Descriptive Paper Instructions:
-Compose a paper that clearly describes a particular person, object, or place.
-Remember that some of the best descriptions take the form of strategically selected narrative snippets or short anecdotes.
-Pull from your personal experience. Do not create a character or describe an imagined world.
-Pay special attention to the organization of your description. You might systematically address how your subject relates to each of the senses. You might spatially arrange your essay, forming your paragraphs in a way that provides the reader with a description that directs their attention in a panning motion from one side of the subject to the other. Or, depending on the subject matter, you might arrange your description in a chronological fashion, such as describing a location in each of the four seasons.
– You need not write toward any particular page count or word count. Instead, write toward your objective: a thorough description.
– Format the final draft in MLA style.
Sample Descriptive Writing:
To Linger and Dissolve
Summer ends on Labor Day weekend, unspectacular—and abandoned, mostly. This expiration into autumn comes slowly and steady with heralds to every sense. These signs play across the present mind, compounded by memories of their predecessors—subtle and ephemeral as epitaphs carved in the sand, waiting for the waves to wash them away.
Emerging from below the surface, the faint taste of lake water and tanning oil mingle together. It washes away, mostly, with a sip of soda—half flat and tepid from its exposed spot on the dock. Then that taste lingers, thin and mildly acidic.
The sun now touches the tops of the trees that line the western cove, and in a moment more the orb dips below the still branches. The last warmth that the sun can offer radiates through the leaves, a tired and languid light—dying, again. The water stands still, a mirror for an empty beach.
The dusk feels thick with the scent of white water lilies and the vapors of a sputtering two-stroke outboard—a pungent perfume, in vogue annually but soon to fall out of season. Breathing the scent feels perfectly right—an invisible signature of summer, far from the institutional air forcefully duct into corridors and classrooms. In another breath, the fragrance evaporates. It dissipates over the water, filtered through the imperceptible shift of evening air.
Two people talk on the edge of the dock. Into the void, they alone gently push sound: quiet words of quiet dread, resigned murmurs about days they know will come but days they know they cannot stop. He mentions a date. She rejoins with a time. Then the voices cease, and the speakers sit in silence.
The little boat shifts easily under the weight of just one body stepping aboard and sitting asymmetrically. The starter pulls easily, but the tiller’s throttle resists turning, slick in the palm from the same oil tasted earlier. A rag with a bit of water allows the hand to gain purchase, and the little outboard’s shaking intensifies to a smooth vibration.
In a minute more, the boat smoothly cuts through the shadow line, traversing into the darker water of the opposite shore, a bank cast in the vanguard of expanding dusk. Everyone has already gone to dress for dinner, leaving the dock vacant. Even the lawn chairs, unneeded by tomorrow, have been put away. The season turns. The summer lingers and then dissolves.
Thoughts, Revised & Refined 