WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYFour Basic Steps

PREWRITING

Gathering Ideas: Brainstorming or ‘thinking on paper’ can help you find specific details and sense descriptions. The Dominant Impression: This is the main point

of the description. Often you will find ideas that keep coming up in brainstorming. The dominant impression helps form the topic sentence (for a paragraph) or thesis statement (for an essay).

PLANNING

Using the Dominant Impression: Once you have written the topic sentence, list the details that you discovered under it. Check the details by asking: Do all the details relate to the topic sentence?

Once you have found details that relate to the topic sentence, think about the order of the details. Time Sequence- first to last Spatial Position- top to bottom or right to left Similar Types- for example, all about how a meal

looks, then all about how a meal tastes.

DRAFTING AND REVISING

When drafting, your goal is to put your ideas in paragraph form so you can see what needs to be revised.

Using the outline you created while planning will help you remember the details and their order.

Please see the checklist for revising a descriptive paragraph on pg. 74

POLISHING AND PROOFREADING

The finishing touches of changing words, changing or adding transitions, and sharpening details happen during this last step.