Grade 9 Writing – Lesson 1

Descriptive Writing
Description is a kind of writing that produces a vivid picture of someone or something in our mind, and
generates a mood or feeling of the subject being described.
• It portrays a clear and bright picture of a certain subject: person, place, event, etc.
• It uses sensory details, rather than neutral words, to make the description alive.
• It replaces vague language with concrete precise language.
• It uses figurative language and creative images. (Refer to the “Glossary of Some Literary Terms” in
Appendix A at the end of the book, where figurative language is thoroughly explained.)
• It conveys the writer’s feelings about the subject.
• It sheds light on the core, the most important quality of the subject.
Working with Concrete Words
Use concrete words to describe your concept word – concrete sensory details to show what your
subject looks, sounds, or probably feels like. If the concept word, for example, is “friendship,” you could
write the following:
Friendship is like:
• Sight words: a dove, a flowery meadow, etc.
• Sound words: a guitar, etc.
• Taste words: honey, sweet cakes, etc.
• Touch words: velvet, silk, etc.
• Smell words: popcorn, chocolate cookies in the oven, etc.
• Action words: a quick hug, running, etc.

Activity 1
Develop a paragraph in which you describe the concept of friendship (or any other concept of your choice,
probably something like motherhood, bravery, cooperation, hunger, etc.), using concrete words that appeal
to the senses.
Sensory details vs. Neutral details
Focus on all kinds of sensory details, not just visual details, to make your description alive.
Neutral words Sensory words
1. The horse came toward us. The spotted pony galloped toward us.
2. I like summer. I like the smell of cook-outs, the sounds of cardinals,
and the taste of fresh strawberries that summer brings.
3. There was a smell coming from the trunk. There was a foul odor coming from the rusty trunk.
4. We sat in the attic listening to the rain. We sat in the hushed attic listening to the pounding
rain.
5. Susan lifted out the vest. Susan lifted out the soft satin vest.
Activity 2
Study the following descriptive words and try to use as many of them as possible in descriptive statements
of your own.
• Sight: towering – rusty – shadowy – silver – golden, etc.
• Sound: jingling – lilting – hoarse – echoing – musical – murmuring, etc.
• Smell: musty – putrid – earthy – lemony, etc.
• Touch: frozen – splintered – mushy – slimy, etc.
• Taste: curried – syrupy – pickled – fiery – salty, etc.

General vs. Specific descriptions

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 Instead of using general vague language, try to use specific and precise language. Imagine you have a
camera. Zoom in for a closer observation and collect precise details about the subject. Consider the
following cases:
• General: She walked up the street.
Specific: Her tiny leather shoes patted over the cobblestone sidewalk and her long, straight navy skirt
brushed the many parked scooters.
• General: The boy struggled but the woman pushed him along.
Specific: Sweat popped out on Tim’s face and he began to struggle. His stepmother stopped, pushed him
around, and continued to drag him up the street.

Using figurative language

Use figures of speech and new comparisons in your description. Try closing your eye to re-create an
image in your mind and then draw your image in vivid words:
• Sentence: She’s young but due to her illness, she always bends down.
Revised: She’s young and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but due to a stubborn illness, her shoulders are
pitifully hunched.
• Sentence: The old woman went up the steps to the church. Just inside the doors, she paused a moment.
She looked at the sky and stepped into the church.
Revised: The wrinkled- gray-haired woman straightened her shawl and mounted the steps to the church.
Just inside the massive carved oak doors, she paused a moment. She looked at the frown of the
gray rainy sky, and fearfully marched into the sleeping church.

Capturing the essence of the subject

Read the following piece of descriptive writing by the English novelist Charles Dickens. Notice how,
by choosing and focusing his description very carefully, Dickens not only shows what Coketown was like,
he also highlights the quality of life in this industrial town. In doing so, he creates a deep sympathy for the
people caught up in this dreadful picture of life.
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.
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 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 out and in 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. . . .
Activity 3
Answer the following questions on Dickens’s descriptive selection above.
1. Does Dickens’s description capture the essence of the subject? Identify the quality of the subject
described.
2. Identify the details that appeal to senses. Do they reflect a vivid impression of the subject?
3. Point out three figures of speech used in the selection. Paraphrase the statements and show how they
intensify the description of the subject.
4. Are the details precise or general in the selection? Give examples.
5. How does Dickens emphasize the quality of sameness in the town at the end?
6. Does the description reveal Dickens’s feelings toward the subject? How?
7. Rewrite Dickens’s description by presenting only the facts of this town.

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Activity 4
Develop a paragraph in which you describe a place or a person of your own choice.