Solo
Narrate the Walk
A noticing drill: walk and quietly narrate only what is actually there, in increasingly specific passes.
How to run it
- Walk somewhere ordinary. For two minutes, narrate what you see in plain nouns — under your breath is fine.
- Second pass: only details you'd normally miss — the tape on the sign, the one dead plant, which windows are open.
- Third pass: people (respectfully) — posture, pace, what they're carrying, one guess at their errand.
- Last pass: pick one detail and say three more specific things about it.
What it teaches
Specificity as a habit. Scenes starve on generic detail ('a store', 'some guy'); a stocked memory of real particulars is what object work and base reality draw on later.
Coaching notes
Ban adjectives like 'nice' and 'weird' — they're labels, not observations. 'A brass doorknob painted over twice' is worth twenty 'old doors'.
Where it usually goes wrong
Turning it into inventing. This is the input drill, not the output drill; the discipline is staying with what's actually there.