Descriptive Writing

1. Descriptive Writing • The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader's mind. • Capturing an event through descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses. • Writing more descriptively will improve your writing by making it more interesting and engaging to read.

2. The 5 Senses

3. The Words You Use Matter Don’t use words like stuff, very, pretty, things, or really. Use words like these • Animated • Bruised • Cylindrical • Dingy • Elegant • Frail • Grimy • Lumpy • Portly • Radiant • Shapeless • Statuesque • Tearful • Timid • Untidy • Verdant • Wiry • Worn

4. Descriptive Similes and Metaphors • When the pickup hit it, the armadillo came apart like a watermelon flung across the asphalt. • The Oldsmobile was a boat, and Jason was the captain. The searchlights on the bow shone through the heaviest weather. … "All ahead full," Jason commanded, and shifted into drive. • His headache was as painful as a root canal without the benefit of laughing gas. • The couch is the autobahn of the living room. • Her hair was like gravy, running brown off her head and clumping up on her shoulders. • A large crisis. In fact, if you've got a moment, it's a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying "This Is a Large Crisis." http://ocw.usu.edu/english/intermediate-writing/english-2010/-2010/metaphors-and-similes-skinless_view.html

5. More Transitions Spatial Addition • In the front, In the back • Beside • Adjacent • Across from • Nearby • Left, Right • Above, Below • In the distance • Here, There • Also • In addition • Too • Moreover • Besides • Furthermore • Equally important • Finally • Then

6. HS Example: 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.

7. Nonfiction Example: 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. From: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

8. HS Example: 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.

9. Fiction Example: Italo Calvino A jack-hare came out, white, onto the snow, he twitched his ears, ran beneath the moon, but he was white and couldn’t be seen, as if he weren’t there. Only his little paws left a light print on the snow, like little clover leaves. Nor could the wolf be seen, for he was black and stayed in the black darkness of the forest. Only if he opened his mouth, his teeth were visible, white and sharp. There was a line where the forest, all black, ended and the snow began, all white. The hare ran on this side, and the wolf on that. From:Marcolvaldo or The seasons in the city