In my book, Looking into the Light, one of the very first assignments I give works like this: I tell people to go out to a place where there are people, find someone they think looks interesting, and then write an imaginative portrait of that person, perhaps in the form of the opening of a short story in which they are a character. (I tell them to spend no effort on the quality of the writing, just get their impression down, but the writing is usually quite wonderful.)

The point of this is to get people to look past the merely physical aspects of a person and more deeply into who they are, into what feeling comes off them. After all, saying “He is a man, tall, maybe 6 feet, about 70 years old, etc.” really doesn’t give me anything that draws me in. But if I read this by Lilian Shen I get physical clues, but also something much more.

“She sat in the corner booth, white hair in place. Despite her faded features her carriage and high cheekbones conveyed an air of elegance.

Her arctic blue eyes stared into the distance, then narrowed slightly as an unpleasant image surfaced in her mind, an image she had been trying to suppress. Relentlessly her inner eye turned to the trunk of the gray Oldsmobile parked outside the café…and to the bundle in the trunk. Soon, she was sure, acquaintances would notice that calls to her husband went unanswered, that he had not been seen for days.

The cup in her hand quivered slightly as her mind began to race….

You see how it works? For photographers who want to make a picture of a person, this is the way they need to see.

Now here’s another that was done a few weeks back in an unusual workshop, and within a line or two the whole group knew it was hearing something really good, really penetrating. The writer, Abby Stiers, really inhabited the mind of the person and found a great character. Read it and you’ll see.

God, this place is dead.  There is literally nobody in here.  Whatever, fuck it, nobody interesting is going to come in.  It’s because the retard that runs this place doesn’t have regular hours and so nobody knows when he is going to be open.  At least I can talk shit about people and not worry about what anyone thinks.  But even talking to Lisa kind of sucks.  I am so bored.  She is so boring. This bar is so boring.  Maybe this bartender can suggest a better bar.  This town is the worst.  If people actually lived here, if I hadn’t been the only available drunk person at that party last week, I wouldn’t have been the one Bill cheated with.    God, Lisa is so dumb.  She doesn’t understand that having your mom die when you are only twenty-one is not the same as breaking up with your stupid boyfriend.  Like all the kids who come home from their snotty-ass colleges and feel obligated to hang out with me.  Like all these boys who come home from Easter and want to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with me because they are so sorry for me.  I want to be somewhere interesting. I want to be somewhere better.   I just want.  Fuck, if I had known she was going to die, I wouldn’t have broken up with Brett 2 weeks earlier.  Then, I would have somewhere to go, besides my lonely ass parent’s house. Like normal. We could just go to bed and he could hold me and I wouldn’t have to check Tinder every five minutes hoping to talk to someone who isn’t totally boring.  I CAN’T STAND LISA.  Why the fuck does she think I care about the stupid shit she is saying.  Just stop talking, finish your drink so we can LEAVE THIS FUCKING BAR.

These are two of the best responses ever to this exercise. The point is to stretch your mind beyond what you already think you know.