Descriptive Writing Assignment: Place
OVERVIEW: More than any other type of essay, descriptive essays strive to create a deeply involved and vivid experience for the reader. Fulfilling descriptive essays achieve this effect not through facts and statistics but by using detailed observations and descriptions. Your assignment is to create a formal essay with a descriptive focus.
Through prewriting, narrow your topic down to a specific place: Decide on something you know well and your reader does not. Also, pick a place you can deftly describe with intricacies and sensuality. In this assignment you have the luxury of choosing your subject for description. This academic freedom must not be taken lightly. Choose wisely.
Purpose: It’s a great creative exercise to sit down and simply describe what you observe. However, when writing a descriptive essay, you should have a particular reason for your description. Describe a place that creates one of these impressions: peace, cheerfulness, tension, danger, warmth, or safety.
Form: The form of this assignment will be a standard five-paragraph-ish essay of at least three pages long. Font 12 pt., Times New Roman, double-spaced. Typical MLA format heading and header.
Here are two elements you must use in your essay: Sensory description and solid organization. These should combine to create a dominant impression.
What to avoid: Wordiness, trite figurative language, basic grammar errors, the word “very.”
Procedure: Choose something you are interested in and/or know a lot about and think about whether your purpose will be to explain or to persuade. Then brainstorm and freewrite for as many sensory details and comparisons you can think of.
Prewriting: Answer these questions:
Think of an instance that you want to describe. Why is this particular instance important?
What were you doing?
What other things were happening around you?
Is there anything specific that stands out in your mind?
Where were objects located in relation to where you were?
How did the surroundings remind you of other places you have been?
What sights, smells, sounds, and tastes were in the air?
Did the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes remind you of anything?
What were you feeling at that time?
Has there been an instance in which you have felt this way before?
What do you want the reader to feel after reading the paper?
What types of words and images can convey this feeling?
Can you think of another situation that was similar to the one you are writing about?
How can it help explain what you are writing about?
