WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY
Four Basic Steps
PREWRITING

Gathering Ideas: Brainstorming or ‘thinking on
paper’ can help you find specific details and sense
descriptions.

The Dominant Impression: This is the main point of
the description. Often you will find ideas that keep
coming up in brainstorming. The dominant
impression helps form the topic sentence (for a
paragraph) or thesis statement (for an essay).
PLANNING

Using the Dominant Impression: Once you have
written the topic sentence, list the details that
you discovered under it. Check the details by
asking:


Do all the details relate to the topic sentence?
Once you have found details that relate to the
topic sentence, think about the order of the
details.
Time Sequence- first to last
 Spatial Position- top to bottom or right to left
 Similar Types- for example, all about how a meal
looks, then all about how a meal tastes.

DRAFTING AND REVISING
When drafting, your goal is to put your ideas in
paragraph form so you can see what needs to be
revised.
 Using the outline you created while planning will
help you remember the details and their order.
 Please see the checklist for revising a descriptive
paragraph on pg. 74

POLISHING AND PROOFREADING

The finishing touches of changing words,
changing or adding transitions, and sharpening
details happen during this last step.