Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing is a relatively simple concept to master and is useful in a variety of writing situations. Description is something you are already familiar with and use, most likely, on a daily basis. It reports the testimony of your senses—inviting your readers to imagine that they can see, hear, feel, smell or taste the subject that you describe. There are usually two purposes one might have for including descriptive writing. The first is to convey information without bias or emotion, and for this you would write an objective description. (This could also be called an impartial, public or functional description.) This description would include clear and precise information, delivered without any sense of emotion. You might find this type of description in technical or scientific writing, such as a manual. You might also employ this type of description if you were providing someone with directions to your house. The second purpose for descriptive writing is to convey information with feeling, and for this you would write a subjective description. (This could also be called an emotional, personal or impressionistic description.) In this type of a description, you’re relying on biases and personal feelings. Your readers should definitely get a sense of how you feel about the subject that you’re describing. Here’s an example of a subjective description written by Charles Dickens in his memoir, American Notes. This two-paragraph description is of a storm he experienced at sea. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge body swollen and bursting…sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating; all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air. Add to all this the clattering on deck and down below; the tread of hurried feet; the loud shouts of seamen; the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers; with every now and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault; and there is the head wind of that January morning. I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the ship; such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various staterooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast. Do you get a sense of how he feels about the storm? Do you notice also how descriptive he is in his choice of words—it’s not just that he uses adjectives. Look at the verbs: howling, roaring, beating. He also personifies the ship: the pulse and artery of her huge body. And look at how he compares objects: the clouds in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air. Each of the two paragraphs conveys a slightly different idea regarding the storm. The first examines the outside storm, with a lot of emphasis on the sounds. The second, also

emphasizing sounds, looks at the interior of the ship, what Dickens calls the domestic noises. The emphasis of each paragraph is called a dominant impression—it’s the main idea, very similar to a thesis. When you write description, you need to consider first what your purpose is. Do you want to convey emotion or not? Are you writing a subjective or objective description? Then you should decide what dominant impression you want to convey and which details contribute to that impression. Finally, you should decide how you want to present those details. Pick an order that makes sense and be consistent in applying that order. Here’s one more example paragraph from an essay titled, “Shooting Dad” by Sarah Vowell. Note how she orders her ideas in this paragraph as well as her use of figurative language: Our house was partitioned off into territories. While the kitchen and the living room were well within the DMZ, the respective work spaces governed by my father and me were jealously guarded totalitarian states in which each of us declared ourselves dictator. Dad’s shop was a messy disaster area, a labyrinth of lathes. Its walls were hung with the mounted antlers of deer he’d bagged, forming a makeshift museum of death. The available flat surfaces were buried under a million scraps of paper on which he sketched his mechanical inventions in blue ballpoint pen. And the floor, carpeted with spiky metal shavings, was a tetanus shot waiting to happen. My domain was the cramped, cold space known as the music room. It was also a messy disaster area, an obstacle course of musical instruments—piano, trumpet, baritone horn, valve trombone, various percussion doodads (bells!), and recorders. A framed portrait of the French composer Claude Debussy was nailed to the wall. The available flat surfaces were buried under piles of staff paper, on which I penciled in the pompous orchestra music given titles like “Prelude to the Green Door” (named after an O. Henry short story by the way, not the watershed porn flick Behind the Green Door) I started writing in junior high. Now you should try your hand at description and proceed to the observation paragraph assignment.