Descriptive Writing

1. Descriptive Writing

2. Seven keys in descriptive writing • Has a purpose • Involves sensory impressions • Dominant impression —an overall mood or feeling • Vantage point • Selection of details • Arrangement of details • Respectful of ethical issues

3. Purpose • Description may stand alone; sometimes enriches other writing • Appears nearly everywhere: histories, biographies, fiction, poetry, journalism, advertisements, sometimes technical writing • May help to create images and moods • Stimulates understanding or leads reader to action

4. Sensory Impressions • Use observation: physical and mental. • When words escape you, compare the situation/object to something else. • Will typically use several senses rather than just one. • Comparison must be accurate and familiar: Does it smell like a rotten egg or does it smell like burning rubber? Is it a high-pitched sound, or a rumble?

5. Dominant Impression • Writers use senses to create an overall mood or feeling (joy, anger, terror, distaste) • This sense may be identified or left unnamed. Reader must deduce. • Verbal picture should evoke one type of feeling. When describing a pending storm, the writer may describe the “sinister masses of slaty cloud, cannon salvos of thunder, blinding lightning flashes, and viciously swirling wind-caught dust.”

6. Vantage Point • Fixed –Observer remains in one place; reports only what can be perceived from there. OR • Moving –Observer views situation from various positions. Uses action words to present the shift in action.

7. Selection of Details • What will you include? Exclude? • Select details that point toward the mood or feeling you want to create.

8. Arrangement of Details • Use chronological order to describe an afternoon at a soccer game. • If describing a woman’s dress, move from top to bottom. • You may begin by describing something in particular and then relate it to its surroundings.

9. Ethical Issues • When describing something, be accurate. • Inaccurate descriptions may create a wide range of undesirable consequences. • Would you “buy” the scene, described as it is, or are you falsifying to grab your readers’ attention?