What did she look like again? The descriptive paragraphEnglish 050

DescriptionFinally, we’re getting to write! We’re starting our journey of writing with one of the most fun (well, relatively fun) paragraphs: the descriptive paragraph. Let’s try to have fun with this one, shall we?So what is description? It’s something you do everyday, whether or not you realize it. You describe where something is when you give directions. You describe what someone looks like when you are pointing them out. You describe the TV show you watched the day before.

DescriptionDescription is used not just to describe people, places, things, feelings, but also to paint a vivid picture that allows someone to visualize what you are trying to say.Let’s look at the following sentences:

The leaves are falling from the trees.The crinkly leaves are falling gently from the trees.The brightly colored, crinkly leaves are falling gently from the increasingly bare trees.

See the difference? Which sentence do you find more interesting?Okay, so you are thinking “I don’t talk like that. Nobody talks like that. Why do I have to learn this?”

DescriptionThe more you describe something, the more information you are providing.Say you go to the library and ask someone at the desk a question. They might reply “I don’t know. Go ask the woman.”This description is obviously not at all helpful. Which woman? There’s several. Where is she? What does she look like? I need more information!!!!Let’s try this again. “I don’t know. Go ask the dark-haired woman wearing the blue blouse who is sitting in the office at the end of the hall.”That’s why description can be important!

DescriptionWe’re going to go through the steps of brainstorming and writing a descriptive paragraph. Let’s take the book’s example of describing one of your earliest childhood memories.First we want to decide upon our “dominant impression.” (You’re going to be hearing much more about this during the semester). Essentially it’s the feeling or mood you want to communicate. Is your memory sad? Happy? Nostalgic (longing for the past)? Funny? Deciding upon this will help you develop your details.

DescriptionNext, you want to draw upon the five senses (see, hear, taste, touch, smell) to develop your description.

Say your first memory is going to a movie. What sounds did you hear? What did you see and touch? Any smells or tastes worth mentioning?

DescriptionHere’s a few sample sentences: “One of my earliest memories is going to the movies with my brothers and other kids from my neighborhood. I remember standing in line, holding my mother’s soft velvety hand and seeing the red satin rope that kept us, however briefly, from our new adventure. It was so exciting to hear the gentle sound of popping popcorn, and to smell the divine bouquet of melted butter.”Hopefully if this sentence has done its job, you can almost smell the buttered popcorn, visualize the red satin rope, and recall the feel of your own mother’s hand.

DescriptionIn addition, you want to show, rather than tell, what you want your readers to know.

We sort of did that in our earlier paragraph. But to demonstrate using an example from the book, let’s take the example of a car.

“I bought a great new car.” That’s nice. But it doesn’t tell us much.“I bought a sleek new shiny red sedan with all-wheel drive, silver leather seats, a sunroof, and a state-of-the-art stereo system.” With this description, you don’t need to say it’s “great.” You’ve shown us that it’s great.

DescriptionFinally, you need to organize your paragraph. The example I just used was chronological. But it’s going to depend on what your memory is. Our main methods of organization are chronological, spatial (where things are located), general to particular, particular to general.

DescriptionNow it’s time to write a draft. Some hints:

Remember your prewriting techniques. Decide upon a memory from childhood (or think about a couple of different ones before you decide which to use).Start developing your topic by free writing, brainstorming, creating a list, asking yourself questions, or drawing yourself a mind map. Experiment until you find a method that’s right for you. Note: this does not necessarily have to be a long, drawn-out process. Just jot down some notes to yourself in whatever form works.

Another note: This may seem like a big hassle, but the idea is to save you extra work—and frustration with this project—in the long run.

DescriptionNow review your notes to start developing details. Don’t worry about elaborate descriptions yet…concentrate on the facts.Think about how you want to organize your paragraph. If you are using a computer, you can place your details in several different orders before you decide which one to use. Or use index cards and arrange them in different ways.Now…start writing! Turn your details into sentences, and don’t forget your topic sentence.

Also, try this trick. Just put your sentences together. Then review your sentences and start adding some details. Another hint: use descriptions that draw a vivid picture. But…use them wisely. Don’t put descriptions in just for the sake of adding descriptions. Use them if they apply to your story.

Reviewing your workSo you’ve written a first draft of your paragraph. What’s next?Now you want to review your work. Let’s go over the following checklists, divided by aspects of your paragraph.Topic sentence

Does the topic sentence convey the paragraph’s controlling idea?

Ask yourself: What is the dominant impression of this paragraph? Then decide whether or not the topic sentence conveys it. If not, you need to do some more work on your topic sentence.

Does the topic sentence appear as the first or last sentence of the paragraph? (Note: for our purposes, let’s aim to keep the topic sentence at the beginning.)

Reviewing your workDevelopment

Does the paragraph contain specific details that support the topic sentence?

Ask yourself: does the paragraph draws upon all five senses (or at least three of them)? If not, see if there’s room to add some details.

Does the paragraph include enough details to explain the topic sentence?

Ask yourself: do the sentences in the paragraph tell rather than show? (In other words, does it tell you the car is great, or does it describe the car in detail? If it just tells you, you need to work on them.

Reviewing your workUnity

Do all of the sentences in the paragraph support the topic sentence?

Ask yourself: are all of the sentences necessary to the story? If not, delete (or rewrite) them.

OrganizationIs the paragraph organized in a logical manner?

Ask yourself: do they make sense the way they are arranged? Does the way it is written confuse you? If so, reconsider the order you place them in.

Reviewing your workCoherence

Do the sentences move smoothly and logically from one to the next?

Ask yourself: do your sentences sound choppy? Are you using transition words (we’ll be going over these shortly)? If not, think about adding some to make your paragraph flow smoothly.

Editing your workWe’ve reviewed the paragraph for content; now it’s time to see if the paragraph follows the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Note: Our book reviews some grammar rules we haven’t gone over yet. For now, let’s stick to the following. We’ll add more as the semester goes along.

Review for spelling. Number one rule of spelling: if you aren’t sure if a word is spelled correctly, look it up! If you aren’t sure of the word enough to look it up, do your best to spell it phonetically.

Editing your workReview for basic grammar. Does the paragraph have any sentence fragments, or run-on sentences? Do all of the sentences follow basic sentence structure (main subject and verb?)Review for punctuation. Again, there’s some rules of punctuation we still need to go over. But do commas and periods look like they are in the right place? Review for mechanics. Mechanics covers things like capitalization. Are proper nouns capitalized? Are common nouns lower cased?Review for word choice. Are the correct versions of the words being used? Are there more correct forms of these words available to use?