Build Your Confidence - Imaginary Lives - Creative Writing

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Click the play button to listen to the curators talk

Part 1: Imaginary Lives

Getting started:

We suggest that you try these exercises without listening to the curator’s talk. This is to encourage you to approach writing about the object from an entirely imaginative point of view. Once you’ve completed the exercises it’s then fascinating to compare your writings with the curator’s description.

Step 1: Warm up exercise

Choose an object from our gallery to write about. Using the five senses, write a description of the object as if you were describing it to someone who hasn’t seen it. What might it smell like or taste of, what would it feel and sound like, what does it look like?

Click on the arrows to view the examples

To see: You are terror, hells messenger. To imagine a bird in a cage and then you, teeth and beak and wings snapping and writhing snapping in aworm hole.

To smell: Like burnished leather your skin and bones eroded leaving a tardy tang.

To touch. So old that the breathe is now gone where you lay down and died. The mud and shit covered you leaving a piece like marble.

To hear. The sound of thrashing wings. The blur of an ancient creature, close enough to kill. It’s voice. Shrill and hostile.

To taste: Dry laminate, pot with fossilised mud, the residue on the tongue is dull and unresonant.

liam michael hunt

Agate

This piece is mysterious and adventurous. It is frosty on the inside and has purple layers on the outside. It may sound initially like bubbly larva and may smell fresh like crystal. It is bitter to taste and is jagged and sharp on the inside and smooth on the outside.

Edward Cowan

Over millions of years the object is now set in stone. Its feather like tentacles emanate outwards as it searched for food. A simple life form that survived in the depths of the mighty oceans. Almost transparent but emitting a luminous light amidst the dark world it inhabits. A gentle humming sound almost imperceptible if there were other creatures to hear it at such depth.

JB

Step 2: Being the object

Imagine you are one of the objects. Think about what it would be like using following questions as a guide. You can add to them or adapt them. Read through the questions first to give you an idea of what you’ll include

1. When and where were you created?
2. Write about one thing that happened on the day you were created (E.g, a thunderstorm)
3. Where do you live or exist?
4. What can you see from there?
5. What can you hear?
6. What happens on rainy days?
7. What do you feel like in the mornings?
8. What do you consist of?
9. What colour are you?
10. If someone touched you, what would you feel like to them?
11. What do you do all day?
12. Is there more than one of you?
13. If you could live/exist somewhere else, where would it be?
14. Will you ever die?

Have a look on the next page at some examples...

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