Creative Writing Prompt: Soundwalk in the Spring!!!

Writing is such a visual exercise. Not only is it physically written in front of you, it also deals in imagery, attempting to capture the visual experience for the reader to imagine. We use the word “image” to talk about the ideas that the writer creates with his or her words. Inevitably, this means that writing often struggles to capture other senses, including touch, smell, taste, and sound. When a writer takes the time to note these other senses, the experience of reading becomes much more textured.

However, in order to write about these senses, we must become fully aware of them.

For this activity, we will immerse ourselves in sound. We are going to go on a soundwalk.

A soundwalk is where we walk around listening to the world around us. We write down the sounds we hear. We also write down when the sounds change, how loud they are, and where the sounds occur. We let the sounds make us think about where we are and our associations with those sounds.

Soundwalk rules:

1.       No talking is allowed. You must stay perfectly quiet so that you – and those around you – can listen to the sounds in your environment. There will be plenty of time to talk afterwards: the soundwalk is a silent activity.

2.       You must stay with the group. While you are listening to the things around you, you must stay with the group: we cross the road as a group, we stop as a group, and we walk down sidewalks in single file as a group. Safety is one of our major concerns in this camp; if you are found to have broken this rule, you will be escorted back to the classroom, and you will not participate in the rest of the soundwalk.

3.       You must write down what you hear. Once you start listening, you will be surprised by the things that you hear around yourself. Stay quiet and listen to every tiny movement around you. Write down as many of the sounds as you can as you hear them. We will stop periodically so that you do not have to write and walk at the same time J

When we come back from the soundwalk, you will have 15 minutes to write a story about the sounds you heard.

You don’t have to write a story about the walk, per se:

You may have heard a bird on the walk that made you want to write about it.

You may have heard a car horn honk at a pedestrian, and you want to write about how that person might have felt at being honked at.

You might have moved from an urban space to a residential space and noticed how the sounds changed: you might want to write a poem comparing the two spaces.

The choice is up to you!