Descriptive ParagraphsA Writer’s Guide

Descriptive Paragraph

Audience:

● Informal

● Consider Age (children vs young adult vs adult)

Purpose

● Entertain

● Create a movie or image in the reader’s mind

Listen To Understand

Appealing To The Reader’s Senses

¨Use words that help the reader:¤Touch¤Taste¤Smell¤See¤Hear

¨Create a “word picture” that helps the reader to create a mental image of what you are describing using words. This is called imagery!

Word Choice

¨Strong Action Verbs¤Helps the reader to see and feel the character’s actions, movements, gesturesI.e. Use “bolted” instead of “ran”

¨Use comparisons (similes/metaphors)¤By comparing your subject with familiar objects, people, experiences, you can draw on your reader’s prior knowledge to help describe a new imageI.e. His hair was as smooth as silk

¨Descriptive Adjectives¤Use adjectives to help describe nouns (places, people, things)¤Be creative – think of colours, textures, qualities etcI.e. Her blue, crumpled, torn backpack fell to the floor.

¨Descriptive Adverbs (words ending in –ly)¤Use adverbs to help describe actionsI.e. He gingerly placed his backpack on the floor.

Structure:Follow The Hamburger Paragraph

¨¤Topic sentence – state the one topic you are going to be describing; try to identify a main idea.¤ Body: three - five supporting sentences which use adjective, adverbs, strong verbs and comparisons in order to create a picture in the reader’s mind (imagery).¤Concluding sentence – restate the topic you are describing with a final description that sums up your main points

Write a descriptive paragraph from the perspective of the man in this photo:

TASKS1. Brainstorm: throw your ideas on paper - what does this

man see, hear, taste, smell, and feel?Ex. he sees people stare at him, he hears the rumble of his stomach, he tastes nothing but the sandpaper of his tongue because he can no longer eat, he smells the garbage near him, and he feels like he is drowning in hopelessness.

2. Can you turn this into a big idea? He sounds like he has no power and like he’s stuck there for people to stare at - like a statue.

3. Now structure these ideas into a paragraph

4. Choose a narrative voice (narrative point of view)

Topic

body

conclusion

Organizing Ideas into the Paragraph:

This is the formatTopic: I feel like a statue

Body: - my spirit is trapped and I am trying to break free

from the statue but noone can hear- people stare at me as if I’m a statue and this

reminds me of my failure- I can’t escape the smell of garbage or my hunger

or my thirst.

Conclusion: people wonder why I don’t make a change but I can’t because I am a statue.

Add adj, adv, strong verbs, simile etc. to the final product:

As I sit on this sidewalk, I feel like a statue. My spirit is trapped in this homeless man’s body screaming and pleading for help, trying to break through but noone can hear. As each person stares at the outer shell of a man, I drown in a new wave of my own failure, which keeps pulling me down every time I think I have the strength to live. The smell of rotting garbage floods my senses and the roaring of my stomach becomes a never ending song. My mouth is now a desert full of sand, and my body aches with heat. People wonder why I don’t do something with my life, but I can’t because I’m no longer a man, I am a statue cemented to this road.

Write a paragraph to describe this scene: