Descriptive Writing

1
Descriptive Writing

• EH 1301
• Fall 2005

2
Description

• Writing that has extraordinary appeal to our
  senses.
• In large part, our abilities to see, hear, touch,
  taste, and smell constitute our ability to
  experience.

3
Description

• Once we undergo an experience
• our memories record it
• empowers us to remember
• enables us to undergo the experience again as a
  function of our imaginations

4
Description

• Our minds hold the ability to re-create images
  sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings.
• This ability is prompted when we compose or read
  descriptive writing.

5
Description

• Imagination is the key concept in descriptive
  writing.
• It appeals to one or more of the senses.
• Sight
• Smell
• Sound
• Taste
• Touch

6
Description

• black and bright appeal to sight
• sour and sweet appeal to taste
• shrill and bang appeal to sound
• putrid and stench appeal to smell
• wet and slimy appeal to touch

7
Description

• In the jungle the lion roared. (sound)
• The door opened to reveal a blinding light.
  (sight)
• The milk was hopelessly sour. (taste)
• The cloth was coarse, roughly spun but durable.
  (touch)
• The acrid pall hung over the mines entrance.
  (smell)

8
Description

• Depending on how they are used, some words appeal
  to more than one sense.
• jagged and rough can appeal to both sight and
  touch

9
Role of Descriptive Language

• Descriptive writing isnt necessarily dominated
  by adjectives.
• She was a long, cool woman in a black dress.

10
Description

• On a clear day southwest of Limon, Colorado, on
  U.S. Highway 24, you can gaze off into the blue
  distance and see what appears to be a low, hazy
  line of dim clouds. Only with gradual awe do you
  realize that those clouds are in fact the
  enormous Rocky Mountains towering beyond Colorado
  Springs, still more than one hundred miles away.

11
Description

• Other words can also be descriptive.
• Bobby Lee sashayed up to Vera.

12
Description

• Tied game, ten seconds remain on the clock.
  Visalias guard fires a jumper it rims off, and
  Lou grabs the rebound. Lou heaves it out to
  P.J., who streaks down the side and looks for
  someone to pass to. I am tearing down the middle
  of the court we have no timeouts left. P.J.
  lofts a pass up toward the rim, and I leap to
  meet it. Time freezes my left hand meets the
  ball and shifts it onto the fingertips of my
  right hand I push the ball softly against the
  glass as I soar on under the goal and the ball
  settles into the net. The horn sounds as the
  crowd explodes in thunderous approval of our
  victory.

13
Description

• Other words can also be descriptive.
• Walk
• Amble, trot, stroll, sashay, hike, tramp, march,
  promenade, traipse, step, stride, gait, saunter,
  trek, pad, hoof it, wend ones way, mosey, waddle
• Angry stomp, storm out, stalk, catapult
• Baby toddle
• Backward backpedal, retrace ones step
• Brush through, blaze, bushwhack, negotiate, weave
• Step nimbly around, thread ones way, edge along,
  inch forward
• Jockey for position, be borne along by
• Difficult falter, hobble, limp, lumber, plod,
  shuffle, careen
• Group parade, march, file out, tramp, troop,
  swarm, flood, spill out
• Show off stagger, strut
• Sneaky or cautious creep, edge, inch, slip away,
  slink, steal, tiptoe, shrink, skulk, prowl,
  withdraw, lurk, shadow
• Wet or mud slog, splash, wade

14
Description

• Figurative language reaches the senses through
  description.
• Simile
• Compares two things by asserting one is like the
  other, using the words like or as.
• A is like B.
• The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover.
  (Dillard)
• My love is like a red, red rose. (Burns)
• Metaphor
• Compares two things by identifying one with the
  other.
• A is B.
• Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. (Thoreau)
• Love is a rose, but youd better not pick it.
  (Ronstadt)

15
Description

• Figurative language reaches the senses through
  description.
• Analogy
• Extended metaphor goes through sentences,
  paragraphs, entire essay.
• A high school is like a zoo.
• Personification
• Giving inanimate objects or abstractions human
  characteristics.
• Flames devoured the structure in a matter of
  minutes.
• The winds cried out as they whipped through the
  trees.

16
Description

• Figurative language reaches the senses through
  description.
• Allusion
• Comparison between a historical, literary, or
  mythological event or person and the subject
  under discussion.
• Writing my research paper has been a Sisyphean
  task.
• Sisyphus was condemned to roll a steep hill in
  Hades, only to have it roll back down just as it
  reached the top.

17
Description

• Figurative language reaches the senses through
  description.
• Coach Warren sounds like hes got a ton of gravel
  in his throat when he talks.
• Barbs chemistry experiment smells like rotten
  eggs.
• His hair looks like he was frightened by a ghost.
• Running into their defensive tackle was like
  running into a brick wall.

18
Description

• Description can be easily overdone.
• Last summer I saw the towering, rocky, majestic
  mountains of western Wyoming. They were so
  magnificent and high that they took my breath
  away. I couldnt believe my eyes. The peaks
  were snowcapped, and some of them were even above
  the clouds. We drove up a canyon by a bubbling,
  babbling brook and saw many cute, cuddly forest
  creatures. A good time was had by all.

19
Description

• N. Scott Momadays The Way to Rainy Mountain
• A single knoll rises out of the plain in
  Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range.
  For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark,
  and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The
  hardest weather in the world is there. Winter
  brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the
  spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvils
  edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it
  cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts
  along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of
  hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a
  distance in July or August the steaming foliage
  seems almost to writhe in fire. Great
  green-and-yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in
  the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the
  flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red
  earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time.
  Loneliness is an aspect of the land. Al things
  in the plain are isolate there is no confusion
  of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree
  or one man. To look upon that landscape in the
  early morning, with the sun at your back, is to
  lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination
  comes to life, and this, you think, is where
  Creation was begun.

20
Description

• Make the scene you describe vivid.
• Colorful words
• Strong verbs
• Specific detail
• Provide a detailed presentation of significant
  people and events.