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The campus, however, hadn’t impressed upon Peri the full weight of its grandeur until she entered the famed Harvard Yard. Back at Cal State, she would have called this the quad, but she couldn’t bring herself to give this place such a banal name. Thick leafy trees shaded the wide green lawn crisscrossed by walkways, such that though the square wasn’t more than a tenth of a mile across, she couldn’t see the opposite side through the foliage. Great buildings of red brick ringed the square, watching the students as they had for hundreds of years.

Most daunting, however, was her destination, the university library. A wide rise of steps led to entry doors dwarfed by twelve thick Corinthian columns, shining white under the gray Boston sky. The dark windows stared down at her, daring the girl from a (gasp!) state school to attempt entry into the finest library in the country. Peri bit her lip. She’d faced down maniacs on far-flung alien planets with no problem; why was this so frightening?

Today, you’re going to do research, because research is a part of writing.

Select an outdoor public place you’ve never been to before, specifically a building or an area that you can approach and enter by walking. Some ideas: the Louvre, a temple in Japan, a public park in San Francisco, Soho, the front gates of Disneyland.

Go to Google Maps and find the place. For a few minutes, study the place in map view and satellite view, and street view if it’s available. Get a good sense of the layout, how far apart things are, how tall things are, where entrances and exits are (if applicable), the terrain, which way is uphill/downhill, etc. Try to picture what it would be like to visit that place.

Now, choose a character (original or DW or anything else), think of a reason that person would be in that place, then write two paragraphs (or more) of that person walking into that place. Try to focus on the actual entry (movement, sights, sounds) and the environment, and less on how they feel at the moment.

Ideas: How do they approach the place? What do they see? Is it easy to get in, do they have to buy a ticket, or are they stopped from entering? Are there other people around?