In college, I was given an assignment that permanently changed how I read and write.
The premise was almost absurd in its simplicity. There was a man and a woman in a kitchen. The woman was his wife. The man brought her her slippers. That was it. No plot. No backstory. Just that action. We were instructed to write the scene twice, using the same facts and the same sequence of events, but to convey two entirely different emotional realities using nothing but word choice, pacing, and detail.
