I'd been wanting to do this exercise for a while, because I needed it desperately. My limited sense of spatial perception makes it almost impossible for me to properly describe scenery while writing a scene, and often it's clear where the characters are in relation to each other but the setting is blank - at least to me, or it's filled in by a scene from real life, a place I really know, which is why I started off with an actual place. I just sat there in the library and turned phrases over in my head until I thought I had an accurate verbal picture of a place I avoid rather strenuously. I tried to mix it up a bit - I think I only did one outdoor scene, but I did different places - a library, a pub/bar/thing, a habitation, a work-place. It was good fun, seeing the places through someone else's eyes, or even my own.
I take it back, I did two outdoor scenes, one of which was a confederate army camp. Even though I know such long description wouldn't really fly in my ordinary narration, I do have to learn how to weave it in, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to learn to describe physical detail as well as try to create an emotional backdrop of a location, and I think I did all right. Who knows what comes next?
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