Descriptive Writing: Techniques and Strategies for Effective Description, Exercises of Literature

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DESCRIPTIVE WRITING

Pilar Aguado Jiménez Lengua Inglesa IV

The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe an object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation, etc. This genre encourages the student’s ability to create a written account of a particular experience.

What is more, this genre allows for a great deal of artistic freedom (the goal of which is to paint an image that is vivid and moving in the mind of the reader).

guidelines for writing a descriptive essay:

• Take time to brainstorm
• Use clear and concise language.
• Choose vivid language.
• Use your senses!
• What were you thinking?!
• Leave the reader with a clear impression.
• Be organized!

Fried Chicken

taste

smell

preparation context

salty

crunch spicy

fried

outside

afternoon

picnic

dry

salt heat oil

fry

flour

eating with family wash chicken

WORD WEB

• Smells blend as you cook
• Can be smelled from far away
• Smells drift from kitchen

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?
• What details should be left out?

Focus on the Five Senses

• Sight
• Sound: If you are describing a person, remember to include dialogue.
• Smell
• Touch
• Taste

Similes Descriptive writing may use similes to make something seem more familiar or more creative. Similes make ideas easier to understand, and they can also express feelings. Similes are often used in literature and poetry. Look at the famous examples below:

The sun was like a glowing ball of fire. -Shakespeare

My love is like red, red rose. -Robert Burns

I was young and easy… and happy as the grass was green. -Dylan Thomas

Simile Structure A simile can use the preposition like + noun or noun phrase

The stars looked like diamonds

A simile can also use as … as + noun or noun phrase. This kind of simile also uses an adjective

He is as clever as a fox

Concrete Details

She was nervous as she approached the staircase.

She used the sleeves of her stained wool sweater to wipe the sweat from her forehead before squinting into the darkness that lay before her. She rubbed her moist palms against her jeans before shoving her hand back into her side pocket and hastily pulling out her flashlight.

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.

Descriptive organization

In a descriptive essay, a writer uses details to tell how a subject looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels. The essay should make the reader feel like responding to what he or she is reading. Introduction

• The hook introduces the object or event of description
• The middle sentences provide the background
• The thesis statement tells why the object or event of description is important to the writer. Body paragraphs
• Most of the description is in the body paragraphs.
• Adjectives and adverbs make the experience more vivid.
• The scene is often described with prepositions and prepositional phrases that specify location or position in space.
• Comparisons, such as similes, can make the writing more descriptive, familiar, and expressive. Conclusion The conclusion gives the writer’s final opinion about the description.

Tips for Organization

• Try moving your reader through space and time chronologically.
• 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.
• You may also use a topic-by-topic approach, especially if you are describing a person.

Remember to come up with a clear thesis statement/focus. However, this thesis does not necessarily have to come at the beginning of the essay.

In this case, you may come to your overall statement about the value of the object(s) in your conclusion.

through the door, is the main part of the restaurant. There is another, rarely used, dining room off to the right. It was added during the oil well boom of the seventies. Through the main dining room is yet another room; it guards the door leading into the kitchen. This room contains the most coveted table in the place. The highest tribute Lou can bestow on anyone is to allow them access to seats at this table. This table is the family table; it is reserved for Lou’s, and her daughter Karen’s, immediate family and treasured friends. When entering the main dining room, whether by design or by custom, there is a definite pecking order involved in the seating arrangements. The first table on the left, presided over by an elderly gentleman with Basset Hound eyes, belongs to the old men of the town. The table sits in front of one of two large windows; the old men can see and are able to comment on the “doins of them young ’uns running the town these days.” It is amusing to discover that the average age of the people under discussion is at least fifty and they took over their businesses from the same old men looking over them now. On the right side, the other large window is dominated by the “women’s information league.” In other towns they would be known as busybodies or gossips. At Lou’s, they are part of the complicated information gathering process. They bring all the information from the night before and are linked to the rest of the town

through the old fashioned rotary telephone hanging outside Lou’s kitchen door. The phone rings constantly: someone wants to call in an order, someone wants to leave a message for a person the caller knows is going to be there sometime during the day, and someone else wants to know where the police and the ambulance were going last night. Along with all the calls coming in for the special of the day are also calls delivering the latest events of the day. The old men on the other side of the room will be giving a running commentary on the family of the latest newsmaker, their history in the community, arrest record if any; the who, what, when, where, and why, of the story, with an accuracy to equal any television or newspaper reporter. In the evenings, when Lou’s daughter Karen gets in from school, she brings a change of atmosphere. Even though the news branch never stops, it is replaced in importance by the young people, heralding the evening. The old juke box, reigning in the corner, is brought to life and starts blasting tunes that cover at least twenty years of change in musical tastes. The place fills up with the town’s young people. Whether the kids are flirting, giggling, strutting around, being manly for the girls, or hiding in the darkest corner to profess undying love for each other, the restaurant begins its shift as the town’s social center. All of the activity at Miss Lou’s is conducted in a haze of aromas, guaranteed to make the mouth water. The smell is never the same; it depends entirely on what is cooking at the time. Whether it is roast for tomorrow’s

WRITING TASK 1

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

Write an essay where the description of one the the main characters’ mood could be used to support your thesis