This assignment asks you to expand your descriptive writing by producing vast amounts of organized detail. The goal is to make your writing "thicker" -- to "blow it up," in photographic terms -- by writing intensive, close studies of single subjects. Here are the guidelines:
1. You must stay on the block that holds the New York Public Library. You can travel anywhere on the block, but you cannot cross the street. Treat the block as an island surrounded by deep water.
2. You must stay on the block for at least an hour.
3. In total, you should make notes on 4 subjects: three people and one pigeon.
4. In order to produce a sufficient quantity of detail, you should also try to generate "complete" descriptions of your subjects, capturing every nuance of their appearance, their dress, their actions. Try to produce as much notation as you can -- more than seems possible -- for each one. However, this is also a "stealth assignment": you need to find ways of positioning yourself to observe and write that do not involve staring openly at the people you are studying or disturbing them in any way. (You can stare at the pigeon, of course.)
5. Try to break down single actions into small steps. Don't just write, "He licks his ice cream cone." Expand: "He raises his his right arm, bending it at the elbow and raising the ice cream cone in a sweeping motion across his chest, toward his mouth. As he does so, the sleeve of his jacket pulls against his elbow, expanding slightly at the cuff to reveal a trace of the white shirt underneath. His lips part slightly as the cone approaches his mouth. He does not look at the cone. The ice cream is as white as his sleeve, the cone a pale gold color. Suddenly his mouth opens and he bites the ice cream, quickly taking the cone away and turning his head." Be specific, even maddeningly specific.
6. Try to see details as minutely as possible. Don't just write, "She carries a purse." Expand: "She carries a large, shapeless purse on her right shoulder -- bronze-colored with gold buckles and studs. It has two long straps, one of which is firmly on her shoulder, her right arm passed through it so that the bag is under her arm. She clutches the strap tightly in her hand. The other strap, however, has fallen off her shoulder and hangs against her upper arm a few inches above the elbow." Be specific to the point of seeming unreasonable, stupid, crazy.
7. No interior states! Don't make notes about what you think the person you're describing thinks or feels. Don't make notes about what you think or feel about the person you're describing. You are a neutral recording device, no more biased than a digital camera or an audio recording device -- but just as exhaustive.
8. No figurative language! No one is "tall and skinny as a stork" or "squat like a toad" -- no one is "like" anything!
9. Take your notes and draft an organized piece of descriptive writing for Monday's workshop. Write each description in a separate paragraph, for a total of four paragraphs. This kind of writing is difficult to organize: that's also part of the challenge of this assignment. If you simply copy out what's in your notes in the order you witnessed it, your piece will probably be quite boring. You have to revise, reorganize, strategize about how to create small moments of drama in the arrangement of your sentences or the order of the details you include. Because your description will so minute, small contrasts (for example, between the two purse straps in #6) and minor resemblances (for example, between the shirt and the ice cream in #5) will be important in giving structure and drama to your piece. Word choice ("clutches," not "holds") will be crucial.
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If you missed our field trip and need to make up this assignment with an independent trip to this location, I suggest you go at a time when it will be busy and crowded. This is midtown and there's a park: that means lunch time or immediately after work (5:30 or 6pm) are optimal; weekend afternoons are also good. You'll see very different sorts of people, and see them in different proportions, depending on what time you go: tourists, office workers, Parks Dept. employees, homeless people, schoolchildren, people who are visiting the library to do research.
Be sure to visit the bust of Gertrude Stein in the park, just behind the library.
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