WRITERS’ CIRCLES

Keep your writing group fruity with these exercises from Julie Phillips

There’s nothing like a tangy fruit salad to get your tastebuds tingling. There are so many different fruits to choose from that there is something for everyone. From the fruits of our childhood to the fruits we enjoy today, the taste, smell, look and feel of fruit can bring back so many memories. With this in mind, this month we’re going to use the decadence of pomegranates, the energy of oranges and the comedy value of bananas to lift our writing into a perfectly balanced diet of literary deliciousness.

Find the fruit

Ask the group, in pairs, to describe a fruit to each other, as though their partner has never heard of, seen or tasted that fruit before. What colour is it? What shape is it? Does it grow in a bush or a tree? What is its country of origin? Does it have pips or a stone? What is its texture like, both in the hand and in the mouth? Does it have to be peeled or can you eat the skin? Try and use fruits that people might not know so well to make it more challenging. Can they guess what it is? What aspects of the fruit did they decide to describe and what was it that made their partner guess it, if they did? Ask the group to then think about the fruits they enjoyed as children. Was there a fruit they had at special occasions? Some people had a satsuma in their Christmas stocking, for example, and others had a tin of mixed fruit salad with Carnation milk on top as a treat. During the war and for some years after when rationing was in force, what fruits did people miss most, do you think? What memories do the fruits evoke for them?