Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Lesson 1 - Annotation
Read the passage below. Underline and annotate any examples of similes you can find.

● Step 1: Identify unknown vocabulary

● Step 2: Underline & annotate similes

Other techniques to look for:

● Strong verbs / other vocabulary
● Adjectives
● Senses
● Interesting sentence openers

Although it was so brilliantly fine - the blue sky powdered with gold and
great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques -
Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fury. The air was
motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill,
like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a
leaf came drifting - from nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill put up her hand
and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had
taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it
a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes. “What has
been happening to me?” said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to
see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown!... But the nose, which
was of some black composition, wasn’t at all firm. It must have had a
knock, somehow. Never mind - a little dab of black sealing-wax when the
time came- when it was absolutely necessary… Little rogue! Yes, she really
felt like that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She could
have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in
her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she supposed. And
when she breathed, something light and sad - no, not sad, exactly -
something gentle seemed to move in her bosom.
Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield

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Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Lesson 1 - Application
You have seen some great examples of similes and how they can be used in a descriptive
paragraph. Now describe the image below.

Success Criteria: You could describe:

● 2 descriptive paragraphs ● The shape of the running water
● Use similes ● Ferns growing either side
● Use interesting adjectives ● Tall trees in the distance
● Use a thesaurus to improve your ● Anything else you can think of!
adjectives
● Try not to start sentence with ‘I’ or ‘the’
● Zoom in on parts of the image to focus
on

Lesson 2 - Annotation
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Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Read the passage below. Underline and annotate any examples of metaphors you can find.

● Step 1: Identify unknown vocabulary

● Step 2: Underline & annotate metaphors
● Step 3: Look for other techniques to annotate

Other techniques to look for:

● Adjectives
● Strong verbs / other vocabulary
● Similes
● Interesting openers

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross
his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a
temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since
Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ashgray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March
nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The
light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing
away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear
of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying
face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, impeded by his
enormous wings.

Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting
compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at
the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few
faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a
drenched greatgrandfather took away and sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge
buzzard wings, dirty and halfplucked were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so
long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end
found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible
dialect with a strong sailor's voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the
wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship
wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about
life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Lesson 2 - Application

You have seen some great examples of metaphors and how they can be used in a descriptive
paragraph. Now describe the image below.

Success Criteria: You could describe:

● 2 descriptive paragraphs ● How the skull arrived
● Use senses to describe ● The shape and size of the skull
● Use show not tell in your writing ● The size difference between man, dog,
● Use a thesaurus to improve your and skill
adjectives ● The beach
● Use interesting sentence openers (- ● The background/sky
edingly) ● Anything else you can think of
● Zoom in on parts of the image
● Use similes and metaphors

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Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Lesson 3 - Annotation

Read the passage below. Underline and annotate any examples of personification, or other
figurative language techniques, you can find.

● Step 1: Identify unknown vocabulary

● Step 2: Underline & annotate personification

Other techniques to look for:

● Strong verbs / other vocabulary
● Adjectives
● Senses (show not tell)
● Similes
● Metaphors

Stars twinkled overhead in the midnight sky. The only sounds that
punctuated the night were the crackling and spitting of the flames in the
campfire. A gentle, cool breeze drifted across the forest landscape, kissing
the faces of the mesmerized children. The smell of marshmallows toasting
over the flickering fire wound their way up the children’s noses. Flames
stood tall and proud, their sparks illuminating the dark, creating dancing
shadows on the children’s eager faces. All present were completely silent,
as still as marble statues. They sat, watching, waiting, for the tales of old to
begin.

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Descriptive Writing Study Guide

Lesson 3 - Essay Planning

Use this planning sheet to make notes for your descriptive essay. You will be writing a description
inspired by the image below. You can use your imagination. You should include examples of:

adjectives senses sentence openers show not tell

vocabulary imagery strong verbs figurative language

Paragraph 1: Overview of the

Paragraph 2: Zoom Paragraph 3: Zoom
image

Paragraph 4: Zoom Paragraph 5: Zoom

What is zoom?
Zoom is when
we focus on a
part of the
picture to
describe. Try
selecting
something to

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