Objective: Learn how to develop techniques in writing that help the reader understand exactly what you have seen or experienced.
Choosing Descriptive Words: Degrees of Meaning
Description is one place that you especially want to use words that reflect exactly what you mean. One way to develop these kinds of details is to ask yourself questions about what it is you really see. To do this, you can use a method called questioning degrees of meaning. Degrees of meaning will allow you to describe a world that is not just black and white. One way to find a word to color your work is to think about how different words can be categorized by the intensity of a person's reaction. Often writers say something is "good," which doesn't provide much descriptive detail, so this word is an effective example of this technique. Using "good" as a base, or center, try thinking of words that mean a little better than good or a little worse. Here is a sample list:
- Admirable -- much better than merely good
- Practical - not only good but useful
- Good - not harmful and probably of benefit
- Adequate - will do the job but something else might be better
- Passable - may do the job but something else would definitely be better
Can you think of other words that would indicate degrees of meaning for good? Every idea has more that one word that might describe it and providing the appropriate degree, or level, of meaning will help readers understand exactly what you mean.
Practice
You can use the area below to practice this technique with some of these ideas: pretty, enough, and cold.
Describing Objects: Showing What You See
Written description helps the readers build a picture of an object or situation in their minds. Consequently, organization and details in descriptive writing are as important as finding specific words. When describing an object, you would choose a pattern that reflects the way someone would actually look at it - top to bottom or left to right, for example. You would not describe the top, the bottom, and finally the middle. Here is an example:
The old barn sat neglected about five hundred yards west of the new dairy. Its roof was beginning to sag, and the doors were locked securely with a rusting padlock and chain. But in its day, it was a useful center of activity for Joe's business.
Have you ever had an instructor say, "Don't tell me what you saw, show me!" What he or she usually means is that they want details in your work that provide a picture in readers' minds. In the example above, we could have easily said:
The old barn is west of the new one. It is falling apart. I used to be a good barn.
However, readers would not know very much about the barn if we only gave those vague details.
Let's look again at the original description:
The old barn sat neglected about five hundred yards west of the new dairy. Its roof was beginning to sag, and the doors were locked securely with a rusting padlock and chain. But in its day, that barn was a bustling center of activity for Joe's business.
You might think about what individual words in these two sentences tell the reader because each becomes the part of the complete description. "Neglected" gives the impression of loneliness, and readers know right away that no one bothers to go to the old barn for anything important. By using dairy, rather than barn to describe the new building you make it seem more functional than a mere barn, so readers begin to think it is a more purposeful and efficient building than the old. Finally, describing from top to bottom or largest part to smallest part, the sagging roof and the rusting lock complete the picture of abandonment by indicating time has passed since anyone found the building useful. The final sentence indicates time has passed the barn by with the phrase "In its day," and that it was more than a good barn because it was busy.
Describing Events: Using Time in a Description
Describing events are usually based on time; you follow the sequence that things occurred. To make a list of simple tasks more descriptive, writers use details and active verbs. Again, questions are a useful way to get at this information. The most obvious is "what happened first?" There are many transitional patterns to help you describe a sequence of events. Here are a few:
- First, second, third, finally/last
- First, then, and, finally
- In the beginning, later, as a result
These are not the only patterns, so you might develop your own. However, following one of these kinds of transitional patterns will help you describe events. Here is an example of working a time sequence into a short paragraph:
Joe is always the first person in the dairy and the last to leave. He arrives to do the milking about 4 AM and begins by checking the equipment. While others perform the actual task of milking the cows, Joe oversees the job to be sure everything runs smoothly. When the first dairy hands arrive, about 4:30, they find that the shiny stainless steel machines are prepared to begin the actual task of milking, and Joe is in the control room waiting for the process to begin.
Describing Human Reactions: Using Your Senses
Of course details that involve the reader are always important, and in description you can rely on the human senses to provide these: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Questions that will help you here are:
- Does the look, sound, taste, feel, or smell remind you of something else?
- Can you compare it to the look, sound, taste, feel, or smell of something familiar?
- Is it different than the look, sound, taste, feel, or smell of something familiar to most people?
- Does the look, sound, taste, feel, or smell change from one thing to another?
- What happens to make the look, sound, taste, feel, or smell change?
Usually a writer will choose one or two ideas to develop in a descriptive paragraph. Here is an example where the writer answers the question of how things change and smell:
When the cows are let into the dairy, the pristine silence of the modern dairy is broken by the sound of the cow's hooves clomping on the concrete floors and echoing off the huge metal machinery. Anxious to be relieved of their burdensome milk, the animals stumble into one another and the dairymen shout as they direct the animals into the milking stalls. The very air changes when the bitter antiseptic aroma of yesterday's cleaning is erased by the presence of earthy sweaty animals.
In this paragraph, there is a time sequence to move the reader along, and the writer uses degrees of meaning to emphasize how things change and smell.
Summary
Descriptive writing is used in every kind of writing: workplace, essays, and paragraph assignments. Writing description requires that you, the writer, stand back and look at the object or event as an outsider and then share your observation with a reader. Interesting description pulls the reader in by using degrees of meaning that he or she can relate to like familiar sights, sounds, and other sensual experiences. For instance, you could use a variety of words for the simple word sour: lemony (a clean sharp image), curdled (a lumpy rotten image), and mildewed (a dirty neglected smell). When you write a simple descriptive sentence, you should ask yourself three questions:
- How do you picture the idea, object, or event: top to bottom, left to right, or in a time continuum?
- Which senses do you use to experience this: sight, smell, touch, taste, sound?
- What words will tell the exact degree of meaning for the reader?
Practice
Imagine that you have just been escorted into your dentist's examination room and left alone to wait for the dentist. The dental assistant has firmly settled you in a chair and draped your body with protective material. You left the magazine you had been reading outside in the waiting room. In the textbox below, describe sitting in the chair waiting for the dentist. Remember that using the five senses and the degrees of meaning will help you in this exercise.
  
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