This is a creative writing exercise. And it’s one that has created much of my lyrical content, and honed my lyric writing craft more than any other exercise. And you can do it too. It’s called Object Writing. Today, you will show, not tell.

Pick a subject. Anything you want to write about. But be specific. Perhaps a memory of you siting on the swing in your grandma’s front yard. Or a beautiful day swimming in the ocean. Or a pepper shaker. Or a walk in the rain. You can use any of those examples if they sound fun.

You’ll fill the following pages with stream of thought describing that experience. There’s one rule. You can only describe using your senses. There are five standard senses – sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound. We’ll add another two. Organic sense is your awareness of your inner body – your breathing, muscle tension, heartbeat, etc. Your kinesthetic sense is how you relate to the world around you – the world spinning when drunk, I’ll bang my head on the attic ceiling if I stand up straight, etc.

Using only language from these seven senses, you’ll describe the object or memory. You can deviate from the original subject and go anywhere, as long as you stick to sense-based writing.

The reason for this exercise is to develop your ability to show. If I write a song that says “I love you so much,” it doesn’t feel like anything. If I say “I won’t fight back, not against this swelling sound of music ringing in my ears, bringing me to tears. A beating drum is my heart when you’re around,” you feel it.

Don’t try to rhyme though. It’s cool if you do, but don’t let that limit you for this exercise. Get the hang of sense-based writing for the fun of it. You’ll introduce a world of color into your writing.

This exercise is called Object Writing (from Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattinson). He recommends that you do 10 minutes of it first thing in the morning, set to a timer. This gets the juices flowing through your day, and gets your creative brain begging for more action (“if only I had one more minute!”). It’s also very useful to do before writing verses to a song. The chorus tends to be more abstract – the main idea. The verses need to balance that out with sensory writing to put you in this world. I object write a few pages, underline what I like, then see if I can build lyrics around it.

Making your writing more sensory based will be one of the strongest exercises you can do for songwriting and prose. And it’s downright fun.