How to Write a Description

Because a description is a text that creates an image in the mind of the reader, it should give information
to the reader in the same way that the reader would get the information directly. If a person were actually
observing the same thing as the writer describes, how would she take in the information?

Let's suppose that you are trying to describe a scene. What would the person do to get the image of the
scene into her imagination if she were actually there? She sees things; she would hear things, smell
things, feel things. She would take these things in either in some kind of sequence or simultaneously. Her
observation of the scene would create a mood in her mind, and the mood would then become the tone of
the image for her and that tone would highlight certain parts of the scene and diminish others.

The writer becomes the observer in place of the reader. You become the reader's eyes, ears, nose, and
body. So the first thing to do is to collect this kind of information. What do you see, hear, feel, or smell?
Write down specific observations:

 What shape are the various things you see?

 What colours?
 Where are they in relationship to each other?
 What do you smell?
 What is the scent like?
 What do you feel?

Make the details as specific and concrete as possible. Related to being the reader's body is the notion that
you supply a "point of view" for the reader. Where are you as you describe the scene? Let the reader
know.

The writer also becomes the soul of the reader:

 What mood does the scene create?

 What is it reminiscent of?
 Why does this scene create this emotion or mood?
 Given this mood, which of the details recorded earlier stand out?
 Which seem to be insignificant?
 How does the mood change the character of the specific things you see and hear?

As you write the description, select from the details that reinforce the mood you want to create.

The writer also becomes the consciousness of the reader. A person's consciousness is like a pilot. It
directs the attention. Given the mood you want to create in the description and the selection of details you
want to emphasize, you now must consider what order most strategically reinforces the mood or
impression you want to create. The order for a description can be spatial, thematic, or impressionistic.
If you follow a spatial pattern, you begin usually by describing the whole scene briefly and then by
focusing on one place in the scene, describing it in detail and then moving on to an adjacent place in the
scene and describing it. The whole description continues as you move in a systematic description of each
section of the whole.

If you follow a thematic pattern, you divide the scene into mental categories, and regardless of their
actual relationship to each other in space, you describe elements that support one theme and then another
theme. This pattern is really closer to classification than to description, but it is a description as long as
you continue to create pictures within the subsections.

If you follow an impressionistic pattern, you imagine, given the mood of the observer, what things
would draw attention to themselves first, and then second, and so on. The description would then present
these details in the order that they would normally be noticed.

Overall, a good description should create a mood or tone by giving concrete details in a strategic
sequence. The reader should have a strong sense of the whole scene, but should also be able to conjure up
specific details easily.

Summary of Things to Consider as You Write Your Descriptive Essay

 Think of an instance that you want to describe.

 Why is this particular instance important?
 What were you doing?
 What other things were happening around you? Is there anything specific that stands out in your
mind?
 Where were objects located in relation to where you were?
 How did the surroundings remind you of other places you have been?
 What sights, smells, sounds, and tastes were in the air?
 Did the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes remind you of anything?
 What were you feeling at that time?
 Has there been an instance in which you have felt this way before?
 What do you want the reader to feel after reading the paper?
 What types of words and images can convey this feeling?
 Can you think of another situation that was similar to the one you are writing about? How can it
help explain what you are writing about?
 Is there enough detail in your essay to create a mental image for the reader?
Brainstorming Descriptive Essay Topics

PUBLIC
PLACES SERVICES
(skytrains,subways)

TOURIST DESCRIPTIVE
ATTRACTIONS TOPIC
NATURAL
PLACES

OTHERS
 Sample Description : Children's Park, San Diego, CA

Sitting on a slab of rough-hewn, rectangular limestone, I feel the chill rise up through my body, the stone no longer giving
off heat from yesterday's sun. Bells clang to my left and then from behind me, bells warning pedestrians who are not yet
out that a trolley is about to cross the side streets. Without turning to look, I imagine the red boxes of the trolley cars, with
their black arms ascending from their roofs to the electric wires above, yellow green lights illuminating the vacant interiors
at 6:00 in the morning. And then a soft hum passes from right to left behind me as the trolley eases by on the tracks fifty
yards away. Once it passes, the sounds of the early morning city streets re-emerge: engines revving as the drivers take off
from the lights, soft airy sounds of black tires rolling by on concrete streets, a squeal of iron on iron, perhaps a truck
braking deeper in the caverns of the tall buildings downtown or perhaps the wheels of a trolley arguing with the rails as it
crosses an intersecting track. Trolley bells again, this time accompanied by the sound of a door bell buzz as a trolley rushes
by, not stopping nearby as the earlier one had.

I sit on a slab of cold limestone under a miniature ponderosa pine, its trunk knurled with scabs of reddish bark that invite
you to pull one off, its needles, like course hair a foot long clumped along the branches. Beyond the tree, which grows out
of a sandy walkway, a series of five pedestals made of concrete blocks and painted a glossy gray stand mute, seemingly an
intrusion from under ground in their regimented line. But beyond that, a lamp post, black cast iron rising to a yellow glass
dome that looks like it remains from the 1880s, but of course it is new. It only looks old. The miniature ponderosa pines
are sprinkled through a series of sandy paths, creating a miniature forest, broken by gray cement block pedestals and
London-like lamp posts reminding me of Dickens, or perhaps the lamp in the woods in the enchanted land of Narnia. From
where I sit, the paths diverge in three directions, but they are not like the paths of a natural wood: there are concrete
borders, and the paths narrow and then expand within the boundaries of these concrete borders.

Trolley bells clang again and the airy trolley hurries buy from left to right behind me. A hand held whistle blows, the
sound of the parking attendant in the circle drive of the glass-clad Marriot, shaped like two large glass sails bellowing in
the Southern California breeze, and the voice, words unheard, hails the assistance of another parking attendant.

The flesh-colored paths, bordered by light gray concrete, penetrate a miniature mountain range, mounds covered with
plush fescue, dew sparkling from the green blades as the sun ascends from the right. As I look down the path in front of
me, I see six of these miniature mountains, three on each side of the path, the path interrupted by some twenty miniature
ponderosas and three sets of gray block pedestal walls. I see a yellow taxi cross the open space at the end of the path, the
billboard on its roof white with large black lettering. It intrudes on the fantasy world of miniature forest and mountains.

A sea gull calls as it flies with deliberate and easy strokes over the forest. A motor cycle engine, loud and bubbling breaks
the dying sounds of background traffic noise and then silence, except for the sound of water falling on water, the sprinkling
poles standing in a blue reflecting pool, like a forest of corroding pipes fifteen feet tall jutting from the floor of the pool,
each with a rotating sprinkle of four or five lines of water that change into a sheet of drops falling on the dark blue surface,
changing its colour to a lighter blue and roughing up its smooth surface.

Bells at the intersection again, this time accompanied by the deep, body resonating rumble of large diesel engines, the
clarion corded sound of an Amtrak train's silver trumpets, and a faint whiff of diesel fuel exhaust. This is no fantasy land
trolley, but then it is gone, and the gentle sound of falling water returns, accompanied by the squeaking call of the sea
gulls, the chirp of a brown-winged sparrow.

I wonder how it looks from above. These green miniature mountains, perfect circles, surrounded by concrete boundaries,
must look like cookie-cutter circles iced with green icing cut out of a golden dough that makes up the paths where I sit, and
to one side a blue half circle of the reflecting pool with a rectangular patch of pipes and falling water describing a watery
forest of falling water leaves.
But here I sit on a cold slab of hewn limestone in a little mountained world of soft green breasts and adventuring paths
filled with a forest of miniature ponderosas and broken by gray concrete block walls. I'm invited to be a child but reminded
that it is all artificial, that the real world of attendant whistles, of squeaking brakes, of yellow taxis and Amtrak trains is the
real world. The sun has risen, the sky, a roof above me, early on a darkling dawn and then a peach-coloured yellow, is now
an azure dome with white fleecy clouds. Morning has broken, and the trash truck with its big yellow, over-the-cab arm
rumbles by on its mission of picking up after the real world.