descriptive essays
DESCRIPTION
This is a presentation that I, Hrishikesh Choudhari, gave alongwith Neeraj Dabir for the ENG-111 course in July 2007. This is the first time I was incorporating the Zen features into my presentation.. and the result was very unique. The Zen style has stayed with me since.TRANSCRIPT
Descriptive Essays.
Visual is less.
Words are more.
“She cradled her daughter in her right arm...the left, she kept free to pick
alms...dressed in a magenta sari...she stood out starkly against the rainy white
scene outside my taxi's foggy window. Her hands looked heavily wrinkled, like that of my old grandfather, while her face still said
that she was not above thirty. The daughter's untidy hair...but angelic eyes,
made quite a demure picture. She, too, was looking at me expectantly like her mother, as though her mom had promised her that
she'll get her darling a candy when she gets some coins.”
Words are open-ended – different people interpret
different words in different ways.
Descriptions in words never attempt to capture
photographic reality.
Instead, they invoke the reader’s imagination, and
allows him to “read between the lines”, so that he can
“picture” the picture described in the pages.
A few words about the person has a stronger impact than a
static photograph.
What impression does the person in the next slide give you?
Hmm…???
Does the man’s portrait betray that he was the commander-in-
chief of the world’s most powerful armies? No? But
words do.
By the way, who is that person?
Descriptions recreate sense impressions, ideas and feelings by translating them into words.
“My turbaned friends jostled to douse me with their color, their red color, the same red as their turbans. Red. The color of each man, the shade of love, the
vivaciousness captured in the red color was unlike any other in God’s own rainbow. It was Holi, the festival of colors, when the triumph of good over evil was celebrated
by smearing our loved ones with the gulal. Their happiness merged with colors around us, and flowed freely as the colored water. After all, it was the burning, intrinsic red
on us. Red”
Sensory impressions decay in seconds, but written descriptions survive
indefinitely.
Subjective descriptions frequently make use of
figurative language – similes and metaphors that forge
connections with the reader’s mind.
“His highly inquiring, black eyes stood out perfectly against his milk white tee. His eyes bored me down as if to seek some unwilling answer to a question – “where have you hidden my toy gun”? Or maybe he was concealing something from me, as his tight lips revealed. Or maybe, he just didn’t care, as his tousles curved down on his cheek like a swan’s neck.”
Words help to transform things from being “just a physical
thing” into a symbol.
id
id – id destroyer – a project for underworld hackers that secures a
target personality from many of the billion people whose identities lie naked on the internet, erases
all their records from government books, bank accounts, as well as
erase their existence from peoples mind by radiating an
excruciatingly complex radiation.
or…??
id - an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a
suburb of Dallas. The company was founded by four programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game
designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. id software is now
considered the most influential of the many game development companies
in the Dallas area, known as the Dallas Gaming Mafia. Id has immemorial
games like doom, wolfensteinin it’s repertoire.
DESCRIBE AN OBJECT
OR A PLACE
1
Indescribable, huh??
First task :
Select what you want to describe.
A fresh and perceptive way only will leave an impression
on the reader.
Just connect to the past experiences (or pre-conceived
notions) of the readers.
“A character partially inspired by Pepe PeLew and Keith
Richards.”
Is it enough ?
Justified selectivity is needed when describing an object or a
place.
DESCRIBE A PERSON
2
What is it about this person that is worth describing ?
It is always other than physical attributes.
ORGANIZATION OF A
DESCRIPTION
3
Principles of Order –
Which sensory impact will convey the most to the reader?
Lotsa adjectives and adverbs ?
Precise and vivid nouns and verbs will do the trick.
VISUALIZING A DESCRIPTION
4
Limitations of words.
Kirchoff's Current Law (KCL):At every node, the sum of all currents entering a node is equal to the sum of all currents leaving the node.
Kirchoff's Voltage Law (KVL):The voltage law says that the sum of voltages around every closed loop in the circuit must equal zero.
Exercise:Please apply Kirchoff's Current
and Voltage laws to the following figures.
1Choose your subject carefully.
In conclusion,
2Observe your subject in a fresh
way.
In conclusion,
Pick out details, selectively.
In conclusion,
Choose a pattern of organization.
In conclusion,
Intense and graphic words.
In conclusion,
HrishikeshNeeraj