Writing Exercises for Family Entertainment: 2 of 6

Let's continue to explore the theory that learning to write can be a form of family entertainment.

As I stated in my first entry (below), writing can be fun and even therapeutic. Not only can writing itself be fun, but learning to write can provide an opportunity for family entertainment. And it's not that difficult.

It bears repeating that in today's world of lightning-speed communication, we still all need to write to communicate. Beyond the cryptic tweat and text, we draft an e-mail in search of a job, a carefully composed apology to make up for a mistake, or a message at work to help do your job. Most important, communicating with one another continues to be the base of a relationship. Writing can be a valuable way to reach out to one another.

So it makes sense to hone your writing skills.

At the same time, in this accelerated world, family members are each pre-occupied with their individual activities –Mom and Dad with their jobs and with maintaining a comfortable dwelling for the family, and kids with school, sports, band, debate club, and, of course, their chores. Sometimes we have time to read a book, but seldom do we have time to practice our writing skills. Frequently we find writing to be a drudgery and avoid it, basking in the brevity of social media.

The first exercise we explored involved a family description of cooking dinner. Each family member first described the cook, then used at least three action verbs to tell us how the cook actually made the dinner, and concluded with a description of the result—with the caveat that it was not intended to be a way for teenagers to critique their parents' or sibling cooking.

For this next exercise, we are going to call on the artistic skills of each family member. One member of the family is in charge of writing a paragraph describing a room that none of the other members has seen—perhaps a room at school, at the mall, or in a library. The writer will describe:

• the physical characteristics of the room: its size, the colors of its walls, is it light or dark, whether it's organized or sloppy with things lying all about

• the furnishings: stove, number of chairs, pictures on the wall, tables

• the environment: is it hot or cold, humid, musty, clean or dusty

The originator of the paragraph describing this room will read the paragraph to the gathered family members who will then within ten minutes draw the room as described. To you artists, drawing hot or cold might be challenging. Perhaps there's a large thermometer in the room, which registers 40 degrees. You can take creative license so long as you faithfully draw what the author is describing.

Each other member of the family takes a turn writing a paragraph and reading it to the remaining family members. These family gatherings can be as along or as short as you want, but the idea is to give each family member the opportunity to write a paragraph that describes a room. The art work will help the authors to understand how successfully they have used their words to communicate.

In the next exercise, we'll work on describing a specific thing and compare how other members of the family write about it.

Joyce T. Strand, Ph.D.

Author of the Jillian Hillcrest Mystery Series

Joycestrand.com