1. Some Notes By Brian Yablon
Descriptive Writing
Some Notes
By Brian Yablon

2. Overall Purpose
You want to create an image or series of images in the reader’s mind.
If done well, your reader should feel as though he/she is experiencing the world through your senses -- as though he/she were transposed onto you.

3. A Basic Skill
Descriptive writing is a “threshold skill.” It is the basic building block of all other forms of writing.
In order to write all types of essays well, you must write well descriptively.

4. Some Specific Uses To entertain To relate an experience.
Such as an amusing description of a teenager’s room.
To relate an experience.
Such as a description of your childhood home to convey a sense of wealth or poverty you grew up in.

5. More Specific Uses To express feelings
Such as a description of your favorite outdoor spot so that your reader clearly understands why you enjoy that place so very much.
To inform (for a reader unfamiliar with a subject).
Such as a description of a newborn calf for a reader who has never seen one.

6. Still More Specific Uses
To persuade, to convince readers that some music videos degrade women.
Such as a description of a degrading music video.
To clarify, to clear up a misconception.
Such as the descriptions of two people, objects, places, or ideas.

7. Where Can Descriptive Writing Be Found?
By itself
Narratives
Exemplifications
Comparison-contrasts
Arguments
Definitions
Division-classifications
Cause-effect

8. How Do You Begin? First, figure out two things:
Your purpose -- what are you trying to achieve with this description?
Your audience -- who are you directing your description toward.
Your purpose and audience determine WHAT you say and HOW you say it.

9. Then What?
Generate as many ideas, details, examples, and images as you can -- more than you think you’ll need.
Select which of those you want to use.
You cannot use everything; it’s too much -- and you want to avoid sounding like a laundry list.

10. Focus on a Dominant Impression
Support the dominant impression with specific, vivid, precise details that all lead toward that overall image.

11. Getting Organized
There are three ways to organize a descriptive essay.
Keep in mind that organization patterns tend to overlap.

12. Spatial Organization This is organizing your images in physical space:
Top to bottom
Front to back
Left to right
Near to far
Head to toe
Bumper to bumper

13. Chronological Organization
Sequential order
First to last
Morning-noon-night
First, second, third
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
September, October, November
1999, 2000, 2001

14. Emphatic Organization
Order of importance
Least to most
Most to least

15. Then What? Express and explain your details in length and in depth.
Avoid creating a laundry list of characteristics.
Use sensory language. We are sensory creatures and experience our world with our senses.
Hearing
Taste
Touch
Sight
Smell

16. Be Aware of: The power of words.
Denotation (literal, dictionary definitions)
Connotation (associations we make with words)
They are often not the same -- and sometimes opposite!

17. You Gotta Be Smooth, Baby!
Be aware of transitions; they help your reader move between ideas.
They’re connectors between sentences and between paragraphs.

18. Do You Feel Like I Do? Use sensory language:
Hearing
Tasting
Touching
Smelling
Seeing
Be aware that sensory language enlivens your writing but also slows it down.
Use it well but sparingly.

19. Precision, Precision…
Always be vivid, specific, and precise with details.
Use concrete details instead of amorphous, vague ideas.

20. Figurative Language
Try to use:
Metaphors
Similes
Personification

21. Sentences Vary sentence Length Structure Short Medium long Simple
Complex
Compound
Compound-Complex

22. Focus
Remember that descriptive writing is focused on images NOT EVENTS.
Think of it as flipping through a photo album. Each image is static yet tells a story.