How to Write a Descriptive Essay

by Jesse Seldess, Professional Writer

More than many other types of essays, descriptive essays strive to create a deeply involved and vivid experience for the reader. Great descriptive essays achieve this affect not through facts and statistics but by using detailed observations and descriptions. How to Write an Essay Essay Writing

Descriptive Essay Narrative Essay Persuasive Essay The Essay Conclusion

What do you want to describe? As you get started on your descriptive essay, it's important for you to identify exactly what you want to describe. Often, a descriptive essay will focus on portraying one of the following:

a person a place a memory an experience an object

Ultimately, whatever you can perceive or experience can be the focus of your descriptive writing. Why are you writing your descriptive essay? It's a great creative exercise to sit down and simply describe what you observe. However, when writing a descriptive essay, you often have a particular reason for writing your description. Getting in touch with this reason can help you focus your description and imbue your language with a particular perspective or emotion. Example: Imagine that you want to write a descriptive essay about your grandfather. You've chosen to write about your grandfather's physical appearance and the way that he interacts with people. However, rather than providing a general description of these aspects, you want to convey your admiration for his strength and kindness. This is your reason for writing the

descriptive essay. To achieve this, you might focus one of your paragraphs on describing the roughness of his hands, roughness resulting from the labor of his work throughout his life, but you might also describe how he would hold your hands so gently with his rough hands when having a conversation with you or when taking a walk. How should you write your description? If there's one thing you should remember as you write your descriptive essay, it's the famous saying: show don't tell. But what's the difference between showing and telling? Consider these two simple examples:

I grew tired after dinner. As I leaned back and rested my head against the top of the chair, my eyelids began to feel heavy, and the edges of the empty plate in front of me blurred with the white tablecloth.

The first sentence tells readers that you grew tired after dinner. The second sentence shows readers that you grew tired. The most effective descriptive essays are loaded with such showing because they enable readers to imagine or experience something for themselves. As you write your descriptive essay, the best way to create a vivid experience for your readers is to focus on the five senses.

sight sound smell touch taste

When you focus your descriptions on the senses, you provide vivid and specific details that show your readers rather than tell your readers what you are describing. Quick Tips for Writing Your Descriptive Essay Writing a descriptive essay can be a rich and rewarding experience, but it can also feel a bit complicated. It's helpful, therefore, to keep a quick checklist of the essential questions to keep in mind as you plan, draft, and revise your essay.

Planning your descriptive essay:

What or who do you want to describe? What is your reason for writing your description? What are the particular qualities that you want to focus on?

Drafting your descriptive essay:

What sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures are important for developing your description? Which details can you include to ensure that your readers gain a vivid impression imbued with your emotion or perspective?

Revising your descriptive essay:

Have you provided enough details and descriptions to enable your readers to gain a complete and vivid perception? Have you left out any minor but important details? Have you used words that convey your emotion or perspective? Are there any unnecessary details in your description? Does each paragraph of your essay focus on one aspect of your description? Are you paragraphs ordered in the most affective way? 4,001 Business, Sales & Personal Letters

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Writing Expository Essays

It is not enough to makeup your verse of plain words Horace, Roman 65 - 8 B.C.E. Seven stages of writing assignments Writing under deadline The five-paragraph essay Essays for a literature class Expository essays

Persuasive essays Position papers Writing white papers Presenting your positive image/brand

When writing an essay, follow these eight basic steps: Select a topic: Be sure the topic is narrow enough to make it manageable within the space of an essay Write a thesis sentence: Be sure the thesis statement(or sentence) expresses a controlling idea that is neither too broad nor too specific to be developed effectively Select a method of development: Check through all the methods before you finally settle on the one which will best serve your thesis: definition compare and contrast classification example cause and effect process analysis

Organize the essay: Begin by listing the major divisions which the body paragraphs in your essay will discuss; then fill in the primary supports that each body paragraph of the essay will contain

Write topic sentences for the body paragraphs of the essay: For each body paragraph, furnish a topic sentence that directly relates to the thesis sentence Write the body paragraphs of the essay: Each body paragraph should develop the primary support covered in that paragraph's topic sentence Furnish a paragraph of introduction: An introductory paragraph should state the thesis of the essay, introduce the divisions in the body paragraphs of the essay, and gain the interest of the reader Write a paragraph of conclusion:

Restate the thesis and divisions of the essay Bring the essay to an appropriate and effective close Avoid digressing into new issues

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Expository essays are simply essays that explain something with facts, as opposed to opinion. Samples of expository essays include:

Essays that described how to do something. Essays that analyze events, ideas, objects, or written works. Essays that describe a process. Essays that explain/describe an historical event.

Expository essays are often written in response to a prompt that asks the writer to expose or explain a specific topic. Essay questions on tests are normally expository essays, and will look like the following: Explain the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. Explain how to balance a checkbook.

Describe the composition and function of a chicken's egg.

An expository essay should have the same basic structure as any typical essay, with an introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and a summary. The length of your essay can vary, according to context. The introductory paragraph will contain the thesis sentence, and the topic of the thesis should be grounded in fact.
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Expository writing
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Expository writing is a type of writing, the purpose of which is to inform, explain, describe, or define the author's subject to the reader. Expository text is meant to deposit information and is the most frequently used type of writing by students in colleges and universities. A well-written exposition remains focused on its topic and lists events in chronological order. Examples of this type of writing are cooking instructions, driving directions and instructions on performing a task. Key words such as first, after, next, then and last usually signal sequential writing. Secondperson pronouns may be used in such writing, if needed; for example, in a how-to essay a writer

may choose to personalize the instructions with "you." However, the use of first-person pronouns should be avoided. Expository essays will not reveal the opinion of the writer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expository_writing