DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH

SMASH!
BASIC NOTIONS
 Read the descriptions 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
Now read this and try to find
the strategies used by the
writer to create a vivid image of Mrs. Blaise, a strict housekeeper at the Savoy hotel.
The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off
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..

We could always hear her coming, because she rattled like a skeleton on the move.
This was on account of a huge bunch of keys that hung from her waist. She had a
voice as loud as a trombone when she was angry, and she was often angry. We lived in
constant fear of her. Mrs Blaise liked to be called “Madame”, but on the servants’
corridor at the top of the hotel where we all lived-bell-boys, chamber maids, kitchen
staff-we all called her Skullface, because she didn’t just rattle like a skeleton, she
looked a lot like one too. We did our very best to keep out of her way.

To her any misdemeanour, however minor, was a dreadful crime-slouching, untidy hair,
dirty fingernails. Yawning on duty was the worst crime of all. And that’s just what
Skullface had caught me doing just before the Countess arrived. She’d just come up
to me in the lobby, hissing menacingly as she passed, “ I saw that yawn, young
scallywag. And your cap is set too jaunty. You know how I hate a jaunty cap. Fix it.
Yawn again, and I’ll have your guts for garters.”

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

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.

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 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)

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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.

In an upmarket restaurant near Cambridge city centre one lunchtime during

December 1988, 12 graduates are sitting around a large table. To one
side, slumped in a wheelchair and being spoon-fed by a nurse, is a man in his
mid-forties.

His neat open-necked shirt and plain jacket contrast favourably with the
general scruffiness of the young men and women, and behind steel-rimmed
spectacles his clear blue eyes are alert. But he looks terribly frail, almost
withered away to nothing.

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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
at ti tude t oward 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:

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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
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
pressed collar of a white cotton shirt contrasted nicely with her tailored blue pinstriped jacket.
Her dark blue A-line skirt reached to just below her knees. Latoya finished her outfit with a
flattering pair of blue low-heeled pumps that matched her briefcase and purse. Latoya looked
as professional and confident as she felt.
Extract from Using Patterns to develop paragraphs
available on the internet @ Pearson Education, Inc.

 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.

 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?

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 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.

Next PARAGRAPPH THIS IS AN REQOHFLJNDVN,C Z,ZX.,AAJANX,MZ X,M ZX.CXZCMNZCN

What is a paragraph? ( This section has been adapted from Purdue owl)

A paragraph is a collection of related sentences dealing with a single topic. Learning to write good
paragraphs will help you as a writer stay on track during your drafting and revision stages. Good
paragraphing also greatly assists your readers in following a piece of writing. You can have fantastic
ideas, but if those ideas aren't presented in an organized fashion, you will lose your readers (and fail to
achieve your goals in writing).

The Basic Rule: Keep One Idea to One Paragraph

The basic rule of thumb with paragraphing is to keep one idea to one paragraph. If you begin to
transition into a new idea, it belongs in a new paragraph. There are some simple ways to tell if you are
on the same topic or a new one. You can have one idea and several bits of supporting evidence within
a single paragraph. You can also have several points in a single paragraph as long as they relate to the
overall topic of the paragraph. If the single points start to get long, then perhaps elaborating on each of
them and placing them in their own paragraphs is the route to go.

Elements of a Paragraph

To be as effective as possible, a paragraph should contain each of the following: Unity, Coherence, A
Topic Sentence, and Adequate Development. As you will see, all of these traits overlap. Using and
adapting them to your individual purposes will help you construct effective paragraphs.

Unity

The entire paragraph should concern itself with a single focus. If it begins with a one focus or major
point of discussion, it should not end with another or wander within different ideas.

Coherence

Coherence is the trait that makes the paragraph easily understandable to a reader. You can help create
coherence in your paragraphs by creating logical bridges and verbal bridges.

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Logical bridges

 The same idea of a topic is carried over from sentence to sentence

 Successive sentences can be constructed in parallel form

Verbal bridges

 Key words can be repeated in several sentences

 Synonymous words can be repeated in several sentences
 Pronouns can refer to nouns in previous sentences
 Transition words can be used to link ideas from different sentences

A topic sentence

A topic sentence is a sentence that indicates in a general way what idea or thesis the paragraph is going
to deal with. Although not all paragraphs have clear-cut topic sentences, and despite the fact that topic
sentences can occur anywhere in the paragraph (as the first sentence, the last sentence, or somewhere
in the middle), an easy way to make sure your reader understands the topic of the paragraph is to put
your topic sentence near the beginning of the paragraph. (This is a good general rule for less
experienced writers, although it is not the only way to do it). Regardless of whether you include an
explicit topic sentence or not, you should be able to easily summarize what the paragraph is about.

Adequate development

The topic (which is introduced by the topic sentence) should be discussed fully and adequately. Again,
this varies from paragraph to paragraph, depending on the author's purpose, but writers should beware
of paragraphs that only have two or three sentences. It's a pretty good bet that the paragraph is not fully
developed if it is that short.

Some methods to make sure your paragraph is well-developed:

 Use examples and illustrations

 Cite data (facts, statistics, evidence, details, and others)
 Examine testimony (what other people say such as quotes and paraphrases)
 Use an anecdote or story
 Define terms in the paragraph
 Compare and contrast
 Evaluate causes and reasons
 Examine effects and consequences
 Analyze the topic
 Describe the topic
 Offer a chronology of an event (time segments)

How do I know when to start a new paragraph?

You should start a new paragraph when:

 When you begin a new idea or point. New ideas should always start in new
paragraphs. If you have an extended idea that spans multiple paragraphs, each new
point within that idea should have its own paragraph.
 To contrast information or ideas. Separate paragraphs can serve to contrast sides in
a debate, different points in an argument, or any other difference.

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  When your readers need a pause. Breaks in paragraphs function as a short "break"
for your readers—adding these in will help your writing more readable. You would
create a break if the paragraph becomes too long or the material is complex.
 When you are ending your introduction or starting your conclusion. Your
introductory and concluding material should always be in a new paragraph. Many
introductions and conclusions have multiple paragraphs depending on their content,
length, and the writer's purpose.

Transitions and Signposts

Two very important elements of paragraphing are signposts and transitions. Signposts are internal aids
to assist readers; they usually consist of several sentences or a paragraph outlining what the article has
covered and where the article will be going.

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)

Transitions are usually one or several sentences that "transition" from one idea to the next. Transitions
can be used at the end of most paragraphs to help the paragraphs flow one into the next.

REMEMBER

When you write a paragraph, check.