DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS

A Brief Guide to Writing Descriptive Essays

There are several methods writers use to describe something in an essay. They may choose vivid, fresh
language, or they may use examples, or they might take something ordinary and by comparing it with
something extraordinary, make it interesting, or they may use their senses.

When someone asks you to describe something, the first step you might take is to jot down the first words
that come to you. If I say "egg," for instance, you might write down the following string of associations:
"round, white, brown, fresh, scrambled, farmer, chicken, goose, over-easy." But another student might
write down "ostrich," while yet another chooses "dinosaur." Then a medical student might chime in with
"ovulation, zygote, baby." At some point, someone else may take it a step further and mention "fragility."
The point is that the one little word "egg" can conjure up a number of associations, all coming at the
subject in a different way. So when you are asked to describe an event or a person, start with the
obvious, but don't stay there.

Features

1. A well-focused subject can be ordinary or extraordinary, but you should strive to make it as interesting
as possible by emphasizing what makes it interesting or new and unusual. Pick something specific, an
event or a person or an animal.

2. How you treat your subject is directly related to how your reader will react to it. Give plenty of
specific descriptive detail. If you're describing an event, watch people moving and hear them talking.
Create a dominant impression for your reader.

3. Create a clear pattern of organization. Your introduction should work from general to specific, ending
in a thesis sentence. You should have several paragraphs that develop and describe your topic, and your
conclusion should restate your thesis or conclude your event.

Let's say I'm writing a paper about my Uncle George. Watch how I work from general sentences to
specific ones:

When I was little, I loved visiting my relatives. Although I was a country girl, I didn't have any
brothers or sisters that were close to my age, nor did my parents enjoy some of the outdoor events
that my extended family did. But my aunts and uncles in Manchester, Tennessee, were always doing
something fun, especially my Uncle George. Uncle George loved to laugh and he loved to fish and he
loved me.
In this first paragraph, I have moved from general (visiting relatives) to more specific (Manchester,
Tennessee and Uncle George) to even more specific (Uncle George loved to laugh, fish, and he loved me).
My paper now falls into three natural paragraphs, one on laughing, one on fishing, and one on how Uncle
George showed his love and how it affected me. Now it's not imperative that you have three paragraphs in
your body, and oftentimes, the three-paragraph body seems trite and boring. Usually, however, that's not a
result of the organization, it's a result of the writing itself.

Here's one descriptive paragraph about fishing:

Uncle George and I would head out before it got light. The trek to the pond was always exciting.
The earth smelled fresh and new, promising warmth, and as the birds awoke, they'd tentatively
practice the prologues to their songs. We'd walk past the apple trees, and I could smell the
sharpness of the rotten fruit that had dropped to the ground. Occasionally, I'd slip on a peel, so I
learned to be careful not to run too quickly. We'd walk past the water troughs where the tadpoles
were busy wiggling their way to froghood and pick up the pond trail on the other side of the musty-
smelling old barn. At this point I had to be careful not to get my pole tangled in the underbrush--
which constantly grabbed for my dangling hook and bobber--while Uncle George's flashlight
jumped and weaved as he made sure the small circle of light was set for my height. He would hold
my hand and tell me about the fish, and I was never scared.
Notice that I use my senses to describe the scene. All of the senses can be used in a descriptive paper--
touch, smell, hearing, taste, and vision, although you may just pick one or two. Notice the language, too.
"Froghood" is not a word, but it seems to me that it's better than "adulthood," which I wrote first. And
"froghood" works, does it not?

What do you want to describe?

As you get started on your descriptive essay, it's important for you to identify
exactly what you want to describe. Often, a descriptive essay will focus on
portraying one of the following:

• a person
• a place
• a memory
• an experience
• an object

Ultimately, whatever you can perceive or experience can be the focus of your
descriptive writing.

Why are you writing your descriptive essay?

It's a great creative exercise to sit down and simply describe what you observe.
However, when writing a descriptive essay, you often have a particular reason for
writing your description. Getting in touch with this reason can help you focus
your description and imbue your language with a particular perspective or
emotion.

Example: Imagine that you want to write a descriptive essay about your
grandfather. You've chosen to write about your grandfather's physical
appearance and the way that he interacts with people. However, rather than
providing a general description of these aspects, you want to convey your
admiration for his strength and kindness. This is your reason for writing the
descriptive essay. To achieve this, you might focus one of your paragraphs on
describing the roughness of his hands, roughness resulting from the labor of his
work throughout his life, but you might also describe how he would hold your
hands so gently with his rough hands when having a conversation with you or
when taking a walk.

How should you write your description?

If there's one thing you should remember as you write your descriptive essay, it's
the famous saying: show don't tell. But what's the difference between showing
and telling? Consider these two simple examples:

• I grew tired after dinner.

 •As I leaned back and rested my head against the top of the chair, my eyelids
began to feel heavy, and the edges of the empty plate in front of me blurred
with the white tablecloth.

The first sentence tells readers that you grew tired after dinner. The second
sentence shows readers that you grew tired. The most effective descriptive
essays are loaded with such showing because they enable readers to imagine or
experience something for themselves.

As you write your descriptive essay, the best way to create a vivid experience for
your readers is to focus on the five senses.

• sight
• sound
• smell
• touch
• taste

When you focus your descriptions on the senses, you provide vivid and specific
details that show your readers rather than tell your readers what you are
describing.

Quick Tips for Writing Your Descriptive Essay

Writing a descriptive essay can be a rich and rewarding experience, but it can
also feel a bit complicated. It's helpful, therefore, to keep a quick checklist of the
essential questions to keep in mind as you plan, draft, and revise your essay.

Planning your descriptive essay:

• What or who do you want to describe?

• What is your reason for writing your description?

• What are the particular qualities that you want to focus on?

Drafting your descriptive essay:

•What sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures are important for
developing your description?

•Which details can you include to ensure that your readers gain a vivid
impression imbued with your emotion or perspective?

Revising your descriptive essay:

•Have you provided enough details and descriptions to enable your readers to
gain a complete and vivid perception?

• Have you left out any minor but important details?

• Have you used words that convey your emotion or perspective?

 • Are there any unnecessary details in your description?

• Does each paragraph of your essay focus on one aspect of your description?

• Are you paragraphs ordered in the most affective way?

Writing Descriptions

Because description is a mode of expository writing which is relied upon in other

expository modes, we sometimes find difficulty in imagining a purely descriptive
essay. In a narrative, for example, description can make the setting of characters
more vivid; in a process paper it can insure that the audience understands the
finished product. Regardless of how we use description, it is easy to see that it
strengthens an essay considerably.

Principles

Students often ask, "But how do I write a purely descriptive essay? What's the point
of description? What's so different about it?" There are three characteristics of a
purely descriptive essay which are worthy of remembering.

• a descriptive essay has one, clear dominant impression. If, for example you
are describing a snowfall, it is important for you to decide and to let your
reader know if it is threatening or lovely; in order to have one dominant
impression it cannot be both. The dominant impression guides the author's
selection of detail and is thereby made clear to the reader in the thesis
sentence.
• a descriptive essay can be objective or subjective, giving the author a wide
choice of tone, diction and attitude. For instance, an objective description of
one's dog would mention such facts as height, weight, coloring and so forth. A
subjective description would include the above details, but would also stress
the author's feeling toward the dog, as well as its personality and habits.
• the purpose of a purely descriptive essay is to involve the reader enough so
he or she can actually visualize the things being described. Therefore, it is
important to use specific and concrete details.

Conventions

• The descriptive essay relies on concrete, sensory detail to communicate its

point. Remember, we have five senses, not one or two.
• The author of a descriptive essay must carefully select details to support the
dominant impression. In other words, the author has the license to omit
details which are incongruent with the dominant impression unless the
dominant impression is one which points out the discrepancies.
• Description very often relies on emotion to convey its point. Because of this,
verbs, adverbs, and adjectives convey more to the reader than do nouns.
 • Unless the description is objective, you must be sure that the dominant
impression conveys an attitude.

Strategies

• Try giving all the details first; the dominant impression then is built from
these details.
• Check your details to be sure that they are consistent with the dominant
impression. You might even want to write down the five senses on a scratch
piece of paper and check to see that you have covered them all.
• Try moving your reader through space and time chronologically. For instance,
you might want to describe a train ride from start to destination, or a stream
from its source to the point at which it joins the river.
• Use a then-and-now approach to show decay, change, or improvement. The
house where you grew up might now be a rambling shack. The variations on
this strategy are endless.
• Select an emotion and try to describe it. It might be more difficult to get
started, but it can be worthwhile.

Once that is decided, you need to decide what the focus of your essay is going to be – are you going to talk about
how you like the weather just before it rains, or are you going to talk about how the gloominess of the environment
makes you feel sad. The focus decides the approach of your essay. Obviously, if you are going to write about how
you like the weather before the rains, the essay would be more upbeat, and if you are talking about the gloomy
aspect of the weather, your essay would focus on your feelings of sadness etc.

Then you have to decide what senses are you going to use – are you going to talk about what you see, or how you
feel or how the smells are – so that you can begin creating a visual image in the reader’s mind.

Using the example above, let’s see a short paragraph with both the approaches we discussed above.

Here is the paragraph where the weather before the rains makes me feel good.

As I leaned out of the window, I inhaled the fresh air smelling of wet earth. I looked up and saw the clouds
slowly gather together so that they could shower their cool drops upon us down below. The trees were
swaying slowly to the light wind that had picked up. It felt as if Mother Nature herself was getting ready for
her dance in the rain.

Here is the paragraph where the weather before the rains makes me feel gloomy.

As I leaned out of the window, I smelt the damp smell of earth. Looking up, I saw the clouds gather together
to drench us with their cold, wet drops. The trees swayed in the wind, as if they protested the unexpected
drizzle that was coming their way. I felt as if Mother Nature was getting ready to cry and let out her pain
onto us all.

If you observe, in both the cases, a description of the event has been given using action-oriented words. The maxim
of ‘show, not tell’ has been used along with descriptive words to create the picture of the time before it rains. The
approach then gives the feelings of either happiness or sadness with the imagery thus created. Descriptive writing
techniques of using all the senses have also been used to the best effect to describe, for example, the ‘smell’ of the
earth and the ‘sight’ of the trees swaying.

Descriptive essay writing is thus a culmination of the process of creating a visual image with the help of words and
senses.

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY
Descriptive essay is a wide-spread paper type that is intended to describe an object, a topic, a place, a
building, a person or an event. When you start writing you should think about your descriptive essay topic and
a place, event or a process you are going to describe. A good thesis statement is an important part of any
essay and descriptive paper is not an exception. The thesis statement should be in a form of a question the
answer to which you give in the body part of an essay. The following writing tips will help you learn more about
how to write a descriptive essay.

1. Your work should be brief and comprise the introduction that presents the general
idea of the topic, the main body that describes places, events or people so vividly that
the reader can easily form a clear picture of the whole story, and the conclusion,
which summarizes the entire paper.

2. Be creative when choosing your descriptive essay topics. Your topic can deal with a
particular event or refer to a general topic of an activity.

3. Use detailed observations and descriptions rather than facts and statistics. Think
about the reason you write this work. Use specific details and evolve into more
specific details of a place or personal experience.

4. Use a variety of adverbs and adjectives in your paper. Try to create a vivid picture
for the reader to catch his attention. This may be fulfilled with the help of imaginative
language, comparisons of places, objects, people and events that appeal to the senses.
Focus on the five senses in your work: sight, sound, smell, touch, taste.

5. The reader should have the opportunity to imagine what the story is about in as
much detail as possible. Focus on descriptive details of a situation, activity or a
personality.

Descriptive essay follows the following paper structure: introduction, body part and
conclusion. Sometimes it is obligatory to add table of contents, paper outline or
summary.

It the introduction section you should include some interesting facts on the topic. If
you succeed in the purpose of creating an interesting introductory paragraph, the
reader will continue reading your paper. Be sure to include a thesis statement
somewhere in the introduction so that the professor will see what you are going to
discuss in your descriptive essay.

The next important part is the body section. In this part you should show how well
you understand the topic and how well you use descriptive adjectives and adverbs.

The concluding part summarizes the material given in the body of your descriptive
paper. Besides, an analysis of the information is necessary to include in this section
with restating thesis statement and main points from the work. Moreover, you should
not forget about proper citation of the sources within the paper (in-text citations) and
in the list of sources at the end of your descriptive essay.

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