What Is A Descriptive Phrase

Descriptive Text Examples

In descriptive writing, the author does non simply tell the reader what was seen, felt, tested, smelled, or heard. Rather, the writer describes something from their own experience and, through careful option of words and phrasing, makes it seem real. Descriptive writing is brilliant, colorful, and detailed.

Bright red and orange sunrise Bright blood-red and orange sunrise

Good Descriptive Writing

Skillful descriptive writing creates an impression in the reader's heed of an issue, a place, a person, or a thing. The writing will be such that it will set a mood or describe something in such particular that if the reader saw it, they would recognize information technology.

To be practiced, descriptive writing has to be concrete, evocative and plausible.

To exist concrete, descriptive writing has to offer specifics the reader tin envision. Rather than "Her eyes were the color of blueish rocks" (Light bluish? Night blue? Marble? Slate?), try instead, "Her eyes sparkled like sapphires in the dark."
To exist evocative, descriptive writing has to unite the concrete image with phrasing that evokes the impression the writer wants the reader to accept. Consider "her optics shone like sapphires, warming my night" versus "the adult female'southward eyes had a low-cal like sapphires, vivid and hard." Each phrase uses the same concrete image, then employs evocative linguistic communication to create different impressions.
To exist plausible, the descriptive writer has to constrain the concrete, evocative image to arrange the reader's noesis and attention span. "Her eyes were brighter than the sapphires in the armrests of the Tipu Sultan's gilded throne, nonetheless sharper than the tulwars of his cruelest executioners" will have the reader checking their telephone halfway through. "Her eyes were sapphires, vivid and hard" creates the same effect in a fraction of the reading time. As ever in the craft of writing: when in doubt, write less.

Examples of Descriptive Writing

The post-obit sentences provide examples of the concreteness, evocativeness and plausibility of good descriptive writing.

Her final smiling to me wasn't a sunset. It was an eclipse, the final eclipse, apex dying away to darkness where at that place would be no dawn.
My Uber driver looked like a deflating airbag and sounded similar talk radio on echo.
The former human being was bent into a uppercase C, his caput leaning and then far forward that his bristles most touched his knobby knees.
The painting was a field of flowers, dejection and yellows atop deep green stems that seemed to call the viewer in to play.
My dog'southward fur felt like silk confronting my skin and her black coloring shone, arresting the sunlight and reflecting it back like a pure, nighttime mirror.
The sunset filled the sky with a deep red flame, setting the clouds afire.
The waves rolled forth the shore in a graceful, gentle rhythm, as if dancing with the country.
Winter hitting like a welterweight that year, a jabbing cold you lot thought you could stand up until the wind rose up and dropped you to the canvass.

Examples of Descriptive Text in Literature

Because descriptive text is so powerful, many examples of information technology can be plant in famous literature and poetry.

The High Window

The mystery novelist Raymond Chandler was one of American literature'southward masters of descriptive language. This sentence from The High Window strikes the perfect notes to embody its bailiwick:

"She had pewter-colored hair set up in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak, and large moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones."

Life in the Iron Mills

Detect the vivid description of smoke in this extract from Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Atomic number 26 Mills:

"The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles downward in black, slimy pools on the muddied streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellowish river--clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the business firm-front end, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by."

Jamaica Inn

In this excerpt from Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, detect the writer's choice of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Granite. Mizzling. Du Maurier'south choice of words allows the reader to almost feel the weather condition occurring on the folio.

"It was a cold gray day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing wind brought a granite heaven and a mizzling rain with it, and although it was now only a little after two o'clock in the afternoon the pallor of a wintertime evening seemed to have airtight upon the hills, cloaking them in mist."

The Eagle

In Alfred Tennyson'south "The Eagle," he conveys power and majesty in just a few lines:

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lone lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled body of water beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."

Descriptive Text in Songs

Descriptive text examples can as well be constitute in many songs, since songs are meant to capture your emotions and to invoke a feeling.

Through the Strings of Infinity

Some of the virtually brilliant and effective descriptive writing in music tin be constitute in rap. The evocation of alienation and the need to create in "Through the Strings of Infinity" by Canibus is truly poetic.

"I was built-in in an empty bounding main, My tears created oceans
Producing tsunami waves with emotions
Patrolling the open up seas of an unknown galaxy
I was floating in front end of who I am physically
Spiritually paralyzing listen trunk and soul
It gives me energy when I'm lyrically exercising
I gotta spit 'til the story is told in a dream past angelic bodies
Follow me babe"

Windowpane

The heavy metal band Opeth uses vivid descriptive writing to evoke loneliness in their vocal "Windowpane."

"Blank face in the windowpane
Fabricated articulate in seconds of light
Disappears and returns again
Counting hours, searching the dark"

Bare Space

In her hit vocal "Bare Space," Taylor Swift uses concrete, evocative descriptions to evoke two very different impressions.

Commencement:

"Blood-red lips, crystal skies
I can show you incredible things
Stolen kisses, pretty lies
Yous're the king, baby, I'k your queen"

Then:

"Screaming, crying, perfect tempest
I can make all the tables turn
Rose gardens filled with thorns
Go on you second guessing"

All in the Details

At present that you accept several dissimilar examples of descriptive text, you lot can try your mitt at writing a detailed, descriptive judgement, paragraph or short story of your ain. If you lot need help with powerful descriptions, try some figurative language to help to paint a picture and evoke emotions.

If y'all need inspiration, explore the authors linked higher up, or check out our quotes from poets like "H.D." Hilda Doolitle and Gerard Manley Hopkins, novelists like Angela Carter, or songwriters like Tori Amos and Tom Waits.