Explaining Difficult Things, page 14

Stretch Your Brain

1. Write your own description of the Maltese falcon

   Write your own description of the Maltese falcon. Make sure that the falcon you describe is your own. Forget Dashiell Hammett’s description quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and make a conscious effort not describe the Falcon shown in the film version of The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston.

   In other words, this exercise has two parts. First, conceptualize a plausible, but interesting, falcon using the background from the Hammett book (and the movie based on it). Next, describe it in writing.

2. Describe something concrete

   Shut your eyes and imagine something or someone that you know well such as your spouse, your house, your car, or your pet. Write down a description based on what you have seen in your mind’s eye.

   Go back and read your description. How well have you observed? What are the most important things in the description? Do you need to go and look at the person or thing you have described? How can the description be improved?

3. My birthday present

   Imagine a birthday present. It’s in a box, wrapped in colored paper, tied with a ribbon.

   Describe the birthday present so that a reader will see it.

   Does your description give the reader a hint of what the present might be?

   Alter the description of the birthday present box so that the contents of the box are hinted at, or pre-figured.

Continued next page

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