NOTES ABOUT DESCRIPTIONS

DOMINANT IMPRESSION - This is the equivalent of a thesis statement. Decide what the main idea of your essay should be. What do you want the reader to come away from your essay with? Why are you describing this thing, this person, this event? How do you want the reader to feel? You should not begin writing until you decide what the dominant impression should be. It will influence the words you choose and the organizational pattern you follow. In other words, it will be almost impossible to write your essay without knowing what your dominant impression is.

USE ALL YOUR SENSES - Description relies on more than sight. There are five senses available to most of you. Use them all. Describe what things, people, places, smelled like, what they sounded like, what they felt like, what they tasted like. If you are trying to describe something around or near you, close your eyes and use your other senses to help you. Listen to the noises; feel your surroundings; smell the air.

USE METAPHORS AND SIMILES - One of the best ways to get your description across is to compare what you are describing to something your reader would be familiar with. "After I hit the game winning home run, I felt as tall as the Empire State Building." Or simply state that the thing you are describing is another thing. "I was in a rage, destroying everything in sight. I was a bull in a china store." CAUTION: Try not to overuse similes. Mix up your descriptions with some adjectives, some metaphors, some similes, some personification, etc. Also, try not to use clichéd (overused) figures of speech. "Blind as a bat;" "Sick as a dog."

WORD CHOICE - Your choice of words is extremely important in descriptive essays. One of the main points of a descriptive essay is to put your reader in that place, make your reader see that object, allow your reader to experience that event. Rely heavily on your choice of verbs and adjectives to convey this. The Thesaurus I have lists 24 different words for the word "walk" and each one conveys a slightly different meaning -- "plod" is different from "stroll" is different from "stride" is different from "hike." The word "very" should be removed from your vocabulary. Saying something is "very hot" or "very, very hot" or "very, very, very hot" does not help your description. Again, my Thesaurus lists 27 synonyms or related words for "hot" -- my soup can be "blistering," "red-hot," "warm," or "boiling," just to name a few. Investing in a good Thesaurus would be a wise thing to do.

ORGANIZATION - Consider how you will present the details to the reader. Your organization will have an effect upon the impression you give your reader. A descriptive essay still requires an introduction and a conclusion. Methods of organization include ordering your description spatially (top to bottom or front to back, e.g.), chronologically (time order), emphatically (saving most important element for last), or by sense (taste, smell, sight, etc.). Decide before you begin writing how you will organize your essay.

POINT OF VIEW - A descriptive essay can be objective or subjective, depending upon the purpose of the essay. An objective essay is usually scientific or technical and is very detached from the subject. A subjective essay tries to make the reader feel a certain way about the subject. For instance, an objective description of a dog would include the dog's height, weight, coloring, etc. A subjective description would include the above details, but would also stress the author's feeling toward the dog, as well as its personality and habits.

THINGS TO AVOID -
"It was about three feet long."
Do not give measurements. This is only really acceptable in an objective descriptive essay. If I am on the Metric system or from another planet, I do not know what three feet is. "It was as long as a gorilla's arm" gives me a better picture of the length and is more interesting, too. SHOW ME how long or how tall something is; do not tell me.

"I remember it like it was yesterday."
This is a very old, trite, and overused expression. If you must use some type of comparison for this, try and be more original. "The memory was crystal clear," e.g., might be better.