D-Lightful D-Scription

 

Today's Snack: Make a Peanut Butter Shake. Into a blender, put one cup of milk, one banana, peeled and sliced, and one tablespoon of creamy peanut butter. Put the lid on tight! Blend on high power until smooth. Pour into a glass and enjoy!

 

 

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Supplies:

 

Your favorite item of clothing

 

Print out this Treat, and have a pen or pencil handy

 

 

Zero in on detail, and you'll give the big picture to your reader. When readers can "see" a picture of what you are describing, they take delight in it. So it's well worth the effort to describe things well in your writing.

 

Writers know that a few choice words of good description are much better than pages upon pages of not-so-good description.

 

The rule is: don't overload your reader with words. Instead, make good word choices, and do more with less!

 

But how do you learn to choose the best descriptive words? Think about these five categories that words of description fit into:

 

Visual.

 

Sound.

 

Touch.

 

Smell.

 

Human feelings.

 

You may concentrate on one of these in a piece of writing, or use all of them in combination. Sometimes, you can replace one mediocre word with one great word, and improve your descriptive power 100%. Other times, it may take a lot of words of good description to replace one so-so word, but even though that makes your sentence longer, it'll be worth it.

 

Let's say you're describing a wall. Which does a better job of telling you what it looks like: "a brick wall" or a "graffiti-speckled wall"? The latter one, right? That's a more visual description. It zeroes in and gives the reader a specific "picture" of what that wall looked like.

 

Or let's say you're describing a playground at recess. Which is better to describe that playground: "it was loud" or "children were having so much fun, they screamed for joy." If you zero in on the sounds, you can describe the scene much better.

 

For descriptive words that focus on touch, choose "jagged" over "rough," and "silky" over "soft."

 

It's the same thing with smells: instead of "it smelled bad," write "it smelled like dead fish."

 

For human feelings, skip over "I felt bad" or "I felt happy," and instead write, "I cried my eyes out," or "I grinned and hugged her."

 

See? Think a little more deeply, and try to get action and emotion in your word choices, and your writing will be a lot more lively and clear.

 

Now, write three different phrases to describe the following. Your phrases might describe totally different scenes. Just make each one lively, clear and distinctive:

 

A playground full of kids.

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

A car.

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

Someone cooking.

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

Go back over these and circle the one that is the most descriptive. What makes it good?

 

Now look at your favorite item of clothing, such as a shirt, a necklace, a jacket or a pair of shoes. Describe this item in at least 100 words. Use your five categories: visual, sound, touch, smell, human feelings. You may relate the clothing item to something in your memory, or some conversation that you had in it, or some experience you had while wearing it. Or simply describe it in detail.

 

The reader should know that item so well after you've described it, that the reader might as well be WEARING IT!!!