How to write a descriptive essay, write a descriptive essay.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

How to write a descriptive essay

Published on July 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield. Revised on October 15, 2020.

A descriptive essay gives a vivid, detailed description of something—generally a place or object, but possibly something more abstract like an emotion. This type of essay, like the narrative essay, is more creative than most academic writing.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language in an original and creative way, to convey to the reader a memorable image of whatever you are describing. They are commonly assigned as writing exercises at high school and in composition classes.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays, and similar writing skills can apply to both. You may also describe an object or a place with which you have a special connection. This could be your high school, a playground, or a toy which used to scare you as a kid. Fictional places also count!

Two Classic Approaches to the Descriptive Essay

1. Personal Essay

Here you need to describe an experience using your feelings and responses. This work can awake empathy in readers. It can also be vague and disorganized. If you want to write a good personal essay, you should try to focus only on those aspects that most fully express your experience. Do not shy away from vivid, evocative language in this type of assignment.

A few examples of personal essay topics might be:

• Describing the experience of swimming in the azure sea in summer
• Explaining your favourite movie and its impact on you
• Reflecting on your birthday and all the things that have shaped you in the past

2. Formal Description

This type of descriptive writing resembles an argumentative essay. Your main goal should be communicating a set of key points or describing something in detail—according to a clear structure. Rather than focusing on your own experience, you need to use specific categories of information to provide the fullest possible portrait of what you are describing. This approach can also be engaging, especially when the reader is more curious about the subject of the paper than the writer'

Topics for formal descriptions can include:

• A descriptive essay about climate change, politics, or historical events.
• A news story that provides a summary of an event or information about the place where it occurred.

For further information on how to write a thesis for a descriptive essay, check out the examples below. The title of a descriptive essay speaks for itself. If the narrative essay requires a plot building and some interactions between characters, this paper is all about a picture of a place, event, person or some other things. There can be no explicit storyline but lots of bright passages appealed to human feelings and senses.

Summarize all your thoughts in the conclusion by repeating the thesis statement and a strong final sentence. Don&rsquo

While editing appeals to changing the structure, sentences or some details in the paper'

In the case when you need to finish your paper quickly, change the look of the document, print your copy or divide the whole essay into several parts and edit each of them separately. Put your tasks into a strict order: the most important should come first.

Descriptive essays are full of fun if compare with such serious assignments as coursework or dissertation. Sit back and show one of the most exciting feelings you ever experienced in the paper. This process is quite creative and pleasant, so enjoy!

So many essays, so little differences. That is exactly what can be said about a descriptive essay if compare it with a narrative one. Those kinds of academic writing are usually confused by most of the freshmen.