24 Descriptive Writing

One of the most important things you can do to make your writing more interesting is to clearly describe all the details. This will help your reader understand what you are talking about, and it will make them feel like they can see and feel the same things you do.

What Do You Notice?

Read the story below.

What do you notice about this? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? How does the author feel? Most likely, you don’t see, hear, or feel very much. That’s because the author didn’t give us much detail, so we really don’t know what’s happening.

Now, read the story below with more details.

Now what do you see? You can probably see the beautiful weather, the excited dog trying to run toward the friend. What do you feel? You might be able to feel the fresh air and the sunshine. How does the author feel? Now we can tell that the author feels good and is probably happy to see his old friend.

In this section, we’re going to work toward adding more details so that your writing is more like the second example than the first. Let’s go!

Paying Attention

Before we start looking at the parts of descriptive writing, it’s helpful to do a little exercise. This exercise asks you to pay close attention to everything around you. This will help you think about what details you can add to your writing. As you pay attention, write down details about what you notice.

• What do you see? Look around you. What is there? What color is it? How big or small? What texture is it: soft, hard, smooth, rough?
• What do you hear? How loud is it? How quiet? Is it peaceful, like birds singing outside? Or is it stressful, like traffic sounds or noisy speech?
• What do you feel? Are you hot or cold? Are you comfortable or uncomfortable? What does your chair feel like? What do your clothes feel like? What does the pen in your hand feel like?
• What do you smell? Is it a nice smell? A bad smell? Is there smell strong, or is there not much smell at all?

When you finish, share what you wrote with a partner or a small group. What details did your classmates include that you really like?

The Parts of Descriptive Writing

Attention to Detail

Attention to detail is one of the most important parts of having good descriptive writing. When you are describing something, it’s important to be able to talk about details. It isn’t enough to simply say, “an old man ran toward me.” What does the man look like? How did he run? By answering questions like these, you can say something more detailed, like “a wrinkled man with a long gray beard rushed toward me, swinging his cane in front of him.” Whoa! See the difference?

Specific Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives

You want all of your language to be as specific as possible. If you are talking about a test, don’t just say test, but maybe “terrifying end-of-year English test.” If you are talking about a person, don’t just say they are nice. Instead, try saying they are “supportive when you need them,” “generous with their time and money,” or “always ready to cheer you up with a smile and a hug.”

Also, don’t just use words like “good,” “big,” or “fun.” These words have so many meanings, it’s hard to be clear when you use them. What does it mean if something is good? How big does something have to be for you to say it’s big? Is something that is fun for you the same for everyone? Try to find words that will give more information and make your reader understand exactly what you mean.

Using Multiple Senses

Using your senses helps your reader feel like they are in the story with you. The exercise we did at the beginning of this unit, where you paid attention to what you see, hear, feel, and smell in the room is a great way to start practicing this. However, you want to do this even when you are writing about something you are not currently experiencing. To do this, really imagine yourself in the story. What did you see? What did you smell? What did the air feel like on your skin? What sounds did you hear?

You don’t have to use all of your senses, but adding in some details like this can really help make your writing strong. So instead of saying you were scared, you can say, “I felt the hair on the top of my head stand up, and I heard my heart pounding in my ears.” Instead of saying that your childhood home was comfortable, you can say, “Our home always glowed with warmth. Each time I opened the front door, I was greeted by the smell of spices as my mother cooked our dinner.”

Clear Organization

Yes, organization is important in all kinds of writing, including descriptive writing! When you are writing details about something, you might want to start by moving from the outside and then going in, or maybe you can start from a small part and slowly grow to include the larger part. For example, if you were going to describe a classroom, you could say: “My desk felt hard and cold beneath me. I could hear the clock ticking on the wall and other students erasing their answers angrily. The classroom door was open, and all I wanted was to run out and never look back.” Do you see how this started from the desk, then moved to the classroom, and then finally to the classroom door?

Try It Out

Directions:

1. Choose one of the paragraphs below. Read the paragraph carefully, and look up any words that are new to you.
2. Underline all the adjectives. Circle all the nouns.
3. Find examples of how the details show the senses. What do you see, hear, feel, and smell?
4. Write about this activity. What did the paragraph do that helped you feel like you were with the writer? What did you like about the language?

Group Writing Activity

With your group, choose one of the stories below. Then, improve this story by adding as many details as possible. Be specific, but also be creative–there is no right or wrong answer!

Think about your five senses:

• What do you see?
• What do you hear?
• What do you smell?
• What do you feel?
• And maybe–what do you taste?

You can change anything about the story. For example, you can rewrite sentences to make them longer, change words to make them more specific, and add adjectives to add more description.