Descriptive Writing

"Good descriptive writing includes many vivid sensory details that paint a picture
and appeals to all of the reader's senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste
when appropriate. Descriptive writing may also paint pictures of the feelings the
person, place or thing invokes in the writer.

Good descriptive writing often makes use of figurative language such as

analogies, similes and metaphors to help paint the picture in the reader's mind.

Good descriptive writing uses precise language. General adjectives, nouns, and
passive verbs do not have a place in good descriptive writing. Use specific
adjectives and nouns and strong action verbs to give life to the picture you are
painting in the reader's mind." ~ Source
 descriptive writing
Goal: Descriptive writing vividly portrays a person, place, or
thing in such a way that the reader can visualise the
topic and enter into the writer’s experience.

Characteristics: The general characteristics of descriptive writing

include:

• elaborate use of sensory language

• rich, vivid, and lively detail
• figurative language such as simile,
hyperbole, metaphor, symbolism and
personification
• showing, rather than telling through the
use of active verbs and precise
modifiers

Uses: Descriptive writing appears almost everywhere and is

often included in other genre, such as in a descriptive
introduction of a character in a narrative.

Exercises: • Observe, and then describe an event.

• Think of a person or object that stands out in
your memory. Write a description of that
subject.
• Find an example of descriptive writing; explain
the elements that make this a good example.

Descriptive Writing Techniques

Describe from memory

Take the topic or object that you are going to write about and picture it in your mind.
Take yourself to where that object is located. It maybe a room in your home, a
favorite animal, or maybe it is fresh, homemade cookies. Imagine that you are close
enough to touch the object. Can you feel it? Look at it closely. What does it look like?
What do you feel as you are imagining the object you are going to describe? Use
these thoughts to generate free writing. Write every detail about the object that you
can remember.

Sketch

Draw a picture of your object. Visualize it in your mind and sketch from memory, or
place yourself comfortably near the object. Allow yourself to fully explore the object
and then draw what you experience. Don't worry about not being an artist. This
sketch is just for you to help you fully explore the details of the object. Sketching the
object also gives you a creative outlet for when you are struggling with putting pen
to paper.

Objective and subjective data chart

For me the best way to really get some ink flowing in all directions for a descriptive
piece is to break apart the subjective and objective material. A good way to do this is
to take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the top of one side of
the line write the word objective and on the top of the other side of the line write the
word subjective. Now, keeping your topic in mind write everything you can think of
that is objective about the object. If you think of something subjective don't worry,
just write it in the other column. Do this until you have exhausted yourself or the
store runs out of paper. Don't worry about having complete sentences; just get ideas
on paper. With this, you have a good start to writing a descriptive piece. All the
details are right in front of you. You may also discover which way you would like to
lean toward in regards to whether or not you want your piece of writing to be more
subjective, more objective or balanced.

Create a list of desired outcomes for your descriptive piece

The big advantage to this is direction. If you have no idea where you are going with
your piece of writing about your Kermit the Frog underwear, then you may want to
do some brainstorming on what you want to accomplish. Do you want the reader to
be moved by the piece because the object is special to you? Do you want the reader
to rush out of their house and drive to yours because you are trying to sell your car?
Think about what you for an outcome both for you and the reader. Write them down
on a piece of paper (or type them).

Different degrees of objective and subjective balance with

different paragraphs
When you have a good feel for your topic, write a couple of paragraphs with different
objective and subjective balance. Write one paragraph that is completely objective.
For example, something you would find in the classifieds section of your newspaper.
Then write a short paragraph that is heavily subjective. Do a couple different
paragraphs to get a feel for what would work best for your object with regards to
your intended reader and your relationship to the object. For instance, if you are
writing about your favorite chair, you may find it makes more sense, and is more fun
to write about it with the balance leaning toward subjective writing.

In the following paragraph, observe how the writer moves clearly from a
description of the head of the clown (in sentences two, three, and four), to
the body (sentences five, six, seven, and eight), to the unicycle underneath
(sentence nine). Notice also how the concluding sentence helps to tie the
paragraph together by emphasizing the personal value of this gift.

1) A Friendly Clown

On one corner of my dresser sits a smiling toy clown on a tiny unicycle--a gift I received
last Christmas from a close friend. The clown's short yellow hair, made of yarn, covers its
ears but is parted above the eyes. The blue eyes are outlined in black with thin, dark
lashes flowing from the brows. It has cherry-red cheeks, nose, and lips, and its broad grin
disappears into the wide, white ruffle around its neck. The clown wears a fluffy, two-tone
nylon costume. The left side of the outfit is light blue, and the right side is red. The two
colors merge in a dark line that runs down the center of the small outfit. Surrounding its
ankles and disguising its long black shoes are big pink bows. The white spokes on the
wheels of the unicycle gather in the center and expand to the black tire so that the wheel
somewhat resembles the inner half of a grapefruit. The clown and unicycle together stand
about a foot high. As a cherished gift from my good friend Tran, this colorful figure
greets me with a smile every time I enter my room.

Here is the final version of the descriptive paragraph that appears in the
exercise Practice in Supporting a Topic Sentence with Specific Details.
Compare this version with the earlier one to see which descriptions have
been retained, what information has been omitted, and how sentences
have been reworded and rearranged.

2) The Blond Guitar

by Jeremy Burden
My most valuable possession is an old, slightly warped blond guitar--the first instrument
I taught myself how to play. It's nothing fancy, just a Madeira folk guitar, all scuffed and
scratched and finger-printed. At the top is a bramble of copper-wound strings, each one
hooked through the eye of a silver tuning key. The strings are stretched down a long, slim
neck, its frets tarnished, the wood worn by years of fingers pressing chords and picking
notes. The body of the Madeira is shaped like an enormous yellow pear, one that was
slightly damaged in shipping. The blond wood has been chipped and gouged to gray,
particularly where the pick guard fell off years ago. No, it's not a beautiful instrument,
but it still lets me make music, and for that I will always treasure it.

In the next descriptive paragraph, the student writer focuses less on the
physical appearance of her pet than on the cat's habits and actions.

3) Gregory

by Barbara Carter

Gregory is my beautiful gray Persian cat. He walks with pride and grace, performing a
dance of disdain as he slowly lifts and lowers each paw with the delicacy of a ballet
dancer. His pride, however, does not extend to his appearance, for he spends most of his
time indoors watching television and growing fat. He enjoys TV commercials, especially
those for Meow Mix and 9 Lives. His familiarity with cat food commercials has led him
to reject generic brands of cat food in favor of only the most expensive brands. Gregory
is as finicky about visitors as he is about what he eats, befriending some and repelling
others. He may snuggle up against your ankle, begging to be petted, or he may imitate a
skunk and stain your favorite trousers. Gregory does not do this to establish his territory,
as many cat experts think, but to humiliate me because he is jealous of my friends. After
my guests have fled, I look at the old fleabag snoozing and smiling to himself in front of
the television set, and I have to forgive him for his obnoxious, but endearing, habits.

The following paragraph opens the third chapter of Maxine Hong

Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
(Knopf, 1976), a lyrical account of a Chinese-American girl growing up in
California. Notice how Kingston integrates informative and descriptive
details in this account of "the metal tube" that holds her mother's diploma
from medical school.

4) The Magic Metal Tube

by Maxine Hong Kingston

Once in a long while, four times so far for me, my mother brings out the metal tube that
holds her medical diploma. On the tube are gold circles crossed with seven red lines
each--"joy" ideographs in abstract. There are also little flowers that look like gears for a
gold machine. According to the scraps of labels with Chinese and American addresses,
stamps, and postmarks, the family airmailed the can from Hong Kong in 1950. It got
crushed in the middle, and whoever tried to peel the labels off stopped because the red
and gold paint come off too, leaving silver scratches that rust. Somebody tried to pry the
end off before discovering that the tube falls apart. When I open it, the smell of China
flies out, a thousand-year-old bat flying heavy-headed out of the Chinese caverns where
bats are as white as dust, a smell that comes from long ago, far back in the brain.

In each of these four paragraphs (the first composed by a student, the rest by professional
writers), the author uses precise descriptive details to evoke a distinctive mood as well as
to convey a memorable picture. As you read each paragraph, notice how place signals
(see Coherence Strategies: Transitional Words and Phrases) help to establish coherence,
guiding the reader clearly from one detail to the next.

1) The Laundry Room

The windows at either end of the laundry room were open, but no breeze washed through
to carry off the stale odors of fabric softener, detergent, and bleach. In the small ponds of
soapy water that stained the concrete floor were stray balls of multicolored lint and fuzz.
Along the left wall of the room stood ten rasping dryers, their round windows offering
glimpses of jumping socks, underwear, and fatigues. Down the center of the room were a
dozen washing machines, set back to back in two rows. Some were chugging like
steamboats; others were whining and whistling and dribbling suds. Two stood forlorn and
empty, their lids flung open, with crudely drawn signs that said "Broke!" A long shelf
partially covered in blue paper ran the length of the wall, interrupted only by a locked
door. Alone, at the far end of the shelf, sat one empty laundry basket and an open box of
Tide. Above the shelf at the other end was a small bulletin board decorated with yellowed
business cards and torn slips of paper: scrawled requests for rides, reward offers for lost
dogs, and phone numbers without names or explanations. On and on the machines
hummed and wheezed, gurgled and gushed, washed, rinsed, and spun.

2) Mabel's Lunch*

by Wright Morris

Mabel's Lunch stood along one wall of a wide room, once a pool hall, with the empty cue
racks along the back side. Beneath the racks were wire-back chairs, one of them piled
with magazines, and between every third or fourth chair a brass spittoon. Near the center
of the room, revolving slowly as if the idle air was water, a large propeller fan suspended
from the pressed tin ceiling. It made a humming sound, like a telephone pole, or an idle,
throbbing locomotive, and although the switch cord vibrated it was cluttered with flies.
At the back of the room, on the lunch side, an oblong square was cut in the wall and a
large woman with a soft, round face peered through at us. After wiping her hands, she
placed her heavy arms, as if they tired her, on the shelf.

* Adapted from a paragraph in The World in the Attic, by Wright Morris (Scribner's,
1949).

3) Subway Station*

by Gilbert Highet

Standing in the subway station, I began to appreciate the place--almost to enjoy it. First
of all, I looked at the lighting: a row of meager light bulbs, unscreened, yellow, and
coated with filth, stretched toward the black mouth of the tunnel, as though it were a bolt
hole in an abandoned coal mine. Then I lingered, with zest, on the walls and ceilings:
lavatory tiles which had been white about fifty years ago, and were now encrusted with
soot, coated with the remains of a dirty liquid which might be either atmospheric
humidity mingled with smog or the result of a perfunctory attempt to clean them with
cold water; and, above them, gloomy vaulting from which dingy paint was peeling off
like scabs from an old wound, sick black paint leaving a leprous white undersurface.
Beneath my feet, the floor a nauseating dark brown with black stains upon it which might
be stale oil or dry chewing gum or some worse defilement: it looked like the hallway of a
condemned slum building. Then my eye traveled to the tracks, where two lines of
glittering steel--the only positively clean objects in the whole place--ran out of darkness
into darkness above an unspeakable mass of congealed oil, puddles of dubious liquid, and
a mishmash of old cigarette packets, mutilated and filthy newspapers, and the debris that
filtered down from the street above through a barred grating in the roof.

* Adapted from a paragraph in Talents and Geniuses, by Gilbert Highet (Oxford UP,
1957).

4) The Kitchen*

by Alfred Kazin

The kitchen held our lives together. My mother worked in it all day long, we ate in it
almost all meals except the Passover seder, I did my homework and first writing at the
kitchen table, and in winter I often had a bed made up for me on three kitchen chairs near
the stove. On the wall just over the table hung a long horizontal mirror that sloped to a
ship's prow at each end and was lined in cherry wood. It took up the whole wall, and
drew every object in the kitchen to itself. The walls were a fiercely stippled whitewash,
so often rewhitened by my father in slack seasons that the paint looked as if it had been
squeezed and cracked into the walls. A large electric bulb hung down the center of the
kitchen at the end of a chain that had been hooked into the ceiling; the old gas ring and
key still jutted out of the wall like antlers. In the corner next to the toilet was the sink at
which we washed, and the square tub in which my mother did our clothes. Above it,
tacked to the shelf on which were pleasantly ranged square, blue-bordered white sugar
and spice jars, hung calendars from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue and the
Minsker Progressive Branch of the Workmen's Circle; receipts for the payment of
insurance premiums, and household bills on a spindle; two little boxes engraved with
Hebrew letters. One of these was for the poor, the other to buy back the Land of Israel.
Each spring a bearded little man would suddenly appear in our kitchen, salute us with a
hurried Hebrew blessing, empty the boxes (sometimes with a sidelong look of disdain if
they were not full), hurriedly bless us again for remembering our less fortunate Jewish
brothers and sisters, and so take his departure until the next spring, after vainly trying to
persuade my mother to take still another box. We did occasionally remember to drop
coins in the boxes, but this was usually only on the dreaded morning of "midterms" and
final examinations, because my mother thought it would bring me luck.

* Adapted from a paragraph in A Walker in the City, by Alfred Kazin (Harvest, 1969).

NOTICE THE USE OF ADJECTIVES, VERBS AND ADVERBS FOR EFFECT.

NOTICE ALSO THE MIX OF SIMPLE AND COMPLEX SENTENCES AND

PUNCTUATION.

EXAMPLE 1: Extract from Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

Chapter 1

It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a
backing wind brought a granite sky and a mizzling rain with it, and although it was now
only a little after two o'clock in the afternoon the pallor of a winter evening seemed to
have closed upon the hills, cloaking them in mist. It would be dark by four. The air was
clammy cold, and for all the tightly closed windows it penetrated the interior of the
coach. The leather seats felt damp to the hands, and there must have been a small crack in
the roof, because now and again little drips of rain fell softly through, smudging the
leather and leaving a dark-blue stain like a splodge of ink. The wind came in gusts, at
times shaking the coach as it travelled round the bend of the road, and in the exposed
places on the high ground it blew with such force that the whole body of the coach
trembled and swayed, rocking between the high wheels like a drunken man.

The driver, muffled in a greatcoat to his ears, bent almost double in his seat in a faint
endeavour to gain shelter from his own shoulders, while the dispirited horses plodded
sullenly to his command, too broken by the wind and the rain to feel the whip that now
and again cracked above their heads, while it swung between the numb fingers of the
driver.

The wheels of the coach creaked and groaned as they sank into the ruts on the road, and
sometimes they flung up the soft spattered mud against the windows, where it mingled
with the constant driving rain, and whatever view there might have been of the
countryside was hopelessly obscured.

The few passengers huddled together for warmth, exclaiming in unison when the coach
sank into a heavier rut than usual, and one old fellow, who had kept up a constant
complaint ever since he had joined the coach at Truro, rose from his seat in a fury; and,
fumbling with the window-sash, let the window down with a crash, bringing a shower of
rain upon himself and his fellow-passengers. He thrust his head out and shouted up to the
driver, cursing him in a petulant voice for a rogue and a murderer; that they would all be
dead before they reached Bodmin if he persisted in driving at breakneck speed; they had
no breath left in their bodies as it was, and he for one would never travel by coach again.

EXAMPLE 2: Extract from The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander
McCall Smith

Chapter Eleven

Mma Ramotswe Goes to a Small Village to the South of Gaborone

She drove down in the tiny white van, the morning sun streaming through the open
window, the air warm against her skin, the grey-green trees, the browning grass, the
plains stretching out on both sides of the road. The traffic was light; an occasional van,
minibuses crowded and swaying on their ruined suspension, a truck full of green-
uniformed soldiers, the men calling out to any girl walking along the edge of the road,
private cars speeding down to Lobatse, and beyond, on their unknown business. Mma
Ramotswe liked the Lobatse road. Many trips to Botswana were daunting in their length,
particularly the trip up to Francistown, in the north, which seemed to go on forever, along
a straight ribbon of a road. Lobatse, by contrast, was little more than an hour away, and
there was always just enough activity on the way to keep boredom at bay.

Roads, thought Mma Ramotswe, were a country's showcase. How people behaved on
roads told you everything you needed to know about the national character. So the Swazi
roads, on which she had driven on one frightening occasion some years earlier, were
fraught with danger, full of those who overtook on the wrong side and those who had a
complete disregard for speed limits. Even the Swazi cattle were more foolhardy than
Botswana cattle. They seemed to lurch in front of cars as if inviting collision, challenging
drivers at the very last moment. All of this was because the Swazis were an ebullient,
devil-may-care people. That was how they were, and that was how they drove. Batswana
were more careful; they did not boast, as the Swazis tended to do, and they drove more
carefully.

Of course, cattle were always a problem on the roads, even in Botswana, and there was
nobody in Botswana who did not know somebody, or know of somebody who knew
somebody, who had collided with a cow. This could be disastrous, and each year people
killed by cattle which were knocked into the car itself, sometimes impaling drivers on
their horns. It was for this reason that Mma Ramotswe did not like to drive at night, if she
could possibly avoid it, and when she had to do so, she crawled along, peering into the
darkness ahead, ready to brake sharply if the black shape of a cow or a bull should
suddenly emerge from the darkness.