1. Descriptive Writing S4 Revision Class

2. In this lesson, we will… Learn some more effective techniques to be used when writing a descriptive piece:  Theme

3. What is it that makes reading worthwhile? As readers we need to be:  Interested in what we read.  Engaged in what we read.  Able to relate to what we read. Theme

4. Most people enjoy reading about the important things in life:  Fear  Loneliness  Friendship  Growing up/rites of passage  Getting old  Facing problems People also enjoy reading about interesting characters who succeed in overcoming the odds. How can your descriptive piece satisfy your readers?

5. In professional writing, writers never describe for the sake of describing – the description always underpins a second purpose – often to persuade.

6. In professional writing, the writer's controlling idea is rarely evident 'on the surface'; rather, it begins to emerge as the reader reflects on what is written, often through layers of meaning created by the use of symbolism, metaphor and irony. As an example, consider a description of a landscape; this might have as its deeper meaning the wonders of nature or of creation.  A description of a room might - at a deeper level - not be about the room at all but about the person who lives in it.  A description of a journey could act as a kind of metaphor for a person's life.

7. Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

8. If, like Owen, you can use your descriptive writing to support another purpose, you will stand the chance of gaining a much higher grade. This will mean working out, once you have been given the title for your writing, what 'deeper meaning' such a piece of writing might allow. Using your description to allow your reader to consider deeply some aspect of life they find interesting is the way to do this.

9. Think about the cafe/restaurant piece you wrote last week. What deeper meaning do you think this piece could have? What deeper meaning do you think you could write about in a descriptive piece on the following scenes?  A description of a deserted beach.  A description of the crowd at a football match.

10. Can you work out the controlling idea behind the following pieces of descriptive writing? Can you also recognise how each author chooses very precise vocabulary to reinforce this theme?

11. 'When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick - one never does when a shot goes home - but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time - it might have been five seconds, I dare say - he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay...'

12. [Coketown] was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, arid vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next...

13. In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail. Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag...