essay writing prompts

How to write a descriptive essay: 3 writing strategies


Introduction

Descriptive essays are just that- essays that describe something in detail. This is s a great exercise for students, as it allows them to express their creativity in a very specific manner. Descriptive essays are all about grasping an intuitive understanding a thing as to transfer this intuition to the reader, even if it remains very hard to put into words. In addition, putting it into works is exactly what needs to be done. Sometimes it might be hard to do this, but you have to keep working. Even though it is difficult, there are ways to make the loud a lot easier.

Empathy

It's weird to talk about empathy when writing an essay like this, but it might be the most important thing for a beginner of descriptive essays. Remember that just because you know this object or thing you are describing, or even this idea, you have it either in front of you or in your imagination. Your reader does not. Therefore, it is very important that you keep this at the forefront of your writing, to not assume that your reader knows anything you know just because you know it.

Engage the five senses

More than any other type of writing descriptive essays is sensual. It's the five sense- sight, sound, feel, smell, taste- these allow us to perceive the world, and we think in terms of the five sense. Therefore, to describe something properly, it's important to comment on as many of these things as possible. However, it's not just sight- that's the main one amateur writers will focus on. Sound, feelings even if it's just temperature or emotions one has while viewing the thing, these are important as well. Sight is the simplest thing to engage but also already what the reader is engaging in- they are using their eyes to read, after all. Make sure that you sensation to weave a tapestry of imagery.

Playing with Scope

Scope is just how minute or macroscopic the words you are writing are about. If you are describing a house, for example, you could talk about the shape of the house, how many stories and windows it has, things like that. Alternatively, you could talk about the paint peeling off the house on the side panel three up from the ground; you could describe the tree or the bugs moving around in the soil it is planted it. Moving back and forth from close scope to overall scope gives your writing texture and makes it interesting.