Tips on Writing a Descriptive Essay
Very often young and unexperienced students and writers confuse a descriptive essay with a narrative one and need paper help. At first sight these two papers are similar and have a lot in common, but such statement can hardly be called completely correct. If considering the narrative essay, a student is expected to share his/her own experience and explain its meaning. While writing the descriptive essay student needs to depict a person, thing, place or some phenomenon in details and show its meaning. Descriptive writing is the main factor that determines success of the essay and revives a subject of the essay for readers, that’s why you should work on your own descriptive style
Another benefit of this paper is that you can direct your artistic abilities in any way you need. In an ideal situation the descriptive essay should make readers feel like they have seen and experienced the subject of the paper by themselves. This requires from students to use language in a sensitive way in order to reveal and convey human senses. Besides, there are other no less important things you need to pay attention to. We present you several tips that will guide you and show what points you should focus on.
1. Essay’s prewriting. Being at this stage the writer should carefully think of a topic. He or she should figure out what or who they’ll describe and clearly understand why the subject draws his/her attention. These reasons are an extremely helpful motivator, no matter whether you decided to show a portrait of an important person for you, a picture of a place or a situation that once made a great impression on you.
It’s not so crucial what information you offer, but how you present it. Your subject matter isn’t expected to be scandalous or controversial, on the contrary, you may write about ordinary and routine things, such as favorite dish or drink, shopping, walk with friends and so on. Remembering about the reasons we mentioned earlier, you should try to concentrate on the details concerning the theme. Think over the surroundings if you write about the person, and vice versa – when writing about any room, building or park you can highlight how people affect the atmosphere of the place. In no case you should neglect your emotions and feelings, they are equally important as physical characteristics. Consider and plan in what order you should present the details to make the most impression on the reader.
2. Prepare a draft of your descriptive essay. This stage demands to follow the already created outline. Keep in mind that your aim is to introduce a complex and rich description of your experience, and for that you need not only to tell, but to show. Showing implies the use of all human senses, in this way the reader will be able to be in your shoes – see the blue sky, hear the tweeting birds, smell the perfume, taste the ice cream and feel the light touch of spring wind. For example, such a simple sentence I tasted the pie cooked by my grandmother may sound completely different – Having entered the kitchen I felt the extremely pleasant and sweet smell of grandmother’s pie, so I ate a huge piece. The writer doesn’t have to declare facts, in order to make the descriptive essay pretty good it is necessary to create the most realistic picture in the mind of the reader.
3. Revision of the essay. During this stage the student rereads, reorganizes, makes corrections and does everything possible to improve the paper. There are several points the student remember while revising:
- The way the writer presents the paper must help to clearly comprehend the subject of the essay, avoid confusing sentences and paragraphs;
- The choice of words and figurative language should cover not only feelings and emotions, but also five senses;
- Only appropriate quantity of details makes the picture completed;
- Description always correlates with its meaning for the writer; the writer provides the reader with an opportunity to see how it affects conclusions;
- Guide the reader in a right direction – start with general information, then offer some specifics, and conclude. It’s the most logical way to “make a puzzle” of the descriptive essay.
4. Essay editing. Now the student should be especially attentive, he or she proofreads, corrects grammatical, lexical and syntax mistakes. This step is also essential if you didn’t write an essay by yourself but used an Essay Typer tool or something like this. It’s also high time to sharpen style, enrich vocabulary and ask someone to have a look at the essay with fresh eyes.
5. Show the essay to other students. The student may be afraid of sharing the paper with the audience, but any writer feels the same, when it comes to his/her work. Listen to every comment and every remark even if you are not fond of them. Getting a feedback is a great lesson everyone needs to take, otherwise person’s skills will not progress.
