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Writing is usually an activity that many people undertake, either for their profession or their studies, and also as a hobby and pastime. It is an activity that can be carried out to achieve an end, or be itself an objective. People can undertake various writing exercises: narrative, essays and other writings of the most varied nature. One of the most common types of writing is descriptive.
A descriptive paragraph is one that provides a large amount and variety of detail about a specific topic, area, character, or situation. This type of paragraph is very common in narrative works, as it helps the reader to imagine the context in which the characters unfold or it can also describe a series of complex feelings of someone.
In the narrative paragraph, adjectives and adverbs will abound to help specify the events and objects that are described. The five senses will be involved in the creation of this type of paragraph to create a complete mental image of what is chosen.
The topic
The first step to writing a good descriptive paragraph is identifying the topic. When the writing is done within the academic field, it is common for the topic to be already assigned by the professor or instructor in charge. In that case we can proceed to the next step.
If a topic has not been chosen, brainstorming can be done to help decide the most appropriate one. One should choose something that is deeply known and, if not, the unknown topic should be extensively investigated. Our knowledge of the subject will determine the richness of the descriptive paragraph that is built. Personal or family topics can be broadly described and are a good choice to start training with this type of paragraph. Everyday objects and places can take on a new life if we write about them, since we will be forced to consider them with the five senses so that they acquire different dimensions and meanings.
When choosing the topic of the paragraph you should consider its objective. If the objective of this writing exercise is to put literary and writing knowledge into practice, the agenda is wide. If the descriptive paragraph is part of a larger project, as is often the case, make sure the topic doesn’t stray from the line you’re working on.
Explore the chosen theme
In order to achieve a rich description that can create a valuable mental image, the subject must be studied in detail. It is helpful to stand in front of a blank sheet of paper, write the title of the topic you want to describe in the center of the page, and start jotting down anything that comes to mind that may be related to or part of the topic. It’s time to engage the senses: What does the object look, sound, smell, taste and feel like? What are your own memories or associations with the object?
Sensations and memories can be part of that paragraph under construction. If the topic chosen were a visit to the dentist, the list of details might include the smell of the office, the brightness of the examination lights, the sensation of pain or numbness in the mouth under anesthesia, the sound of the equipment electric dentist. In short, all the aspects that allow the reader to be located in time and space within the chosen scenario.
In this exploration phase, you can draft a paragraph sketch that will be later edited. There is no need to worry about achieving a perfect paragraph in this step. The best writing advice directs us to write as much as we can and then at a later stage edit, never doing it at the same time as the first writing. That is a moment that we must dedicate to the creative impulse.
organize information
Once you have a broad list of details you can decide how to organize them within the paragraph. First, considering the objective of the description, you must order the elements and make decisions about what to include and what to exclude from the final paragraph. What message, if any, do you want the description to convey? What details best convey that message?
Within each paragraph we can create, in various ways, the following structure:
1.- A sentence that identifies the topic and explains its meaning.
2.- One or several supporting sentences that describe the topic by adding the details, sensations and other elements that have been chosen for the description.
3.- A final or closing sentence that takes up the meaning of the topic.
This type of organization will be best used depending on the central theme that frames the paragraph. For example, if it were a descriptive paragraph within a great novel, the style of narration will greatly influence the organization of the ideas in the paragraph. If, on the contrary, the paragraph is part of a theoretical text, it will be convenient to use the order suggested above so that readers can follow the content of the paragraph and understand it easily.
Paragraph editing
This is undoubtedly one of the most important steps in writing. All text should be considered incomplete if it has not been reviewed and edited. The best editor is always different from the writer, because bringing new eyes to the process will help to see those details that may not be very obvious to the author. If there is no person available who can act as editor, the recommendation is to let the text rest for a few days if possible and then reread it aloud. This verification can help us to identify complicated or inappropriate sentences, transcription and spelling errors, etc., and finally allows us to know if the initial objective of the paragraph has been fulfilled or not.
Examples of Descriptive Paragraphs
In this first fragment of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude , by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, we can observe the beginning of the detailed description of the town of Macondo, inserted in turn in a memory of Colonel Aureliano Buendía.
“Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Macondo was then a village of twenty mud and cane houses built on the banks of a river with clear waters that rushed through a bed of polished stones, white and huge as prehistoric eggs.
In the following example, the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga describes the state of Alicia, the main character of his story El almohadón de plumas . In the story, Alicia is seriously ill and the cause of her condition is unknown.
“During the day her illness did not progress, but every morning she woke up livid, almost syncope. It seemed that only at night did she leave her life in new wings of blood. When she woke up, she always had the sensation of being collapsed in bed with a million kilos on top of her.”
References
Olivares, C. (1982). The paragraph: structure and function. Philological research notebooks. Available at: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/68928.pdf
Vera, A. (2012) The paragraph as a discursive unit. ELUA. Linguistics Studies. Available at: http://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/28733
