Paragraph of Description: Setting the Scene

[Sarah]

[El Presidente's Notes] - In this particular exercise, we were to write a paragraph that focused on setting a tone using scene description. We were to begin the paragraph focused on a character of our devising, then move into descriptions of the surroundings, or the character's situation, and then finish once again with the character. - [/El Presidente's Notes]


Sarah's Piece:

Lillianna or Lily as she likes to be called, a young woman full of sadness. The room she is in is quite large. The torches are throwing dancing light and shadows across the marble floor. The tapestries are bright with color; red, gold, blue, green silver, purple, yellow, and orange all woven into perfection. They depict how life should be in this place. The room contains a dying fire and a large four-poster bed made of polished cherry wood with flowing chiffon curtains that wave in the breeze. The bed is covered with pillows and soft blankets of cream. There are also five chairs around the fire with soft cushions in rich velvety colors of red, green, orange, purple, and blue. The rug in the middle is woven into tight pictures of color. The wood of the chairs shines in the dying light of the fire. As the fire dies, the room begins to become colder and colder. The icky blackness seems to engulf the room. No stars shine this night, but the moon shines full, bright, and blood red. It is a night for strange occurrences. Lily watches from one of the chairs by the fire, her long hair flowing in the wind and her dark past coming to light.

[Scott]

Hank stood with chalk to the backboard with hair like the setting sun. The classroom was a dry white with sparse motivational posters that read things like, “Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.” Or “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others..” The plasterboard ceiling was opposite the linoleum white floor. The tables were tightly packed in the room due to the metal detector at the entrance that took up a larger corner of the already small room. Empty seats faced vaguely toward the board. The bell rung and Hank sighed as student began haphazardly sliding into the classroom and metal detectors screamed throughout the corridors.

[Edward Cheever]

Dorman lounged on the remains of the shattered stump, arms up behind his head, a twig between his smiling lips as he surveyed the landscape. This place had been a forest not long ago. Now it was a twisted ruin. Tree trunks lay in shattered pieces, splinters stabbing into the sky. All visible leaves, the few that hadn’t blown away, lay trampled and crushed in the mud beneath the lumbered graveyard. A bird’s nest lay beneath the remains of a great oak, bird’s shells smashed and scattered all around it, and underneath it all, a silent, cold mother bird. The sight lasted for miles and miles, climbing over hills, down into valleys. Small log cabins, farms, and even an entire village that had sat along a now non-existent riverbank, all erased. Even from this distance the Fenray mountainside was visibly ruinous. Boulders had been tossed asunder, and a great fissure now opened up in its face, like a giant had taken a cleaver and struck the mountain to its core. A tragedy of this kind, this scope, this malicious glory, hadn’t been visited upon the land in generations. Dorman sighed contentedly, happily ignoring the torn and ratty clothing he wore, which had been so fine the day before.

[tiffany]

Quickly Reid darted into a dry stream bed nearby, his bright green eyes darting here and there, taking in the images around him, his dark brown hair flicking wildly about his face. The night was dark, far darker than usual. The first clouds of the winter months had rolled in, masking the guiding light of the stars and moon in the great beyond. Already the trees had abandoned their leafy autumn garb in retreat from the coming cold, leaving their massive black trunks as naught but the bare bones of their former selves. The creek bed itself was nothing more than a faint impression of its former self, the self that would be raging like a mad man when the winter snow thawed in the spring. Despite the coming chill, the wind had yet to pick up. The night was still, silent, so that every man-made noise sounded like a whisper in the Hall of Echoes. Even now the source of Reid’s haste could be heard, splitting the silence of the darkness, and the middle-aged man prayed silently that the crunching of his boots on the dry creek bed would be masked by the shouting that followed him.