Describing the Essentials of a Descriptive Essay and Beyond!

  • Eduhelphub,
  • Aug 27, 2020

The power of description goes far beyond the perception of common thought. It includes all the faculties that a person utilizes; like his senses, to imbibe information about a place thing or event and use his imagination to paint a picture that he can relate with. The role of a Descriptive Essay is to pose as a gateway that facilitates the said imagination and helps paint verbal picture that creates a visual effect in the reader’s mind. We have experienced this form of description through various media such as radio shows, TV and most importantly, books and stories and articles. Very similarly, a Descriptive Essay is one such medium of conveying what the writer wants the reader to comprehend; which involves vivid description about a certain phenomenon or place or person.

What is a Descriptive Essay?

As we have endorsed previously, a Descriptive Essay is a tool through which the writer describes the very essence of an event place or person through the use of the faculty of senses and creative manipulation thereof. It does not only just tell what a thing is, it tells us about a thing.
For example, saying the glass is full, is stating something. Saying that a glass is filled to the brim is describing something, it exactly paints a picture of the level of water inside the glass or how full it exactly is! That is a good starter for a descriptive essay definition.

What Makes It Stand Out from A Mere Description of Something?

A Descriptive Essay might look easy but do not let its simplicity fool you. Descriptive Essay writing is perhaps the toughest essays to successfully convey the principal concepts and structure them in a manner that is easy to comprehend and also effective at the same time. It is not only a description but a Descriptive Essay. A mere description inculcates what a thing is, while a Descriptive Essay is about explaining the peripherals of a certain subject and delving deep into its nuances and noting details very carefully and simultaneously producing a gripping account of a mixture of all the elements that make a phenomenon or place; a person or a thing, worth remembering and noticing.

Utilize Your Senses

To effectively describe an essay topic or a subject in a Descriptive Essay, you not only need to use your senses to feel what it is that you are describing, but also tabulate essay structure that successfully articulates the senses that the subject provokes such as the sense of smell, taste, hearing, sight, and touch.

For example, if you are writing about cactuses you can describe that its thorns feel prickly (sense of touch) and its shape is bulbous (sense of sight) and that it tastes moist (sense of taste)

It is to be observed that, to describe the sense of touch, the word ‘prickly’ is used in place of ‘pointy’, to describe the sense of sight, the shape has been defined to be ‘bulbous’ and not just ‘thick’ additionally, to describe the sense of taste, the adjective used is ‘moist’ and not just ‘wet’

Thus, it can be inferred that an enhanced level of articulation is essential to effectively paint a verbal picture and emboss an image in the reader’s mind.

What Are the Types of Essays Under the Descriptive Category?

It is rare to find only one kind of anything, as you might have already guessed, there is variation involved in this kind of essay writing as well.

A Descriptive Essay Can Be Categorised into The Following Types

1. A Person-Descriptive Essay : This is an essay that deals with observations and inferences drawn about a person. This can be a personal account of the writer and exhibit very minute and personal details about the individual portrayed as a subject of the essay

An account of daily routine of a church priest or an account of a postman might comprise of example of descriptive essay of a person.

2.A Place Essay : A descriptive essay about a place usually deals with painting a picture with words about how a place looks and feels from a third-person perspective. It requires microscopic observations like how the smell of the air is, how the temperature of the place is, and how it makes the writer feel.

A vivid description of a hill station or the hotel in the City centre can be examples of descriptive essay of a place.

3. An Event Essay : This can be an account of an event that the writer has visited or a public event in general; Description of music festivals or sports events are some of the examples of an event essay.

4. Animal Essay : This is a niche category dealing with the behaviour and description of activities of an animal and how the events are interrelated and performed in a daily cycle.

The description of your pet dog and its daily routine can be categorised as an animal essay

5. Behaviour Essay : This is one of the most interesting kinds of essays as it deals with the psychology of humans and analyses their behaviour and responses at different aspects of life. It peeks into the psyche of the human mind and draws inferences based on behaviour and actions.

The drooping of the mimosa pudica aka the touch-me-not plant can be described in an essay that can be categorised into to the behaviour-essay section.

Approaches to a Descriptive Essay

A Descriptive Essay Can Be Approached in One Of Two Ways

1. The Personal Account: This deals with the personal observations of a person regarding subjects in general, or topics that relate to the writer on a personal level it can be an informal account and might be rather unstructured. An amalgamation of facts, opinions and observations form the crux of a personal account. A personal essay is marginally similar to a narrative essay.

Example of A Personal Essay-

Describing about a visit to the botanical gardens is an example of a personal essay

2. A Formal Essay : In a formal essay A writer describes a certain event object behaviour or a person in a rather formal tone and indicates scientific reasoning and logical arguments to support the thesis statement of the essay. Findings and observations using the faculty of sensors and careful inference concluding with facts and convincing tone throughout exemplifies a formal essay.

Example of A Formal Essay-

The phenomenon of aurora borealis aka the Northern Lights and what causes it might be categorized as a formal essay.

Now that you have obtained information about the types of Descriptive Essays and what a Descriptive Essay actually describes, it is time to wrap your brains around not only how to write an essay, but to write a Descriptive Essay in particular and how to put it in perspective.

The Essay Structure and Format of a Descriptive Essay

If you’re wondering how to start a Descriptive Essay, it is advisable to start with drawing up an essay outline for you are about to prepare. Usually High schools follow a 5-paragraph essay structure but colleges provide students with ample freedom in writing and, in this case, imagination. No matter how long is an essay, the Descriptive Essay follows a consistent format.

Preparing an Essay Outline Includes the Following Steps:

  • Identify the issue you are about to describe and prepare a thesis statement that answers significant question about the issue

Start with Drafting An Informative Introduction

  • Introduction is the opening of the essay and should provide context and background for the descriptive essay topic.
  • The introduction should start with a hook or a catchy sentence that grabs the attention of the readers.
  • An essay introduction should contain not only background about the issue that is to be dealt with, but also answers the question about the concerned issue through a compact and definitive thesis statement.

Develop and Prepare A Substantial Body Paragraph

  • The body of your essay should include some major points that elucidate the characteristics and other significant factors about the subject; that could be a person, place, thing or event.
  • For example, if the topic of the essay is global warming and its impact on polar ice caps, the body could contain facts about how global warming effects the average temperature how ice caps are melting because of the same and what factors lead to such an event.
  •  It is necessary to include significant data that supports the argument or description of ascertain event in the body section like what used to be the average temperature of the world 50 years ago and how global warming as cause it to rise.

End with A Conclusive Departing Opinion

A conclusion of a Descriptive Essay should mend the significant points and descriptions together to form a concise and comprehensible idea in the reader’s mind. An essay conclusion should reaffirm the observations and determine and outcome of the same.

Review from A Distance

After you have structured the outline of a Descriptive Essay, it is time to form a fresh perspective by giving yourself space and some time. Try to divert your mind from the subject at hand and engage in a leisurely activity like taking a walk or watching a TV show. When you come back to your essay you may gain a fresh perspective and find additional angles to look at it and make appropriate changes. This is extremely important in case of a Descriptive Essay which can easily become monotonous and might not be able to grab the attention of the readers throughout

Fill in The Details with Precise Language and Creative Imagery

After reviewing the essay, fill out information gaps and tighten the structure and flow of words to give it a finished look. You may replace loose sentences with articulate vocabulary and also fact-check your essay while keeping the chronology of events and observations compact and free-flowing.

Formatting and Editing a Descriptive Essay

A Descriptive Essay might be perfectly structured and optimally articulated, but still would lack the completeness and accuracy if not formatted and edited precisely. Punctuations, spelling mistakes, error in logic, errors in sentence construction and extremities of wordiness and lack of coherent description capability might comprise the pitfalls of an essay format. Thus, it needs to be read and edited with extreme prejudice.


Now that you are familiar with the concept of how to write a descriptive essay, what are you waiting for? Get busy writing!

Is It Difficult to Describe That Particular Thing? We Are Ready to Help!

Sometimes it is difficult to describe a certain feeling or a certain stimulus that is caused by an event, person, thing, etc. Even though you can feel it perfectly yourself it is sometimes a bit complicated to describe it perfectly to a second person, that is, your readers. Fear not! Because the experts at EduHelpHub are efficient in doing just that! Not only preparing Descriptive Essays but also dissertations and research papers are inclusive of their forte. Incorporating proofreading and plagiarism-checking facilities for preparing an error-free and impeccable essay a paper, which is destined to shine in the academic-writing sphere along with earning you more than brownie points!

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