University Language Skills

Description

Strictly speaking, there are two kinds of description: static and dynamic. Static descriptions serve to evoke a vivid image of a person or a place - to make the reader "see" a person, place or thing. Dynamic descriptions, more commonly known as narratives - or in technical writing as process descriptions - describe actions or processes as well as people, places and things. To illustrate the difference between the two, as well as way(s) in which the two can be combined, read the following passages and consider how each writer uses language to evoke images:

The child was closely followed by an elderly man of remarkably hard features and forbidding aspect; and so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for the body of a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly, and cunning; his mouth and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face, was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discolored fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog. His dress consisted of a large high-crowned hat, a worn dark suit, a pair of capavious shoes, and a dirty white neckerchief sufficiently limp and crumpled to disclose the greater portion of his wiry throat. Such hair as he had, was of a grizzled black, cut short and straight upon his temples, and hanging in a frowsy fringe about his ears. His hands, which were of a rough coarse grain, were very dirty; his fingernails were crooked, long, and yellow.

Charles Dickens
From The Old Curiosity Shop

In Elvira's garden only the cicadas were alive, their tireless neurasthenic rattle grinding away as if eternity belonged to them. Everything else had been baked or suffocated, paralysed or hypnotized by the heat: the rocks were like chunks of smouldering lava; the muscles of the trees inert and swollen, their twisted branches lolled leadenly on the dust-laden air, and the dry turf exuded a funereal incense of its own. Elvira felt she was in a graveyard. Tombs surrounded her. But graveyards and tombs were usually cool, mossy places. Here there was no coolness even among the shadows.

Harold Acton
From "Peonies and Ponies"

She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but a hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o'clock at night, dark, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the sudden single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy's weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance. Instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk and his legs flew up. The large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.

Langston Hughes
From "Thank You, M'am"

Ronald Reagan is a well-preserved, not young man. Close up, the painted face is webbed with delicate lines while the dyed hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes contrast oddly with the sagging muscle beneath the as yet unlifted chin, soft earnest of wattle soon-to-be. The effect, in repose, suggests the work of a skillful embalmer. Animated, the face is quite attractive and at a distance youthful; particularly engaging is the crooked smile full of large porcelain-capped teeth. The eyes are the only interesting feature: small, narrow, apparently dark, they glitter in the hot light, alert to every move, for this is enemy country - the liberal Eastern press who are so notoriously immune to that warm and folksy performance which Reagan quite deliberately projects over their heads to some legendary constituency at the far end of the tube, some shining Carverville where good Lewis Stone forever lectures Andy Hardy on the virtues of thrift and the wisdom of the contract system at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Gore Vidal

They found him under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy arroyo. He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, gathered the sheep and left them in the pen at the sheep camp before they returned to the cottonwood tree. Leon waited under the tree while Ken drove the truck through the deep sand to the edge of the arroyo. He squinted up at the sun and unzipped his jacket - it sure was hot for this time of year. But high and northwest the blue mountains were still in snow. Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he was bringing the red blanket.

Before they wrapped the old man, Leon took a piece of string out of his pocket and tied a small gray feather in the old man's long white hair. Ken gave him the paint. Across the brown wrinkled forehead he drew a streak of white and along the high cheekbones he drew a strip of blue paint. He paused and watched Ken throw pinches of corn meal and pollen into the wind that fluttered the small gray feather. Then Leon painted with yellow under the old man's broad nose, and finally, when he had painted green across the chin, he smiled.

Leslie Marmon Silko
From "The Man to Send Rain Clouds"

Descriptions evoke strong images that speak to the senses. Descriptive adjectives and adverbs contribute to the effectiveness of a description; so do carefully chosen verbs and nouns. But an effective narrative also has a controlling idea and a point of view - which reflects the writer's attitude or response to the subject of the description.

You may want to print this page to do the activity below. For each of the examples above, try to articulate the controlling idea, the author's attitude or point of view, and the descriptive details that contribute to the expression of the idea and point of view.

Ready for an activity designed to help you activate your descriptive vocabulary and write a description?  

  

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This page is maintained by Janet Sutherland
Last updated: 10 September 2005