The Kidnapping: A Writing Exercise

It's hard to get young (or even older) fiction writers to really put themselves into the mind and experience of a character. They write things like, "I woke up and realized I'd been kidnapped and was being held captive under a boardwalk in Atlantic City." Try this exercise: Your character wakes up and is blindfolded and tied up. They have to use sound, smell, and touch to slowly figure out where they are. At some point, the blindfold may come off, but they need to write about how the character would actually experience it-- as a dawning realization. The results are usually very interesting. When we share aloud, I have students stop just short of revealing where the character is... the rest of the class needs to guess.

George awakened, his head throbbing. Where was he? He tried to open his eyes, but realized it made no difference-- he was blindfolded. Nonetheless, a pulsing, white light pounded against his closed eyelids, right through the rough cloth. He tried to move, but realized that he was bound as well, his feet tied together and his hands behind his back. The rough, prickly rope dug into his wrists, and though his jeans protected his ankles, the pressure still hurt. He lay on his right side, and his face was pressed against a somewhat bumpy metallic surface.

The metal rumbled, vibrated, as if it was moving. Am I in a truck? he wondered. But he began to detect a pattern to the movement-- not the random disturbance of bumps in a road, but the slow churning motion of something moving slowly around in a circle. He was revolving, and felt certain of it now. The light continued to shine in his face, The metal beneath him was warm, and the light was accompanied by an intense heat from above. He smelled something sharp, now. Some kind of oil. In the far distance, he thought he could hear waves, and maybe the cry of some kind of bird. A seagull?

He realized where he was.