The moon with its wisps of white light hung suspended in the frosty air over the still, quiet countryside. He could see in all directions, from the majestic outcrop of mountains to the vast ocean on the other. The reader can certainly SEE the moon and the countryside. Notice the images of color and shape. Descriptive writing focuses on observation, is static, and paints pictures with words. Good writing comes from close observation of people, places, objects, and even our own feelings and emotions. Your assessment will requires you to write a descriptive/narrative piece based on a picture of your choice. You will eventually add this description into another piece later this trimester—so choose wisely. What follows are some examples of descriptive writing which will assist you in responding to that genre more effectively. Describing: Colour Shapes Sizes Movements Sounds Smells Tastes Surfaces These require careful processing of the details of the sensation. Your writing will come alive by doing this. Example: The child was in the green garden with flowers, trees and birds. The child was smaller than the tall green grass that was tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. To the child, it was knife edged, thick like a forest, alive with grasshoppers that chattered and chirped in the air like monkeys. From the ground a tropic heat oozed, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Far above the child, like clouds, elder blossom banked in the sky, showering fumes and flakes of sweet perfumed air that suffocated. High overhead flew frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing. Example 1 In the above example a lot is going on with variety of sentences, word choice and the use of techniques, but without the time taken to pay attention to details then all the writing skills would be wasted. This is what makes details so important to writing. Use words that have sounds similar to the sounds that are being described thus meaning can be reinforced. Techniques such as: ONOMATOPOEIA ALLITERATION ASSONANCE SIBILANCE The events of the next few minutes are difficult for me now to sort out. I found it more difficult still at the time. All we heard back there in the sidings was a distant cheer, confused crackle of rifle fire, yells, heavy shelling booming on our front line, more shouts, yells and cries, and a continuous rapid rattle of machine-guns. After a few minutes, lightly wounded men of the Middlesex came stumbling down Maison Rouge Alley to the dressing-station. I stood at the junction of the siding and the Alley. 'What's happened? What's happened?' I asked. 'Bl- balls-up,' was the most detailed answer I could get. Example 2 alliteration, word choice and onomatopoeia have been used to convey in detail the noises occurring during the attack. Find examples which appeal to the senses. Explore these. Sight is probably the easiest and most obvious sense to appeal to. Pay attention to: Size Shape Colour Movement Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. Example 3 details about colours, shapes, lengths and quantities are all observed and written about As we are very tactile creatures the sense of touch is probably the most important. The next example comes from the novel Sunset Song by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. He describes the setting of the Grampian mountains in the north east of Scotland during a very unlikely event - a drought in Scotland. He uses personification of the wind to get across the feelings of touch in the setting. For days now the wind had been in the South, it shook and played in the prickly moors and went dandering up the smooth, hard sleeping Grampians, it danced on the soft waters of the loch, its light hand upon them, but it brought more warmth than cold, and all the once sodden parks waited for fair rain that seemed never-coming. Up here the hills were brave with the beauty and the heat of it, but the hayfield was all a crumbly, crackling drynes and in the potato park beyond the biggings the shaws drooped red, grainy, dry and rusty. Folk said there hadn't been such drought. Example 4 describing touch/feeling makes the reader more aware of the physical reality of the world in your story. Sense of smell can be difficult to describe so, you need to get inspired: Use a thesaurus to help you with words about smells. notice descriptions of smells when you see or hear them such as advertising: "lemony fresh", "fresh pine scent" adjectives can describe the general, overall quality of the smell: wispy, rancid, airy, musty, stale, fresh, putrid, faint, light, floral, acrid; burning smell; you can use a noun or noun phrase: a stench, an aroma, the smell of leather, it smells like strawberries; smell of baking; smell of burning use verbs for the smells: smells can waft, district, dull, attack, permeate, confuse; wrap around you; follow you words associated with other senses can be used: a smell can be dark, bright, sharp, seet, bitter, harmonious smells can be personal emotional reactions: soothing, comforting, jarring, caring use of figures of speech such as metaphor, simile: the smell clawed at the nostrils, the smell was like a smooth sensation. He drank the milk in the dark room and removed his boots. The smell of freshly turned earth was on them and combined with the musty air of the grain he'd been scattering . The old man smoked as was his custom, filling the room with a strong acrid aroma. He sat drawing at his pipe, the dulling, acrid smell mixing with a sweeter, sharper perfume. The sound of the grandfather clock ticked the minutes away and an ancient cat breathed a pungent breath of fish, newly eaten. Andy went up to bed with the stair creaking under his weight. He smelt Johnnie's earthy clothes, his sweaty, stale socks like rotted rope and putrid underpants, and, finally, the light, familiar aroma of a hand rolled cigarette. Example 5 With a partner write down all of the references to the sense of smell and explain how the writer has been successful. There are many words to describe taste. You can be as creative in your approach when describing tastes as when describing smells (see previous page). Here are some words to get you started: alkaline, cheesy, burnt, crispy, vinegary, buttery, bland, raw, ripe, sour, spicy, hearty, hot, tasty, sweet, bittersweet, gingery, overripe, oily, fruity, fishy, sugary, salty, luscious, rotten, sour, spoiled, peppery, mellow, medicinal, bitter, tangy, greasy, delicious Madeleine was now ready for dessert, the course she relished the most. She had eaten the gingery lemon soup with sour cream and thought it too tangy. The next course, mussels with seafood risotto: well, the mussels she found vinegary and the risotto was fishy, peppery and, due to too much oil, greasy. The next dish was an improvement - a crispy duck with burnt mushrooms and a spicy sauce with some ripe banana fried was a taste revelation! Dessert called her: she hoped for a buttery sponge with sweet custard and tangy fruit, as the menu promised. Example 6 Layering the details and the sense descriptions A writer will very rarely focus on one sense at a time as the previous examples have done. (This is why it's a good idea to read to the end.) Writing your description with a mix of the senses is the usual approach. The reason for this is simple: it gives a richer, more complete picture of what is being described. To do this you can layer details on top of one another. This creates a series of related details that, taken together, create an image in your readers' minds. For example, in describing a room, you might start with its size, then describe the windows, the temperature, the colours, how the floor feels to touch, the sounds that can be heard from it, and finally how the air in the room smells. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray begins with a description of an artist's room and garden. In this amended extract Henry Wotton is sitting in the studio of Basil Hallward, the artist. Wilde has focused on a layered description paying attention to the separate senses in detail. The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable sweet-tasting cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long, soft tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ. Go through the text identifying details of each sense and examine how the writer is describing it. Look closely at how the writer is layering the description together, which creates a strong image of a place, object or person. The girls stand in nervous clusters, wearing their name brand gear – Rip Curl, Esprit, Billabong, tight tops with string straps. Little black numbers. The guys have on their best Levis, T shirts, gelled hair. The air is full of noise, booming so loud you can’t hear a word. Rainbow colored spots cut through the haze of smoke like searchlights, picking up the silhouettes of dancing girls. The boys lean against the walls, sipping Coke, watching, or moving across to chat someone up. Later, in small groups, they’ll pour out into the night street, heading for McDonalds and the scent of hot fries. A good night out. In a large box out in the garage, surrounded by gumboots, shovels and old paint tins, is a scene of joy. The happy mother lies on a tatty red and yellow blanket, her litter at her belly. She licks them, and looks up with watchful brown eyes when we bend over to see. The tiny puppies, blind and almost hairless, scramble over one another, searching for their mother. What brings this scene to life? Write down the words that help the reader visualize this scene. Professional model: Descriptive Writing From “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. It was a time of quiet and waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain do not go together. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
