DESCRIPTIONS

What is descriptive Writing?

To describe the characteristics of people, places and things. 9can be fictional or
factual)

Key features to descriptions:

● Written in present time

● Descriptive vocabulary
● Explains looks, characteristics and actions
WALT:
● Use descriptive language to describe a place
● Use the seven description bubbles in our planning for writing
● Identify and use specific adjectives which enhance our descriptions
● Use precise nouns and descriptive verbs
Let’s practice our describing
WALT: Use descriptive language to describe a place

Picture challenge
Planning
position
Click on the image beside to action
open up a planning template
for your description. Make
sure you: size
Topic texture
● make a copy
● Rename it using your
name
colour
● Organise it into your
shape
writing folder number
 Paragraph three
13/4/16

What are their actions?

What does your character do? Read this

example how does it describe the character?
Jasmine was a nervous young woman who tended to fidget when she
was under pressure. Even her clothes seemed to be on edge: they
shifted and slid and drooped and were never still. Tony, on the other Extra challenge
hand, was too sure of himself. But the more adamant he was about are YOU up for it?
anything, the more Jasmine fluttered. The more she fluttered, the more Experiment with
irritated Tony got, until he was barking orders and she was near tears. adding a piece of
figurative
Plan out your third and final paragraph using the language into
your writing.
description bubbles Metaphors,
Similes.
Paragraph 2
In your second paragraph, you will deal with behaviour - how a character speaks and
acts. What makes a person unique- a laugh, a way of talking, a way of moving.

Check out this list to help you plan your descriptive paragraph about your chosen
person's behaviour
 20.8.21
Getting our first paragraph started describing the physical features of our character

Check out this examples on the next two slides for some ideas to structure your
paragraph.The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (page 98):
"She's the twelve-year-old, the one who reminded me so of Prim in stature. Up close she looks about ten. She has bright, dark eyes and satiny
brown skin and stands tilted up on her toes with arms slightly extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound. It's
impossible not to think of a bird." A lot of the best character descriptions have action or a element of movement to them, so you not only see
the character, you see her in motion. (Doris Lessing has a good passage about this in one of her Martha Quest novels.) Here, we get Rue's
physical details, but we also have an indelible sense of how she moves.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (page 8):

"If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide.
He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of
trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins." The idea that Hagrid is "simply too big to be allowed" is fantastic —
it's the Dursleys' viewpoint seeping through, but also maximizes how big and unruly he seems. And his feet are like baby dolphins! It's comical
and totally lodges itself in your brain.
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (page 274):

"The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and
sorrowful. His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear
evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars." You can almost feel night gathering as you read that passage, from
the gray of evening to the appearance of the night sky, and the overall impression is one of great age despite the claim of
agelessness.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (page 30):

"… Face like the moon, pale and somehow wavering. I could get the gist of his features, but none of it stuck in my mind
beyond an impression of astonishing beauty. His long, long hair wafted around him like black smoke, its tendrils curling and
moving of their own volition. His cloak — or perhaps that was his hair too — shifted as if in an unfelt wind. I could not recall
him wearing a cloak before, on the balcony. The madness still lurked in his face, but it was a quieter madness now, not the
rabid-animal savagery of before. Something else — I could not bring myself to call it humanity — stirred underneath the
gleam." This is full of lovely imagery, including the hair and the cloak moving like smoke — and it leaves you with a really
sharp impression even as you don't ever get a clear impression of him, because Yeine doesn't either. It's like a painting that
sticks with you.