The Descriptive Essay
Create and edit literary texts that experiment with language features and literary devices for particular purposes and effects.
Description is not a list of adjectives. It is choosing the few details that make a reader see the whole thing — and leaving out the rest.
Builds onYr 7 · The Narrative Essay
Method
Three good details beat twenty
A reader builds the picture themselves. Give them too much and they stop seeing anything.
Use more than sight
Sound, smell and temperature are what make a place feel real. Most students use only sight.
Description still needs movement
A static description dies. Move through the space, or let time pass inside it.
Worked example
e.g. Describe a place that is busy at one time of day and empty at another.
- Choose your dominant impression first — the one feeling the whole piece must create.Abandonment.
- List six details. Then cross out the three that any place could have.Keep only what belongs to this place and no other.
- Open with one specific detail, not a general statement.Not the market is very busy. Write by six, the fish ice is already melting into the gutter.
- Bring in a second sense within the first paragraph.Sound or smell. It is what stops description feeling like a photograph.
- Give the piece movement — walk through it, or let the hours pass.By two, the same gutter is dry.
- Use one figure of speech well rather than four badly.One strong metaphor is worth more than a shower of similes.
- End on a detail, not a summary. Never write and that is why I love this place.The last image should carry the feeling by itself.
Practice
Cut, sharpen, and add a sense.
1
Sharpen this: It was a very old and beautiful building with lots of nice windows.
AnswerSomeone had painted the window frames green, a long time ago, and the paint had lifted in strips. Specific, and it implies age without claiming it.
2
A description uses eleven adjectives in the first two sentences. What has gone wrong?
AnswerThe writer is telling the reader what to think instead of showing them something. Cut to the two or three details that do real work.
3
Which senses do most students forget?
AnswerSmell and temperature — and they are the two that most reliably make a place feel real.
4
Why must a description move?
AnswerBecause a reader tires of a fixed image. Walking through a space, or letting time change it, gives the piece a shape instead of a list.