Professor Anne Wilson uses this Imaginative Sense-Memory Exercise in her FYW 150 course to help her students develop their narrative writing skills. You can find a detailed guide for the exercise here.

Having first learned this exercise through theatre, Professor Wilson recognized its relevance to the discipline of writing. In this in-class exercise, she prompts her students to reflect on a specific remembered experience in their life––one that is strong, pleasant, and emotionally connected. She guides them through a series of questions related to the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Once students have decided on a memory, they spend 15 minutes writing non-stop about their sensory experiences tied to it.

During the following class session, students share their work with their peers. Class discussion touches on students’ writing processes as a whole, as well as what they learned about narrative description. Professor Wilson notes that one of the goals of this exercise is to help students practice writing “from a deeper center than just the intellect.” Students tend to enjoy this exercise, and they are often astonished by how much they are able to remember and write in just 15 minutes.