WRITING DESCRIPTION
The artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must make its appeal through the senses.
. . . My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear,
to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. (Joseph Conrad, novelist of The Heart of
Darkness)
INTRODUCTION
Description is a writing strategy that gives your readers sensory impressions of your subject.
Three useful strategies for describing are imagery, vivid diction, and figurative language.
THREE STRATEGIES FOR DESCRIBING
1. Use imagery to appeal to the five senses. Readers experience the reality you are creating by
how you appeal to what they can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. As you read our sample
essays, note examples of these appeals.
1. Appeals to sight
In Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” note how he lets readers see the church members.
“A great many old people came in a knelt around us and prayed, old women with jetblack faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands.”
Also note how with a few sketched details, Hughes gives us all we need to know about
Westley.
2. Appeals to sound
“In the daytime, in the hot mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at
night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one’s ears
like mosquitoes.” (E. B. White “Once More to the Lake”)
One way to create sound effects is by using onomatopoeia or words that have their
sounds as their meanings (bang, snap, wham).
Note Annie Dillard’s use of onomatopoeia: “I had just embarked on the iceball project
when we heard tire chains come clanking from afar.
3. Appeals to touch:
4. Appeals to taste:
“There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple . . . .”
(E. B. White “Once More to the Lake”)
5. Appeals to smell:
Extended, sustained imagery:
Writers might create an image (perhaps religious or nature imagery) and sustain that
image throughout the essay or just within a paragraph.
For example, in E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake,” note how he describes the lake
as a sacred place and sustains his imagery by calling the lake a “cathedral,” a “holy spot,”
and “this cherished body of water.” He also describes the lake as “enchanted.”
In “Salvation” Langston Hughes writes, “Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of
shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place.”
Multiple appeals to imagery in a paragraph:
Note the multiple images in paragraph nine in E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”:
“It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those
summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity and peace
and goodness. The arriving (at the beginning of August) had been so big a business in
itself, at the railway station the farm wagon drawn up, the first smell of the pine-laden air,
the first glimpse of the smiling farmer, and the great importance of the trunks and your
father's enormous authority in such matters, and the feel of the wagon under you for the
long ten-mile haul, and at the top of the last long hill catching the first view of the lake
after eleven months of not seeing this cherished body of water. The shouts and cries of
the other campers when they saw you, and the trunks to be unpacked, to give up their rich
burden.”
Note the multiple images in Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”:
I met Old Lady Chong once, and that was enough. She had a peculiar smell, like a
baby that had done something in its pants, and her fingers felt like a dead person's, like an
old peach I once found in the back of the refrigerator: its skin just slid off the flesh when
I picked it up.
2. Writing tips for using vivid diction.
1. Prefer strong, specific, action verbs and specific, concrete nouns.
Martha went into the room. (weak verb and noun)
Revised: Martha shuffled into her filthy kitchen crawling with cockroaches.
E. B. White made the conclusion that he felt “the chill of death.” (weak verb plus
a nominal)
Revised: E. B. White concludes that he felt “the chill of death.”
2. Don’t overuse forms of “to be” (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been). Revise
sentences with weak verbs. Work for verb strength.
I was a writer of memoirs when I was sixteen. (weak)
Revised: At sixteen, I wrote memoirs. (stronger)
We looked at gypsy campsites for things. (weak)
Revised: We scoured the gypsy campsite for artifacts. (stronger)
3. Avoid the passive voice. Note the difference in of verb voice in the following two
sentences:
The passive voice is despised by me. (passive)
Revised: I despise the passive voice. (active)
“The Chase” was written by Annie Dillard.
Revised: Annie Dillard wrote “The Chase.”
4. Provide fresh, clear imagery using well-chosen adjectives and adverbs.
“So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to
me.” (Langston Hughes, “Salvation.”)
5. Caution: Don’t overuse adverbs (-ly endings).
I gingerly examined the assignment and cautiously proceeded to invent ideas that
undoubtedly I would use in Essay #1.
6. Avoid cliché. A cliché is an overused expression.
Aunt Bertha was pretty as a picture.
The sky rained cats and dogs.
7. Exploit word connotations. A connotation is the emotional definition, rather than a
dictionary definition of a word.
We returned to our house.
We returned to our home.
(What is the difference between a “house” and a “home”?)
8. Avoid overly general non-specific words like “thing,” “a lot,” “cool,” “stuff.”
“awesome,” and “nice.” Also avoid intensifiers such as “very” and “really.”
We did a lot of very nice things and cool stuff last week in English 1301. It was
really awesome!
3. Use figurative language, as opposed to literal language, when appropriate for descriptive
purposes. Review definitions of these words. Locate examples of figurative language in
the essays we are studying in our first unit. Note these examples:
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison using the form of “to be” to connect two
unlike things or abstract concepts.
Note Annie Dillard’s metaphor in “The Chase”:
“The cars travelled down Reynolds street slowly and evenly; they were targets all
but wrapped in red ribbons, cream buffs.”
A metaphor can also describe an abstract concept like death, love, hate, or
prejudice.
Segregation is a stinging dart. (direct metaphor)
"I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation
to say, 'Wait.'" (indirect metaphor, Dr. Martin Luther King in “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”)
Simile: A simile is a comparison of two unlike things using the words “Like” or
“as.”
“[The motor boats] whined about one’s ears like mosquitoes.” (E. B. White,
“Once More to the Lake.”)
“I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy
indignity.” (Amy Tan, “Two Kinds”)
Personification: Personification gives an animal, object, or idea the
characteristics of a human personality.
Note how in “Once More to the Lake,” E. B. White refers to the lake as “constant
and trustworthy.”
Allusion: An allusion is a reference to a familiar person, place, or thing.
With Herculean strength, I gathered all my energy to write the rough draft of my
memoir.
“At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple.” (Amy Tan,
“Two Kinds”)
In E. B. White’s essay “Once More to the Lake,” note the allusions to Fig
Newtons, Beeman’s gum, Cocoa Cola, and Moxie.
Overstatement (hyperbole): An overstatement exaggerates a situation.
That morning, I left a mountain of dishes in the sink.
Understatement: An understatement downplays a situation.
I soon discovered that Hurricane Katrina would be no Sunday picnic.
Symbol: A symbol is something that stands for something else.
Note the water imagery in E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake.” The water
(especially in his conclusion) functions as a symbol of increased consciousness
and transformation, perhaps a rebirth.
Note the symbol of the piano in Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds.” It functions as a
symbol of Jing Mei’s mother’s dreams for her daughter.
CHECKPOINTS
1. Be careful that you do not create mixed metaphors that will confuse the
reader. (We climbed to ladder of success to obtain the golden fleece.)
2. In an extended description, decide on your arrangement of details: top to bottom,
right to left, head to toe, right to left, inside to outside. Use transition words: above,
under, to the right.