Light on Two Sides

A generative exercise that finds action inside of environment. Audio version of the generator included.

Write a scene grounded in the description of an imagined room—its architecture, its furnishings, and the activity within it. Focus on whatever blend of these elements most draws your interest; let your imagination inhabit the room sensorily.

As you conjure this room and this building, begin by considering its place in the world, its decade in time. Include doors but omit the room’s windows at first—let this room be artificially or magically lit. Conjure the details of the room’s surfaces and objects. Its entrances and exits. Its shelves, furniture, places of wear and places of neglect.

Now give your room a natural light source on one side only, and in your mind’s eye, populate the room, as if sending in actors to take their places. See it as a still image in heavy contrast, saturated by glare.

Now watch the image as you open up another source of light from a different wall, so that the room, in your imagination, is now pervaded by natural light from two sides. Feel the influx of light and its effect on the bodies in the room. Note the expansion of the space as it includes what is outside the windows as well as the interior of the room.

Write a short description of the room as a container or holding place for the living beings within it. Focus on the room and the feeling of the room, whether directly or via its inhabitants’ perceptions.

Find the ending of your description by articulating what that environment makes possible for human action or thought. Let that final possibility become the generative seed of something new.