DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH SMASH!

The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off
BASIC NOTIONS
 Read the description of this
character. Who is he? What
is the central idea?
 PURPOSE: to create a VIVID
mental image
 Sensory images
 HOW to structure a
description:
o SPACE
o TIME
its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the
floor.
A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face
was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane
of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make
out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the
hair.
The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so
that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down,
picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its
frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little.
He turned to look at them all.
"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been
an easy journey..

Some tips for starting. Read the following extracts and look at how these
celebrated authors have introduced their characters. Pay attention to some of
the strategies used.

In the past authors used a physical description and biographical summary to

introduce a character. You can use the strategy because of its simplicity but
readers nowadays may get impatient and find it less appealing than the
strategies given in the following section, Some tips from the experts

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by
poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear
sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to
Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to
gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial
fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible - or
from one of our elder poets - in a paragraph of today's newspaper. She was
usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her
sister Celia had more common sense.

Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch

Some tips from the experts

David Lodge, in The Art of Fiction, explains that all description in fiction is
highly selective; its basic rhetorical technique is synecdoche, the part standing
for the whole. The important thing is what details to pick out. You should
therefore have a very clear idea of who your character is so that their actions
and speech (and body language) convey the desired meaning.

Read the paragraphs below and describe the character in a line.

 What elements of the characters’ bodies are described? How?
Why?

"The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the
speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every
sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by
the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base,
while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed
by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide,
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was
inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair,
which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the
wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum
pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside.
The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, -
nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an
unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was, - all helped the
emphasis."
Dickens,
Hard Times

Agatha had a narrow, oblong face with angular cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her
slit-like eyes were a clouded hazel, and her thinly plucked eyebrows were shaped
into a deceivingly perfect arch that followed the slight curve of her eye. A long nose
hooked over continually pursed lips, which were painted a bright red in an
unsuccessful effort to mask their natural thinness. Bleached blonde hair, made thin
from too many years of hair dye, hung straight down into an angular cut at her jaw.
The sharp features of Agatha's face were merely a reflection of her entire body
structure, and everything—from her skeletal arms to her paper-thin waist—screamed
of unnatural skinniness. She walked in long strides, her shoulders back and face held
forward, wearing tall stiletto heels and a bold leopard-print mini-dress.
Unknown author

Start with a few lines by the character

A few minutes later, Sally herself arrived.

"Am I terribly late, Fritz darling?"
"Only half of an hour, I suppose," Fritz drawled, beaming with proprietary
pleasure. "May I introduce Mr Isherwood - Miss Bowles? Mr Isherwood is
commonly known as Chris."
"I'm not," I said. "Fritz is about the only person who's ever called me Chris in
my life."
Sally laughed. She was dressed in black silk, with a small cape over her
shoulders and a little cap like a page-boy's stuck jauntily on one side of her
head:
"Do you mind if I use your telephone, sweet?"
"Sure. Go right ahead." Fritz caught my eye. "Come into the other room, Chris.
I want to show you something."
He was evidently longing to hear my first impressions of Sally, his new
acquisition.
"For heaven's sake, don't leave me alone with this man!" she exclaimed.
"Or he'll seduce me down the telephone. He's most terribly passionate."

As she dialled the number, I noticed that her finger-nails were painted emerald
green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands,
which were much stained by cigarette-smoking and as dirty as a little girl's. She
was dark enough to be Fritz's sister. Her face was long and thin, powdered
dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to
match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows
"Hilloo," she cooed, pursing her brilliant cherry lips as though she were going
to kiss the mouthpiece: "1st dass Du, mein Liebling?" Her mouth opened in a
fatuously sweet smile. Fritz
and I sat watching her, like a performance at the theatre.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD Goodbye to
Berlin (1939)

CRITICISM / LITERARY ESSAYS

Now read the following extract and notice how literary critic David Lodge
describes Sally. How do the texts vary?

Originally the subject of one of the lightly fictionalized stories and sketches that make
up Goodbye to Berlin, Sally Bowles has enjoyed a remarkably long life in the public
imagination of our time, thanks to the successful adaption of Isherwood's text first as
a stage play and film (/ Am A Camera), then as a stage and film musical (Cabaret).
At first glance, it's hard to understand why she should have achieved this almost
mythical status. She is not particularly beautiful, not particularly intelligent, and not
particularly gifted as an artiste. She is vain, feckless, and mercenary in her sexual
relationships. But she retains an endearing air of innocence and vulnerability in spite
of it all, and there is something irresistibly comic about the gap between her
pretensions and the facts of her life. Her story gains enormously in interest and
significance from being set in Weimar Berlin, just before the Nazi takeover. Dreaming
vainly of fame and riches in seedy lodging houses, bouncing from one louche
protector to another, flattering, exploiting and lying, in the most transparent fashion,
she is an emblem of the self-deception and folly of that doomed society.

Decide on a central idea ( Describe character using a couple of phrases and show
your readers)
Choose elements of physical description that show who the character is (a wall
of a forehead for a strict teacher, green nails, a colour unfortunately chosen,
for a woman whose choices have been unfortunate, or the clown make-up,
indicative of pretended sophistication.

Describe the character’s body language and actions as a hint to his/her

personality
The tall, bespectacled, grey-haired man standing at the edge of the throng in
the main room of the gallery, stooping very close to the young woman in the
red silk blouse, his head lowered and angled away from her face, nodding
sagely and emitting a phatic murmur from time to time, is not as you may
think an off-duty priest whom she has persuaded to hear her confession in the
midst of the party, or a psychiatrist conned into giving her a free
consultation;…

Describe setting in time or place as a means to establish either contrast or to

highlight some of the character’s traits.

PARAGRAPH A
Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark
was fumbling along. Ralph saw it first, and watched till
the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way.
Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear
sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all
shadow but mostly clothing. The creature was a party
of boys, marching approximately in step in two
parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric
clothing. Shorts, shirts, and different garments they
carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square
black cap with a silver badge on it. Their bodies, from
throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which
bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each
neck was finished off with a ham-bone frill. The heat
of the tropics, the descent, the search for food, and
now this sweaty march along the blazing beach had
given them the complexions of newly washed plums.
The boy who controlled them was dressed in the
same way though his cap badge was golden. When
his party was about ten yards from the platform he
shouted an order and they halted, gasping, sweating,
swaying in the fierce light. The boy himself came
forward, vaulted on to the platform with his cloak
flying, and peered into what to him was almost
complete darkness.
Topic Sentence
In a descriptive paragraph, the
topic sentence should “overview”
the scene or summarize the
content of the paragraph. In doing
so it should help establish the
author’s tone. The tone of a
literary work is the writer’s
attitude toward his or her
subject, characters, or audience.
The tone is crucial in establishing a
paragraph’s mood.
Mood
Your descriptive paragraph will have
a greater impact if it evokes a
particular mood rather than just
describe details that aren’t unified.
Mood is the feeling created in the
reader by a literary work or
passage. Perhaps you want to
inspire fear or horror. Maybe you
intend to communicate a happy light-
hearted feeling or a sad, nostalgic
one.
Sensory Details
What vivid words help to create a
picture of the boy’s darkness and to
express the author’s tone?

 Descriptive transition words signal that the details follow a logical order
based on one or more of the following elements:
1. The arrangement in space of a person, place, object, or scene
2. The starting point from which the writer chooses to begin the
description
3. The time frame as relevant to the description
 Getting a mental picture of the person, place, object, scene, or situation
helps a writer discover his or her point about the subject being described.
 COHESION: There are some typical transition words that help writers put
the paragraph together. Some of those transition words include:

For example
Hard and cruel and bitter was the land that met his gaze. Before his feet the highest
ridge of Ephel Dúath fell steeply in great cliffs down into a dark trough, on the
further side of which there rose another ridge, much lower, its edge notched and
jagged with crags like fangs that stood out black against the red light behind them:
it was grim Morgai, the inner ring of the fences on the land. Far beyond it, but
almost straight ahead, across a wide lake of darkness dotted with tiny fires, there
was a great burning glow, and from it rose in huge columns a swirling smoke, dusky
red at the roots, black above where it merged into the billowing canopy that roofed
in all the accursed land.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

 But there are others that imply a certain spatial organization. For example:

Dressed to Impress

 Read the following details taken from Maya Angelou’s autobiography I

Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Rewrite the paragraph, organizing the
details by spatial order.

__________And when they put their hands on their hips in a show of jauntiness,
the palms slipped the thighs as if the pants were waxed.
___________When they tried to smile to carry off their tiredness as if it was
nothing, the body did nothing to help the mind’s attempt at disguise.
___________In the store the men’s faces were the most painful to watch, but I
seemed to have no choice.
____________Their shoulders drooped even as they laughed.

 Other cohesive devices unify the text. Find them.

Dressed to Impress
Latoya Bond had been job hunting for months; finally, she landed an interview with a company
that she was eager to join. Latoya felt confident that she was well qualified for the position.
After all, she was one of the three final candidates chosen from over 100 applications, yet she
also knew the importance of making a good impression. From head to toe, Latoya dressed to
appear professional and confident. Latoya gathered her hard-to-manage curls into a neat and
stylish twist. To complement her no-nonsense hairstyle, Latoya used makeup sparingly but
effectively. A little black mascara on her lashes, a touch of blush across her cheeks, and bit of
tinted lip balm brought attention to her interested eyes and her earnest smile. The neatly
 REMEMBER!!! COHESION:
“the continuity that exists between one part of the text and another” (Halliday
and Hasan 1976: 299).
“Cohesive relations are relations between two or more elements in a text that
are independent of the structure “ (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 4)

Look at the following paragraph and answer:

o What is the point or impression the narrator is trying to make?
o How do paragraphs A & B compare?
o What imagery is used in paragraph B?
o What about spatial and temporal organization? Are there
references to both? Which one would you say is the most
relevant?
o Can you find any transition words? If so, how are they used? Do
they follow a top-bottom or left-right order? Why is this so?
o What cohesive devices can you find?

PARAGRAPH B
He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the
prominent tummy of childhood and not yet old enough for adolescence to
have made him awkward. You could see now that he might make a boxer, as
far as width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there was a mildness about
his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil. He patted the palm trunk softly,
and, forced at last to believe in the reality of the island laughed delightedly
again and stood on his head. He turned neatly on to his feet, jumped down to
the beach, knelt and swept a double armful of sand into a pile against his
chest. Then he sat back and looked at the water with bright, excited eyes.