Sitting on the back porch of a cabin, hidden in the woods deep in the Hocking Hills of Ohio, I wrestled with one of my favorite creative writing exercises. The object of the task is to describe your immediate surroundings in different ways corresponding with different genres. This particular rainy day, it went something like this:
Action/Adventure: The rain beat a crisp tattoo on the tin roof rousing me to leave the shelter in spite of the damp. Spring had not arrived though it had broken winter’s back. The underbrush didn’t have time to set it’s green foot-traps and there were no leaves to obscure visibility. It was ideal for moving quickly through the forest. I wouldn’t need a path.
Fantasy/Romance: Droplets of soft rain caressed the hemlocks as Old Man Winter surrendered his daughter, Lady Spring to the raw world. Though she seemed vulnerable and exposed, clothed as she was in only the cool damp mist, she brought with her a promise of warmth. Already you could imagine the pregnant riverbank swelling up to yield it’s violets.
Horror/Suspense: The woods were still. The rain struggled to disturb the silence but fell on a deep bed of decaying oak leaves muffling it’s voice. The drops that landed on the tin roof met with the caked dust it found there. The resulting slurry trickled like blood to congeal in the hidden places of the gutter.
I was having a good time with the exercise but it felt like something just wasn’t quite right. I wanted to see if I could convey a feeling of what the rain was or what the rain meant. Then my muse broke through. I would let the rain express itself.
I took my journal and ran out into the rain. I opened a page to the sky and let the drops fall. Next, I lay the page open on the table to dry. After an hour, the page was warped into blebs and dimples where the drops left their mark.
Yes – That is how you capture rain on the page.