Descriptive paragraphs

What’s the Point of Description?

• The writer uses sensory details such as sights, sounds,

smells, tastes, feelings, and textures to create vivid images in
the reader’s mind
• When you experience something you experience it with your senses.
• There are very few things you do that you experience with only one of
your senses.
• When you eat something you see it, smell it and taste it.
• For example, when you eat an apple you:
• See: the green skin of the apple, the white flesh
• Hear: the crunching sound as the crisp apple is bitten in to, chewing,
swallowing
• Touch: smooth skin of the apple, the sticky drips of juice
• Taste: sweet taste of apple
• Smell: the soft and subtle smell of the fruit.
• The writer often uses spatial order to create a clear visual image of a
person, place, object, or scene: the location or arrangement in space
from top to bottom, bottom to top, right to left, left to right, near to
far, far to near, inside to outside, or outside to inside.
 Transition Words Used to Signal
Visual Description
• above centre front middle there adjacent back beneath close to
• here next to under around beside down in nearby underneath at
• the bottom backup beyond far away inside outside within
•
• at the side
• behind
• by farther
• left
• right
• across
• at the top
•
below
Descriptive writing is characterized
by
• sensory details,
• precise language (tulip instead of flower; mansion instead of home),
• metaphors and similes
A simile is an expression that compares two things using the word like or as + a noun phrase.
(speaks like a queen).
The tree wears the snow like a white fur coat

(under the jeweled sky;

• strong verbs (He slammed the book down.)
• hyperbole (faster than a speeding bullet; strong as an ox).
metaphor is a comparison that does not use the word like or as
(under the jewelled sky;
The snow on the tree is a white fur coat that protects it from the cold
winter
• strong verbs (He slammed the book down.)
• hyperbole (faster than a speeding bullet; strong as an ox).
Personification is giving human qualities to things. e.g. the breeze played
with her hair.
• Alliteration is using the same initial sound for a string of words
• She is a bright and bubbly baby.
• … the whispering of the wind.
• Some objects are associated with emotions or ideas.
• For example, white doves are associated with peace; the devil is
associated with evil; prisons and zoos are associated with lack of
freedom; stones and rock are associated with strength or coldness.
• Descriptive writing provides literary texture to a story.
• Texture shows rather than tells.
• Vivid adjectives and active verbs help the writer to develop specific
sensory descriptions
 Example

• The woman on the beach watched the sun set over the ocean.
(TELLS)
• Shades of neon illuminated the edges of clouds, backlit by the sizzling
sun that slipped beneath a deep blue sea.
(SHOWS)
• Sentences that TELL tend to be direct.
• Sentences that TELL record facts as a scientist or journalist might.
• Sentences that SHOW are subjective; they may be influenced in part
by the writer’s personal experiences.
• Sentences that SHOW create mental images,
 How to develop description
• Think about what observations could be made, for example, when
walking down a city street.
• How could the writer describe the smells of food coming from
vendor’s carts?
• How would the food taste?
• Being specific paints a literary picture with your words.
• Is the food spicy? Does it drip with grease? 
• Does steam rise up from the cart?