An afternoon kept indoors
Make it seen · 15 minutes · Published
Read this first
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847). Project Gutenberg #1260
The prompt
Describe an afternoon when going out was impossible, using only what the weather did to the body and the house: the wind, the rain, the cold fingers, the hour of the meal. Let the narrator's relief or dread show through the details chosen, never through a stated feeling. Four sentences, every one with something touchable in it.
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the shut-in afternoon in four sentences with a touchable detail in each.
The move
Make it seen. Describe with a few chosen details, heard or seen, so that the reader has the scene before them without a word of comment.
Tags: imagery and observation.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Only what works. Anyone reads who wants to. In this format, responses name only what works in the first draft, and every text is treated as fiction.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.