WHAT IS A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY?

The core feature of a descriptive essay is quite simply that it describes something. When your professor assigns you to write a descriptive essay, they are testing your ability to write in a coherent manner and your ability to organize your thoughts as it pertains to describing something. In writing a descriptive essay, you might be asked to describe yourself, something that is around you or something imaginary. Regardless, the focus on structure description is the main characteristic of a descriptive essay and is something that you must remain concentrated on as you write your descriptive essay. Writing a descriptive essay requires that you understand that your main task is to ensure that your reader is capable of visualizing or imagining what you are writing about. This means that you can use your five senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch to describe whatever you have chosen to focus writing your descriptive essay on. A vivid description is one of the core goals of writing a descriptive essay and the more perspectives of description that you provide when writing your descriptive essay, the better your grade will be, as long as you maintain appropriate organization of your descriptive essay.

For most descriptive essays, your professor will assign you a topic to write about so that it makes it easier for them to grade descriptive essays in comparison to each other. At other times, you will be allowed to choose your topic when you write a descriptive essay. If this is the case, choose an item, experience or other phenomenon that you are familiar with when writing your descriptive essay. This will make it much easier to write a descriptive essay as you will be able to describe something that you know and/or care about. Because writing a descriptive essay on something you are not familiar with makes it more difficult to build a strong perspective, always opt to write a descriptive essay on a topic or phenomenon that is familiar to you when this is possible. Ultimately, the descriptive essay is a very simple form of essay writing. What makes writing a descriptive essay challenging is the fact your are actually moving away from the traditional essay structure that you have been taught to write an essay. Because a descriptive essay is less formal and does not make use of sources, you may believe that you are not writing your descriptive essay properly. Remember! The most important elements of writing a descriptive essay are ensuring that you are putting forth a thesis or perspective, that you are providing a vivid description, and that your description is well organized.