Descriptive essays are often used in literature to create a vivid and detailed picture of a scene, object, or person. The author uses the five senses and concrete, sensory details to evoke mental images that allow readers to experience whatever it is that he or she is describing. Know about the Full Form Of IXPRL.
Descriptive essays accomplish this by using point-of-view, sensory details, and figurative language. Students who find themselves in the nutshell after getting a descriptive writing task rush to a professional essay writing service to get their assignment completed on time.
Point-of-view describes the perspective from which a story is told. It belongs to a narrator whose point of view might be either first person or third person. In the cases of descriptive essays, authors typically rely on their observations when writing about things that they have experienced themselves.
For descriptions of things that an author has not seen, such as the thoughts and emotions of other people, he writes from a third-person point-of-view.
Some Important Questions to Consider
Before beginning to write a descriptive essay, authors should consider some important questions: What am I describing? Who is it that experiences these things? How can I describe this experience uniquely or interestingly?
The answer to the first question is usually straightforward: authors describe people, objects, and scenes. The answers to the remaining questions depend on what it is that the author wants his reader to experience. If he’s trying to create a mental image of a person, details about clothing will help readers imagine the scene more fully.
For example, if the person is wearing a turtleneck and boots in the middle of summer, his outfit might seem unusual or noteworthy to readers. By thinking about his audience’s reactions, an author can decide on details that will be helpful for them.
Sensory details are also important because they allow readers to experience whatever it is that an author is describing. The five senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
A descriptive essay uses mostly sight and sometimes sound or smell. The smell is less common than the other senses because it is more difficult for authors to describe what something smells like without including comparisons with things that readers might be familiar with.
Figurative language is a language that cannot be understood by the literal meaning of the words. Authors often use similes and metaphors in their descriptive writing because they provide comparisons between things, stating what something is like (a simile) or who someone is (a metaphor).
An author might describe a person as “burning with enthusiasm” or say that a place “smells like a bakery.” He can also use similes and metaphors to entertain his readers by creating unexpected comparisons. For example, an author could describe a man as being as excited as a little boy on Christmas morning.
How to Avoid Descriptive Essay Mistakes
The first step in avoiding descriptive essay mistakes is to understand what makes a good descriptive essay.
A descriptive essay uses vivid language to paint a picture of an object, person, experience, or place. The goal of this type of writing is to make the reader feel like they are experiencing whatever you are describing.
This is different from an expository essay where you simply state facts or information clearly and concisely.
Writing a descriptive essay requires you to do more than just describe something. You need to describe it well enough that the reader can experience it with all of their senses, not just sight. Someone with poor mental health conditions may not be able to come up with something creative and exciting.
To help you further understand what makes a good descriptive essay, here are the most common mistakes students make when writing this type of essay.
- Overuse of Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives and adverbs are great tools for adding vividness to your descriptions, but if you use too many they can clutter up your writing and end up clouding out the very images they were supposed to create.
Avoid using too many of these descriptive words and instead focus on more descriptive verbs to make your writing clearer and more concise.
- Incorrect Verb Tenses
In a descriptive essay, you want to convey the image that someone is experiencing whatever it is that you are describing.
This is why verb tense should remain consistent at all times, but especially in the present tense to create that sense of immediacy.
- Repetition
Repetition can be helpful if it’s used sparingly, but if you overdo it your writing will become tedious.
For example, if you have a string of sentences beginning with “He saw…” or “She heard…”, it will become tiresome and force the reader to lose interest.
- Overused Clichés
Clichés are another form of repetition. It’s best to avoid them when possible because they have been overused so much that they’re now clichés.
Strive to make your writing original and unique.
- Unnecessary Details
Unnecessary details are anything that doesn’t directly contribute to the image you’re attempting to create in the reader’s mind. Once you’ve mastered all of the above techniques, then you can think about adding these superfluous words into your writing.
For instance, a writer might use the phrase “the sweaty room” when describing a hot and humid environment. This is unnecessary because most people would assume that it’s going to be sweaty in a hot and humid environment.
- Passive Voice
Passive voice can make your writing very vague and unclear which will detract from the images you are trying to create.
For instance, “The windows were broken by the storm” is a passive voice because it doesn’t tell us who broke them or how they were broken. The sentence would be much stronger if written in an active voice as “the storm broke the windows”.
- Unnecessary Repetition
A descriptive essay is not a story. It’s essentially a list of adjectives and/or verbs that you string together into sentences that articulate what it is you’re describing.
Because this type of writing is organized in such a way, there isn’t an opportunity for the reader to get confused about what you are trying to describe.