How To Write A Descriptive
How To Write A Descriptive
How To Write A Descriptive
The answer to that is that it takes time and practise. Da Vinci, for example, didn’t start his career
by painting the roofs of chapels and masterpieces. He had to serve his apprenticeship and perfect
his craft. The real question is how do you start to plan an essay? This book attempts to provide an
answer.
Planning any level of an English assignment should involve some thought. That is why some
writers like to be labelled as ‘wordsmiths’. It infers that the thought processes are a metaphorical
lump of metal. How does that lump of metal become a silver pen? It needs to be heated (collecting
images), smelted (forming sentences), cooled down (sequencing ideas) and forged into the shape
of a pen (paragraph structure).
That doesn’t mean the process is finished. The pen may not work, even though it looks like the
finished product. It may need to be re-heated and re-forged (a redraft). Finally, both the pen and
the essay are ready.
‘Writing with Stardust’ provides a unique way to get the process started, to fire up the forge, so to
speak. The best approach is to pick a chapter and take one word from each of the ten Level 1
grids. Then get the student to rearrange them in sequence. Once this is done, they may then put
them into sentences. This is what it would look like for the MIST chapter.
This is the start of the process. If they are not capable of this, they should be encouraged to
practise it until it becomes second nature to them. They will not be able to sequence paragraphs if
they cannot sequence sentences so there is little point in moving ahead.
If they are capable of sequencing sentences, they are ready to move on to the next stage. You
could then ask them to introduce a character from the FEMALES chapter. They should only use
Level 1 again until they are comfortable with this process. The grid should look something like
this;
FEMALES
an hour glass a bumblebee shining, halo- dreamy, bliss-
silky eyelashes
figure waist white teeth blue eyes
elf thin glowing skin a pointy nose sunrise-gold hair puffy lips
They can then repeat the process by putting the words into five sentences.
The materials are now there for the introduction to an essay. In this case, it may be the day the
narrator fell in love with someone for the first time. By fusing both character description and the
natural surroundings, it should provide a narrative that entertains the reader and keeps the plot
flowing.
As always, the forecasters were wrong. The sky was clay-grey and I could see mist in the distance.
It was voiceless and heartless as shreds of it moved over the ground. Rising up, the smoky and
steamy mist encircled the mountains. Just then I heard a shout. It was Rebecca.
My heart leaped as I saw her sunrise-gold hair flash in the pale light. Her shining, halo-white teeth
gleamed as she broke into a smile. She was walking towards me along the slippery river bank. An
airy, spraying rain started to fall, but I barely noticed. As she came closer, I nearly melted into her
dreamy, bliss-blue eyes. The sight of her puffy lips parting into a bigger smile felt like an electric
current was running through my heart.
Just as I was about to reach her, she hit a tree branch that was sticking out from the bank. I
swept past her with a howl of shock. The river became wider, faster and deeper as I rounded a
bend. I felt like a skittle as I was tossed up and down. At one point, my feet were facing up to the
sky. I died inside then. I knew my time was up. I saw a bright light and faded away when my head
hit a branch under the water. The doctors told me later that if Rebecca hadn’t let go of the tree to
save me, I would have died. They said she was very brave. They never said that about me but
they gave me many strange looks. When it got around the school that I had been saved by a girl I
had jumped in to rescue, I had to put up with years of bad jokes.
I never talked to Rebecca after that day. She was removed from the school by her parents. I have
never had a nightmare about my experience, but I dream every night of once more meeting the
girl with the sunrise-gold hair.
The story above had some very clear objectives from the start. The objectives were that:
By keeping the objectives simple, a student is ready to plan a full essay using paragraphs. Happy
hunting with your writing!