How to Write a Descriptive Essay and Engage Your Reader

This enlightening text containing tips from the best essay writers on the market will provide you with advantageous information on how to write a descriptive essay like William Faulkner. Descriptive type of paper supposes creating a lucid picture of a specific subject, place, person, or anything else with words.

The task can help your tutor understand how well you master the power of a word. Also, it is a good test of creativity. After you noticed plenty of adjectives in the opening paragraphs, let’s get to know writing a descriptive essay closer. 

Prepare for Writing

Right off the bat, choose a topic for your essay and spend some time gathering your thoughts together concerning it. Descriptive writing is about a detailed portrayal using many literary elements, so feel free to check the synonyms dictionary.

As you have to work more with your imagination than with dry facts, creating an essay outline is vital. It will be difficult to structure your text after a stream of your consciousness, so the outline will make your future descriptive essay more logical. Follow these several steps to craft a meaningful outline:

• Gather all topic information
• Collect all pieces of information, making it sound like one entity
• Check out whether your text has a logical connection between the introduction, the body paragraphs, and the conclusion. 

Write a Descriptive Essay

Proper preparation is half of a job. The general recommendation on actually writing a descriptive essay is to avoid common words. Use language to its fullest, and don’t hesitate to think the description is a bit pretentious.

Concentrate on all five senses of a reader and include the description that applies to all of them: sight, sound, contact, odor, and flavor. These sensory details will work on immersing a reader into your description.

Composing an Introduction

The introduction of a descriptive essay would be much closer to success if it performs the following functions:

• Informative. Help your audience understand what your story will be about. Include background information of what you’re going to describe in your essay. 
• Catching the reader’s attention. Hook the intended audience and do your best to hold their attention. Everyone starts from the beginning, and everyone decides whether to read a text or not in this beginning. 

Stating Thesis

Including a thesis statement in a descriptive essay is not a demand. It means you can omit this part of the introduction. But if you decide to use it, make sure your thesis statement meets these recommendations:

• It is short and concise. I mean, extremely short! A thesis should be no longer than one sentence with two clauses. 
• It helps understand the leading idea. An easy thing to do as you express the essence of your thought in this sentence. 
• It is clear and unambiguous. No dangling modifiers as the thesis should straightforwardly represent the idea. 

Using a Hook

A good descriptive essay introduction catches the reader’s attention and makes this reader want to carry on reading. In the case of a descriptive essay, your text will be much more pretty with a hook in the first paragraph though it is not obligatory.

Think of using the following options as essay hook examples:

• Telling a joke
• Providing some alluring statistics
• Sharing a surprising fact
• Asking a provocative question

You can invent something new without choosing any of those above. The descriptive nature of the text gives way more room for picking the most hooking hook.

Filling Body Paragraphs

As body paragraphs comprise the main text of an essay, here, you will showcase how good your language is. Make your descriptive essay bright and lively so that a reader could taste and smell the described things as if visiting a virtual place. Feel free to apply to the same five senses as described before.

Imagine that you are to describe a specific place. What to include in your portrayal:

• Present a place you are going to talk about
• Tell about your feelings being at this certain place
• Provide specific details about its location
• Provide additional facts and details, which relate to your topic.

Another reminder: use fanciful language and include metaphors and allegories in your text. This is the best way to provide a reader with sensory details and create a complete picture of your subject.

Writing Conclusion 

Concluding descriptive essays, authors usually follow these recommendations:

• Make it clear which role it plays for you personally
• Summarize all information given in the essay
• Explain the reason why your reader should care about the idea provided in your essay.

You don’t need to recite the whole essay but to finish your idea in conclusion. In the case of descriptive essays, you still may use literary devices and figurative language to make a text more engaging. Consider using these conclusion templates for the best outcome.

What Else to Consider

Creating successful descriptive essays, you should use expressive language to help your reader see the picture. Don’t forget to include different illustrative examples. You know how to write a descriptive essay after you own a little secret of successful descriptive texts: make an accent on all sensory organs.

For example, describing your holidays at the seaside, breathe life into your work and avoid formalism. Use understandable vocabulary free of common words appealing to your target audience. Help your reader feel how great it was to swim, play with waves or take sunbaths. The criteria of your success is when the person reading your paper feels like being there. 

A descriptive essay is a narration with more vivid details. This is the main peculiarity that makes this type of writing different from a simple narrative paper. Notice that you won’t see a lot of action compared to a narrative essay in this case. Sometimes there is no movement at all. Your work will contain fewer verbs and more adjectives and adverbs.

Descriptive Essay Examples

You know almost everything connected to descriptive writing, and the last thing here is to look through a few descriptive essay examples:

Need Assistance?

The article could be helpful, but you still encounter some issues and cannot complete a descriptive essay? Turn to the professionals that are eager to make as good a deal of descriptive writing as possible. Place your order and stay sure your essay will be of the highest quality!