Ministry of higher education, science and innovations termiz state university

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood.”
—Robert Frost, excerpt from “Birches”.
IMAGERY WRITING EXERCISES
The importance of descriptive, concrete imagery to creative writing cannot be understated. To master this literary device, try your hand at the following 5 writing exercises.
1. SHOW, DON’T TELL
“Show, don’t tell” writing is writing that uses concrete details to transmit an experience to the reader, rather than asserting the experience itself. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, you can learn about it (and find many more imagery examples) at this article.
Here’s an example of showing instead of telling:
Telling: Mom stomped into the doorway, furious.
Showing: The only thing chillier than the breeze from outside was mother herself, her bootsteps making the floorboards shake, her brow furrowed so tightly I worried her face might fall off.
In this exercise, rewrite the following phrases into complete “show, don’t tell” statements. The below sentences are “telling” sentences where the writer is chewing the reader’s food—asserting an experience without relying on the senses.
“Telling” statements:
The girl felt warm.
The full moon was bright.
Her heart dropped.
His dinner wafted through the kitchen.
The cat chased birds.
The wind swept the trees.
Her bike wouldn’t budge.
The berries tasted fresh.
Their socks got wet.
The music echoed down the hall.
The development of precise images is essential to great poetry, storytelling, and “show, don’t tell” writing. While poetry writing can linger in description, story writing is best kept to action. This checklist from Writer’s Digest does a great job of explaining how to make this device action-focused.
2. LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
Find an interesting photograph. It can be a physical photo, it can sit somewhere in your camera roll, it can be a classical painting, or you can simply look for something unique on a site like Unsplash.⁵
Now, describe that photograph using the different types of imagery—except for visual imagery. Try to convey the experience of the photograph without showing the reader what it actually looks like. The challenge of describing something visual without relying on visual images will help you sharpen your descriptive writing.
Here’s an example, using this landscape painting by John Wootton:

• 
  Auditory: The men whistled over the crash of waves reaching the shore, and the horse whinnied along with the work.
  
• 
  Tactile: Water lapped along the men’s ankles, as cold as a snake’s glistening eyes.
  
• 
  Olfactory: The salty air perforated each man’s nostrils, punctuating the air with a briny sharpness.
  
• 
  Gustatory: Salt water waves occasionally crashed into the men’s lips, acrid and mouth-puckering. While they worked they thought about home, the warm taste of dinner satiating a hard day’s work.
  
• 
  Kinesthetic: The barely moving air graced each man’s legs like a cat brushing past, and all was still.
  
• 
  Organic: The sun crept below the horizon, and in the dark the forest seemed like it might come to life, like it was harboring a dark and heady tomorrow.
  

When you have an example for each non-visual image, try to combine them into a singular effective description of the photograph.
Do all of these imagery examples make sense? Do they even come close to describing the painting? Absolutely not. But just the attempt at describing a landscape painting through taste or touch helps juice your creativity, and you might stumble upon some really beautiful writing in the process.
If you enjoyed this exercise, you might be interested in the Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge at Rattle.

3. THINK ABSTRACTLY

Great imagery relies on the use of great concrete words, particularly nouns and verbs (though some adjectives, too). The opposite of a concrete word is an abstract word: a word which describes an idea, not an image.
Examples of abstract words are “satisfaction,” “mercantilism,” “love,” “envy,” “disgust,” and “bureaucracy.” None of those words have concrete images: they might have symbols (like “heart” for “love”), but no single image defines any of those words.
For this exercise, generate a list of abstract words. If you’re struggling to come up with good words, you can use a list of abstractions like this one. Once you’ve settled on a good list, select a word that particularly excites you.
Use this abstract word as the title of a poem or story. Now, write that poem or story, using concrete description to show the reader exactly how that abstraction feels and looks. Do not use the abstract word, or any synonyms or antonyms, in your writing—try to avoid abstractions altogether.
At the end of your exercise, you might end with a poem like “Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.