Describing a scene

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The following writing is beautifully crafted and evokes a scene in a very sensual way,
drawing on long, carefully-structured sentences, precise visual detail and many other
techniques.

Read the extract and accompanying annotations and use these to help you to write a
similarly sensual description of a scene – perhaps one depicted in a photograph or a
place that you know well and love.

The long, stretched out He had travelled some miles, his horse The use of commas
sentences in this passage breaks the flow of
slow the writing down and he, and he was feeling drowsy in sentences and introduces
and support an additional thoughts. This
atmosphere of drowsiness the hot sunshine, when the horse 'slows down' the
and calm. They also atmosphere of the scene
support the sense that stopped, lowered his head, and began and helps to emphasise
the breakfast smells Toad's drowsiness.
entrance Toad and draw to nibble the grass; and Toad, waking
him towards the camp.
How would the mood of up, just saved himself from falling off
the passage be different Despite the elongated
if it was written in a by an effort. He looked about him and sentences, vocabulary is
series of short sentences? precisely chosen and is
found he was on a wide common, not ornamented with
similes, metaphors or
dotted with patches of gorse and chains of adjectives. The
vocabulary is simple:
bramble as far as he could see. Near ‘nibble’, ‘dotted’,
‘patches’. Good writing
him stood a dingy gipsy caravan, and doesn’t have to be fussy
or fancy.
beside it a man was sitting on a bucket
Repetition of ‘and’ is a
distinctive feature of the turned upside down. A fire of sticks
writing. Teachers would
normally discourage was burning near by, and over the fire
‘and’. What is its effect
here? (See below for hung an iron pot, and out of that pot
more thoughts on this.) ‘bubblings and gurglings’
came forth bubblings and gurglings, and are both childish words
This sentence (‘Also whose directness and
smells ...’) is not a a vague suggestive steaminess. Also simplicity is emphasised
‘proper’ sentence: it has by their onomatopoeic
no main clause. Its smells—warm, rich, and varied smells— quality.
informality suggests
speech and thought that twined and twisted and wreathed The alliteration of
rather than writing, and ‘twined and twisted’
this reconfirms the themselves at last into one complete, gives the words a
relaxed mood of the sensual, hypnotic quality.
scene. voluptuous, perfect smell. Toad looked
the gipsy over carefully, wondering
Repetition of the word
‘and’ draws out and vaguely whether it would be easier to
slows down the scene
here. Repeating ‘and’ fight him or persuade him. So there he
makes for simplistic
writing and suggests that sat, and sniffed and sniffed, and looked
– despite Toad’s dilemma
– there is no sense of at the gipsy; and the gipsy sat and
threat or imminent
conflict: the situation is smoked, and looked at him.
as innocent and naïve as
the writing style.

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