descriptive writing assignment high school

Descriptive Essay Writing

Descriptive Essay Examples

Amazing Descriptive Essay Examples for Your Help

Published on: Jun 21, 2023

Last updated on: Jul 23, 2024

Descriptive Essay Example 5 Paragraph

5 paragraphs essay writing format is the most common method of composing an essay. This format has 5 paragraphs in total. The sequence of the paragraphs is as follows;

Introduction
Body Paragraph 1
Body Paragraph 2
Body Paragraph 3
Conclusion

Following is an example of a descriptive essay written using the famous 5 paragraph method.

5 Paragraph Descriptive Essay

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Descriptive Essay Example About A Person

Descriptive essays are the best option when it comes to describing and writing about a person. A descriptive essay is written using the five human senses. It helps in creating a vivid image in the readerâs mind and understanding what the writer is trying to convey.

Here is one of the best descriptive essay examples about a person. Read it thoroughly and try to understand how a good descriptive essay is written on someoneâs personality.

Descriptive Essay Example About a Person

Descriptive Essay Example About A Place

If you have visited a good holiday spot or any other place and want to let your friends know about it. A descriptive essay can help you explain every detail and moment you had at that place.

Here is one of the good descriptive essay examples about a place. Use it as a sample and learn how you can write such an essay.

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Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 6

Descriptive essays are frequently assigned to school students. This type of essay helps the students enhance their writing skills and helps them see things in a more analytical way.

If you are a 6 grader and looking for a good descriptive essay example, you are in the right place.

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 7

Here is one of the best descriptive essay examples for grade 7.

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 8

If you are looking for some amazing descriptive essay examples for grade 8, you have already found one. Look at the given example and see what a well-written descriptive essay looks like.

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 10

Essay writing is an inevitable part of a student's academic life . No matter your grade, you will get to write some sort of essay at least once.

Here is an example of a descriptive essay writing for grade10. If you are also a student of this grade, this example might help you to complete your assignment.

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 12

If you are a senior student and looking for some essay examples, you are exactly where you should be.

Use the below-mentioned example and learn how to write a good essay according to the instructions given to you.

Descriptive Essay Example College

Descriptive essays are a great way to teach students how they can become better writers. Writing a descriptive essay encourages them to see the world more analytically.

Below is an example that will help you and make your writing process easy.

College Descriptive Essay Example

Descriptive Essay Example for University

Descriptive essays are assigned to students at all academic levels. University students are also assigned descriptive essay writing assignments. As they are students of higher educational levels, they are often given a bit of difficult and more descriptive topics.

See the example below and know what a descriptive essay at the university level looks like.

Short Descriptive Essay Example

Every time a descriptive essay isn't written in detail. It depends on the topic of how long the essay will be.

For instance, look at one of the short descriptive essay examples given below. See how the writer has conveyed the concept in a composed way.

Objective Descriptive Essay Example

When writing an objective description essay, you focus on describing the object without conveying your emotions, feelings, or personal reactions. The writer uses sight, sound, or touch for readers' minds to bring life into pictures that were painted by words.

Here is an example that you can use for your help.

Narrative and Descriptive Essay Example

A narrative descriptive essay can be a great way to share your experiences with others. It is a story that teaches a lesson you have learned. The following is an example of a perfect narrative descriptive essay to help you get started.

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How to Start a Descriptive Essay? - Example

If you don't know how to start your descriptive essay, check this example and create a perfect one.

How to Start a Descriptive Essay - Example

Subjective Descriptive Essay Example

It is a common concept that a descriptive essay revolves around one subject. Be it a place, person, event, or any other object you can think of.

Following is one of the subjective descriptive, easy examples. Use it as a guide to writing an effective descriptive essay yourself.

Writing a descriptive essay is a time-consuming yet tricky task. It needs some very strong writing, analytical, and critical thinking skills. Also, this is a type of essay that a student can not avoid and bypass.

But if you think wisely, work smart, and stay calm, you can get over it easily. Learn how to write a descriptive essay from a short guide given below.

How to Write a Descriptive Essay?

A writer writes a descriptive essay from their knowledge and imaginative mind. In this essay, the writer describes what he has seen or experienced, or ever heard from someone. For a descriptive essay, it is important to stay focused on one point. Also, the writer should use figurative language so that the reader can imagine the situation in mind.

The following are some very basic yet important steps that can help you write an amazing descriptive essay easily.

Choose a Topic

For a descriptive essay, you must choose a vast topic to allow you to express yourself freely. Also, make sure that the topic you choose is not overdone. An overdone will not grab the attention of your intended audience. Check out our descriptive essay topics blog for a variety of intriguing topic suggestions.

Create a Strong Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is the essence of any academic writing. When you select the descriptive essay topic, then you create a strong thesis statement for your essay.

A thesis statement is a sentence or two that explains the whole idea of your essay to the reader. It is stated in the introductory paragraph of the essay. The word choice for creating the thesis statement must be very expressive, composed, and meaningful. Also, use vivid language for the thesis statement.

Collect the Necessary Information

Once you have created the thesis statement and are done writing your essay introduction . Now, it's time to move toward the body paragraphs.

Collect all necessary information related to your topic. You would be adding this information to your essay to support your thesis statement. Make sure that you collect information from authentic sources.

To enhance your essay, make use of some adjectives and adverbs. To make your descriptive essay more vivid, try to incorporate sensory details like touch, taste, sight, and smell.

Create a Descriptive Essay Outline

An outline is yet another necessary element of your college essay. By reading the descriptive essay outline , the reader feels a sense of logic and a guide for the essay.

In the outline, you need to write an introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs and end up with a formal conclusion.

Proofreading is a simple procedure in which the writer revises the written essay. This is done in order to rectify the document for any kind of spelling or grammatical mistakes. Thus, proofreading makes high-quality content and gives a professional touch to it.

You might be uncertain about writing a good enough descriptive essay and impress your teacher. However, it is very common, so you do not need to stress out.

Hit us up at CollegeEssay.org and get an essay written by our professional descriptive essay writers. Our essay writing service for students aims to help clients in every way possible and ease their stress. Get in touch with our customer support team, and they will take care of all your queries related to your writing.

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Barbara is a highly educated and qualified author with a Ph.D. in public health from an Ivy League university. She has spent a significant amount of time working in the medical field, conducting a thorough study on a variety of health issues. Her work has been published in several major publications.

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How to write a descriptive essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Descriptive Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

A descriptive essay gives a vivid, detailed description of something—generally a place or object, but possibly something more abstract like an emotion. This type of essay , like the narrative essay , is more creative than most academic writing .

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Descriptive essay topics, tips for writing descriptively, descriptive essay example, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about descriptive essays.

When you are assigned a descriptive essay, you’ll normally be given a specific prompt or choice of prompts. They will often ask you to describe something from your own experience.

Describe a place you love to spend time in.
Describe an object that has sentimental value for you.

You might also be asked to describe something outside your own experience, in which case you’ll have to use your imagination.

Describe the experience of a soldier in the trenches of World War I.
Describe what it might be like to live on another planet.

Sometimes you’ll be asked to describe something more abstract, like an emotion.

If you’re not given a specific prompt, try to think of something you feel confident describing in detail. Think of objects and places you know well, that provoke specific feelings or sensations, and that you can describe in an interesting way.

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The key to writing an effective descriptive essay is to find ways of bringing your subject to life for the reader. You’re not limited to providing a literal description as you would be in more formal essay types.

Make use of figurative language, sensory details, and strong word choices to create a memorable description.

Use figurative language

Figurative language consists of devices like metaphor and simile that use words in non-literal ways to create a memorable effect. This is essential in a descriptive essay; it’s what gives your writing its creative edge and makes your description unique.

Take the following description of a park.

This tells us something about the place, but it’s a bit too literal and not likely to be memorable.

If we want to make the description more likely to stick in the reader’s mind, we can use some figurative language.

Here we have used a simile to compare the park to a face and the trees to facial hair. This is memorable because it’s not what the reader expects; it makes them look at the park from a different angle.

You don’t have to fill every sentence with figurative language, but using these devices in an original way at various points throughout your essay will keep the reader engaged and convey your unique perspective on your subject.

Use your senses

Another key aspect of descriptive writing is the use of sensory details. This means referring not only to what something looks like, but also to smell, sound, touch, and taste.

Obviously not all senses will apply to every subject, but it’s always a good idea to explore what’s interesting about your subject beyond just what it looks like.

Even when your subject is more abstract, you might find a way to incorporate the senses more metaphorically, as in this descriptive essay about fear.

Choose the right words

Writing descriptively involves choosing your words carefully. The use of effective adjectives is important, but so is your choice of adverbs , verbs , and even nouns.

It’s easy to end up using clichéd phrases—“cold as ice,” “free as a bird”—but try to reflect further and make more precise, original word choices. Clichés provide conventional ways of describing things, but they don’t tell the reader anything about your unique perspective on what you’re describing.

Try looking over your sentences to find places where a different word would convey your impression more precisely or vividly. Using a thesaurus can help you find alternative word choices.

My cat runs across the garden quickly and jumps onto the fence to watch it from above.
My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above.

However, exercise care in your choices; don’t just look for the most impressive-looking synonym you can find for every word. Overuse of a thesaurus can result in ridiculous sentences like this one:

My feline perambulates the allotment proficiently and capers atop the palisade to regard it from aloft.

An example of a short descriptive essay, written in response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how a descriptive essay works.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

If you’re not given a specific prompt for your descriptive essay , think about places and objects you know well, that you can think of interesting ways to describe, or that have strong personal significance for you.

The best kind of object for a descriptive essay is one specific enough that you can describe its particular features in detail—don’t choose something too vague or general.

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12 Creative Descriptive Essay Prompts

by Suzanne Davis | Dec 12, 2019 | Writing Essays and Papers , Writing Prompts | 13 comments

“Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.” –Stephen King

Stephen King wrote about description in stories. But the same advice is correct for descriptive essays. Get your readers engaged by making them sense and connect with everything you’ve written in your essay. How can you do that? Begin with descriptive essay prompts that inspire you to write more.

Then add important details and characteristics or features about the person, place, object, or experience in your essay. The more detail and elements you add to a descriptive essay, the better it will be.

So, check out these descriptive writing topics and find the one that will work best for you.

How to Select a Descriptive Essay Prompt

Before you select a descriptive essay topic, see if you can show and not tell your readers about the characteristics, actions, and emotions in that essay.

Maybe you’ve heard writers say, “ Show Don’t Tell .” This motto is an approach some writers use to make their writing more descriptive. The word “show” means to portray or illustrate feelings and actions. And “tell” is when a writer says what the emotions and actions are.

For example, “ The black poodle snarled and growled.” (showing) vs. “The black poodle was angry and fierce.” (telling)

In the example above, the first sentence shows that the black poodle was angry because it snarled and growled. The second sentence says or tells us that the dog was angry and fierce.

Use the “ Show Don’t Tell” approach in your descriptive essay by asking these questions about the 5 senses:

What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you touch?
What did you smell?
What did you taste?

You probably won’t have answers to all these questions. (Or at least if you write about a mountain, I hope you can’t describe how tastes.) But write “Show Don’t Tell ” content wherever you can in your essay.

The 12 descriptive essay prompts here, give you the freedom to develop your content in different ways, and with a lot of sensory details. They are divided into 4 categories: person, place, object, and experience. Each type has 3 descriptive essay writing ideas. For each writing prompt, brainstorm how you can develop that essay.

Descriptive WritingTopics About a Person

# 1 describe the strangest person you ever met.

Strange people are easy to remember, and if you remember a different, odd, or unique person, you’ll have a lot of information you can write on. Before you choose this topic, brainstorm a few ideas about this person.

Questions to develop this essay topic : What seemed strange about this person? What characteristics did he/she possess? How did you feel about this person?

# 2 Describe a person you envied .

Envy or jealousy is a powerful emotion. When you focus on a person you were jealous of, there are reasons and characteristics for why you felt that way.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What traits or characteristics did this person have? How did that person look? How did this person act? What made you envy him/her?

# 3 Describe an inspiring friend or family member.

We remember people who inspire us. And people love to read about inspiring individuals. If you describe an inspiring person, think about the impact that a person made on you.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What did this person do that was inspiring? How did that person act toward others?

Descriptive Writing Topics About a Place

# 4 describe a spooky or haunted place ..

If you describe a scary place, include a lot of sensory details. Spooky and haunted places are memorable.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What did this place look like? Where was it located? What did you see, hear, smell, or feel at this place? Did you find someone or something that scared you? Why is this place, spooky?

# 5 Describe a place you loved as a child.

People love to know things about another person’s childhood. A great way to show who you are is to describe a place that was important to you. If you select this writing topic, make sure you remember this place well.

Questions to develop this essay topic : How did this place look? What did you do at this place? Was anyone else at this there? How did you feel about the area?

# 6 Describe a beautiful location in nature.

You could describe a mountain, body of water, campground, desert, etc. Or any other place that is outdoors and part of nature.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What did this place look like? How did you feel when you were there? Did you hear, smell, taste, or touch anything at the location? Was there anyone else with you? What did you do at this place?

Descriptive WritingTopics About an Object

# 7 Describe a lucky object.

It can be any lucky object, a good luck charm, an heirloom object, etc. Select something you believe brings you good luck.

Q uestions to develop this essay topic: What are the characteristics of this object? How is it used? What makes this a lucky object?

# 8 Describe a piece of art.

It can be a photograph, painting, sculpture, etc. There are a lot of sensory details you can include in a descriptive essay about a piece of art.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What does this work of art look? Can you touch it? If so, how does it feel? What are the emotions you have when you see this sculpture, painting, photograph, etc.?

# 9 Describe an object used in your favorite sport or hobby.

If you have a favorite sport or hobby, describe an object that is relevant to that sport. For example, if you play tennis, describe a tennis racket. Or, if you collect coins, describe a unique coin from your collection.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What are the characteristics or features of this object? How is it used? What is significant about this object? What are some sensory details you can add?

Descriptive Essay Topics About an Experience

# 10 describe the first time you drove a car or rode a bicycle..

First-time experiences are emotional and significant to people. If you haven’t driven a car or ridden a bicycle, write about another first-time experience.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What did you see, hear, touch, smell, or taste during this experience? What did you do? Were others involved? If so, what did they do? How did you feel during this experience? How do you feel about it now?

# 11 Describe a hike or special walk you took .

Do you recall a hike you took or a walk on a trail, path, or street? If so, describe that memory.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What was the place you were at like? What did you hear, see, smell, taste, or touch during this experience? What did you do? What did anyone else do?

# 12 Describe a happy memory.

Write about a happy experience you can remember clearly. This topic involves remembering what occurred and how you felt during that experience.

Questions to develop this essay topic: What made this experience happy? What happened? Who else was there? Can you describe them?

Writing a Descriptive Essay

The key to writing a descriptive essay is to show or portray to a reader the significant elements of a person, place, object, or experience. So, select an essay topic that you connect with, and develop it with sensory details. If you do this, you’ll achieve what Stephen King does in his writing and “make the reader a sensory participant.” When you do that, your readers will want to keep reading until the end.

Make them wish your essay continued so that they could read even more!

So which descriptive essay prompt inspires you? And if you want more creative writing prompts, check out my blog post, “13 Thought-Provoking Personal Narrative Prompts” https://www.academicwritingsuccess.com/13-thought-provoking-personal-narrative-prompts/.

Suzanne,I enjoy reading your articles. Loved your sense of humour ‘(Or at least if you write about a mountain, I hope you can’t describe how tastes.)’. I tried to share this article in my Pinterest account, but somehow something went wrong and it did not allow me to do it.

I’m glad you enjoyed the article. I do try to be funny whenever I can. I’m having a problem right now with my article pinning. I’m working on it.

Loved the “show, not tell” explanation. It really made sense. I’m a visual learner, so I really liked the visual for the 12 descriptive essay prompts in both written form and as a image. You gave me a lot of good ideas for starting a descriptive essay!

Terri, I’m glad you liked my infographic for the post. I love designing visual images for articles. Let me know if you use one of the descriptive essay prompts. I’d love to know how it worked for you.

Excellent. I like the sensory detail questions. It brings the writing to a new level.

Raven, thank you. Sensory details are great for developing writing. They really help writers of all ages.

Nice article, Suzanne. I love using prompts with my students. I might be nervous of the prompt “Describe the strangest person you ever met.” For many of my students I would have the starring role in that one! 🙂 Using the basic five senses to help students expand upon their writing is also very good. So many students write one sentence and then get stuck. Prompting questions can really help them broaden their thoughts.

Ron, thank you. I might be nervous about the “strangest person you ever met” prompt too. But, I’m hoping there are other strange people students could write about too!

Love these! In this generation of “just getting the point across”, it is so difficult to get some students to be descriptive in their writing.It would be hard for any student to not be descriptive using these prompts. When working on writing with students, I always use the five senses to show them how their writing will be more interesting to any reader when it is descriptive. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you,Randy. Descriptive writing is a challenge, but finding a good descriptive writing prompt and using the 5 senses makes a huge difference.

Also, that is a great quote by Stephen King!

Hi Suzanne! Excellent post! I love the creative prompts. They’re helpful, whether one is writing fiction or non-fiction.

You have a great site. Will stop by again. I know I’ll learn lots here.

P.S. Thanks for stopping by my site. I appreciate your feedback.

Hi Nadine, Thanks so much. I am glad you stopped by and checked out my post on descriptive writing prompts. I love prompts because they can make you think about writing in different ways. And sometimes I just need help getting started. I enjoyed your post on writing spaces. I’ll be visiting your site again.

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What is a descriptive essay?

The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe something—object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation, etc. This genre encourages the student’s ability to create a written account of a particular experience. What is more, this genre allows for a great deal of artistic freedom (the goal of which is to paint an image that is vivid and moving in the mind of the reader).

One might benefit from keeping in mind this simple maxim: If the reader is unable to clearly form an impression of the thing that you are describing, try, try again!

Here are some guidelines for writing a descriptive essay.

Take time to brainstorm

If your instructor asks you to describe your favorite food, make sure that you jot down some ideas before you begin describing it. For instance, if you choose pizza, you might start by writing down a few words: sauce, cheese, crust, pepperoni, sausage, spices, hot, melted, etc. Once you have written down some words, you can begin by compiling descriptive lists for each one.

Use clear and concise language.

This means that words are chosen carefully, particularly for their relevancy in relation to that which you are intending to describe.

Choose vivid language.

Why use horse when you can choose stallion ? Why not use tempestuous instead of violent ? Or why not miserly in place of cheap ? Such choices form a firmer image in the mind of the reader and often times offer nuanced meanings that serve better one’s purpose.

Use your senses!

Remember, if you are describing something, you need to be appealing to the senses of the reader. Explain how the thing smelled, felt, sounded, tasted, or looked. Embellish the moment with senses.

What were you thinking?!

If you can describe emotions or feelings related to your topic, you will connect with the reader on a deeper level. Many have felt crushing loss in their lives, or ecstatic joy, or mild complacency. Tap into this emotional reservoir in order to achieve your full descriptive potential.

Leave the reader with a clear impression.

One of your goals is to evoke a strong sense of familiarity and appreciation in the reader. If your reader can walk away from the essay craving the very pizza you just described, you are on your way to writing effective descriptive essays.

Be organized!

It is easy to fall into an incoherent rambling of emotions and senses when writing a descriptive essay. However, you must strive to present an organized and logical description if the reader is to come away from the essay with a cogent sense of what it is you are attempting to describe.

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How to Write a Strong Descriptive Essay

Last Updated: June 24, 2024 Fact Checked

Brainstorming Ideas for the Essay

Writing the essay, polishing the essay, outline for a descriptive essay, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,529,088 times.

A good descriptive essay creates a vivid picture of the topic in the reader’s mind. You may need to write a descriptive essay as a class assignment or you may decide to write one as a fun writing challenge. Start by brainstorming ideas for the essay. Then, outline and write the essay using vivid sensory details and strong descriptions. Always polish your essay and proofread it so it is at its best.

Best Tips for Writing a Descriptive Essay

Outline the essay in sections and create a thesis statement to base the essay on. Then, write a strong introduction and describe the subject matter using creative and vivid adjectives. Use similes, metaphors, and your own emotions to help you bring the topic to life.

You could also choose a fictional person to write about, such as a character in a book, a story, or a play. You could write about a character on your favorite TV show or video game.

Step 2 Pick a place or object to describe.

Another take on this option is to write about a made-up place or object, such as the fantastical school in your favorite book or the magic wand from your favorite TV show.

You could also choose a more specific emotion, such as brotherly love or self-hatred. These emotions can make for powerful descriptive essays.

Step 4 Make a list of sensory details about the topic.

For example, if you were writing about a person like your mother, you may write down under “sound” : “soft voice at night, clack of her shoes on the floor tiles, bang of the spoon when she cooks.”

If you are writing the essay for a class, your instructor should specify if they want a five paragraph essay or if you have the freedom to use sections instead.

For example, if you were writing a descriptive essay about your mother, you may have a thesis statement like: “In many ways, my mother is the reigning queen of our house, full of contradictions that we are too afraid to question.”

For example, if you were writing the essay about your mom, you may start with: “My mother is not like other mothers. She is a fierce protector and a mysterious woman to my sisters and I.”
If you were writing an essay about an object, you may start with: "Try as I might, I had a hard time keeping my pet rock alive."

Step 4 Describe the topic with vivid adjectives.

You can also use adjectives that connect to the senses, such “rotting,” “bright,” “hefty,” “rough,” and “pungent.”
For example, you may describe your mother as "bright," "tough," and "scented with jasmine."

You can also use similes, where you use “like” or “as” to compare one thing to another. For example, you may write, “My mother is like a fierce warrior in battle, if the battlefield were PTA meetings and the checkout line at the grocery store.”

Step 6 Discuss your emotions and thoughts about the topic.

For example, you may write about your complicated feelings about your mother. You may note that you feel sadness about your mother’s sacrifices for the family and joy for the privileges you have in your life because of her.

Step 7 Wrap up the essay with a strong conclusion.

For example, you may end a descriptive essay about your mother by noting, “In all that she has sacrificed for us, I see her strength, courage, and fierce love for her family, traits I hope to emulate in my own life.”

You can also read the essay aloud to others to get their feedback. Ask them to let you know if there are any unclear or vague sentences in the essay.

Be open to constructive criticism and feedback from others. This will only make your essay stronger.

Step 3 Revise the essay for clarity and length.

If you have a word count requirement for the essay, make sure you meet it. Add more detail to the paper or take unnecessary content out to reach the word count.

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About This Article

To write a descriptive essay, start by choosing a topic, like a person, place, or specific emotion. Next, write down a list of sensory details about the topic, like how it sounds, smells, and feels. After this brainstorming session, outline the essay, dividing it into an introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Open with a vivid introduction that uses sensory details, then introduce your thesis statement, which the rest of your essay should support. Strengthen your essay further by using metaphors and similes to describe your topic, and the emotions it evokes. To learn how to put the finishing touches on your essay, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Descriptive Essay

Descriptive Essay Writing

Last updated on: Feb 9, 2023

How To Write An Impactful Descriptive Essay?

By: Cathy A.

12 min read

Reviewed By: Melisa C.

Published on: Dec 17, 2019

Wondering how to write an impressive descriptive essay? Writing a descriptive essay is both fun and challenging. You need to describe the main topic in detail and by engaging the five senses of the readers.

Students usually get this type of essay in high school and college. Writing a descriptive essay is different from other essays.

You need to focus on describing a certain person, place, or event.

Luckily for you, the following blog post will provide some helpful tips on how to create an engaging essay.

Continue reading to learn how to write an A-worthy descriptive essay.

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What is a Descriptive Essay?

A descriptive essay is a detailed paper that describes a place, person, situation, object, or emotion. Different people have different points of view and your job is to explain yours in detail.

You may be asked to write a descriptive essay about the beach or forest or about a person or situation. The purpose of this essay is to test the writer’s ability in expressing and explaining their experiences.

Descriptive writing should create a picture in the reader’s mind. You may be required to write a descriptive essay as a high school or college essay assignment.

For a compelling essay, using adjectives and adverbs, details, and figurative language is fundamental. Without proper usage of words, you will not be able to invoke the readers' emotions.

What is the Purpose of a Descriptive Essay?

The purpose of a descriptive essay is to describe a person, place, or personal experience in vivid detail so that the reader can create a picture in his mind.

The descriptive essay is written to get the reader to understand by using descriptive language. It is different from narrative essays, where the writer tells the story about someone else. Usually, it starts with a real-life event and then the content follows the author's imagination.

Descriptive essays are not intended to persuade the reader or show facts and figures to prove something. Descriptive essays are like word paintings that contain personal and descriptive details and these are mostly assigned to students of creative writing.

How to Start a Descriptive Essay

A strong start for your descriptive essay is essential. Analyze your topic from every angle and document the following details:

Analyze the main subjects in detail and observe minute things.

Start with observing all the possible aspects of the subject.
Don't just observe the object but also its surroundings.
Focus on details and features of the subject and develop opinions about them.
Be thoughtful; this first step will be the basis for the essay.

Physical Settings

Describing the physical settings is a must in a descriptive essay. When describing, keep the following points in mind.

Focus on the subject's position and observe nearby objects
Note the time of day and kind of lighting: natural or imitated
Physical settings: all the basic and decorative elements
The position and shape of the objects
Alignment and any other observable information

Physical Features

When describing the physical features of the subject, living or nonliving, consider the following points.

Living or nonliving; describe the features in detail
The subject's skin color, texture, smoothness, expression, and age
The features of inanimate objects in the picture, color, surface, and texture

Create Drama

Storytelling and drama are the life and blood of a good descriptive essay. It turns your essay into an exciting and interesting piece of writing. However, be subtle about adding drama to your sentence structure and add it to complement your story only.

Focus On Your Feelings

Focus on how you feel about the particular topic or person and stick to it. It is easy to get involved when working on the essay. But, focus on your own feelings and write an essay based on them.

Use Of Specific Vocabulary

Vocabulary is important. Select the best words for describing an action or object. Don't always use the first word that comes to mind.

Write slowly and thoughtfully, and use specific words to convey your thoughts.

Psychological Aspects

Writing about a certain situation or behavior of a person focuses on the mental aspects and emotions involved in them.

For Example, describe your emotions when your friend misplaced your notes right before the exam.

You may have had several emotions in that incident. Maybe you were prepared for exams, but this situation put you under pressure and made you feel frustrated and hurt.

Explore those emotions and describe the feelings they aroused. Describe the body language also, if relevant.

Ask Yourself, WHY?

This is the most valuable tip for students. When you are looking at a particular subject, and having difficulty analyzing its aspects, ask yourself "WHY".

Why is the subject the way it is?
Why does the person you are describing have such a deep-set and cold eyes?
Why is the animal so wounded and terrified?
Why is this particular place famous?

It is a good practice and after some time you will do it naturally. Knowing the why is important if you want to describe your topic properly.

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How To Write A Descriptive Essay?

When you write a descriptive essay, you help your readers visualize an event, a person, or a story. It is written to make your readers feel what you feel about the respective subject.

A descriptive essay seeks to appeal to some or all of the audience’s five senses. Some key things to consider are:

Discussing your subject thoroughly
Focusing on details and adding them in your essay
Sharing your personal feelings and experience about the subject
Observing and describing all sensory details of your subject

Here are the steps to write a descriptive essay easily.

1- Choose an Engaging and Focused Essay Topic

An important step that all strong descriptive essays share is having a focused topic. Before you make the outline, identify the purpose of your essay and use it to create an appropriate thesis statement.This type of paper does not require much personal opinion from you. Its main goal should be focusing on information that will make a dominant impression in readers' minds instead.

2- Research and Gather Important Details

When writing a descriptive essay, it is important to make sure you include as many details and sensory information as possible. This helps your reader fully understand the images that are being presented in their mind's eye.You can organize these ideas into categories so they're easy for you to access when needed.

3- Create an Outline of Your Essay

Your essays must be organized by having subheadings that are clear and concise. Group your main points into individual body paragraphs, each of which should only cover one idea or topic at a time.

4- Write your Essay’s Introduction

A good introductory paragraph is much like a road map because it provides direction to your readers.

It provides relevant background information before diving into more specific details related to how something works or why something happens. These could include statistics or stories from real-life scenarios.

5- Write the Main Body Section of Your Essay

Each body paragraph should start with a topic sentence that keeps the reader hooked on what you are saying. Use specific details instead of making generalized statements, and make sure to give examples if necessary.

6- End with a Strong Conclusion

The conclusion of an essay is the final paragraph, and it should summarize all that you have said throughout. It's a good idea to restate the main points and key details from the essay in this section.

It is important so the reader has everything they need for better understanding before ending off on something new.

If necessary be sure not to introduce anything odd or unusual, to avoid any confusion.

7- Proofread and Revise the Essay Carefully

Once you are done writing the essay, proofread and revise it carefully. Make sure that it is free from all kinds of errors.

Descriptive Essay Outline

Like all the other essays, a descriptive essay also follows the usual 5-paragraph essay structure and format.Before starting, it is important to create an outline. Following are the fundamental elements of your descriptive essay outline:

Descriptive Essay Introduction

The introduction sets the footing for the entire essay. Before heading towards the body section, the reader will come across the introduction.

It is the first impression of your work. It is very important to write an engaging introduction so that the readers read the essay till the end.

Start the essay in an easy-to-understand way and language. Provide background information on your topic so they can understand it and its importance.

To make sure the reader feels your emotions and decides to continue reading further, incorporate the following points in your introduction.

The following tips will guide you on how to write a good introduction for a descriptive essay.

Attract the reader's attention with an interesting fact, phrase, or quote
Don't bombard them with information
Go straight to the main pointsInclude enough information to introduce the topic and its significance.
Summarize the argument and the main topic and craft your thesis statement

Descriptive Essay Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is an integral part of your essay. It focuses on the argument and the writer’s main idea, which is to be discussed in the essay.

This statement also provides the writer with a chance of explaining the purpose and scope of the topic. It is intriguing and engaging.

A thesis statement is written at the end of the introduction, it is mainly a single sentence that describes the essay objective. The thesis statement should act as a guide to the reader on what to expect in the essay body. It is like a table of contents of a book, to the reader on contents you will get an idea of what the book is all about so you get to understand it better.

It is like a table of contents of a book. By reading it, you will get an idea of what the book is all about.

A good thesis should contain the following things:

Define the essay scope - it should narrow down all the points to clarify its purpose.
Avoid using common words - you should be creative with your choice of words.
Create suspense - it should attract the reader to the body paragraphs of the essay.

For further information on how to write a thesis for a descriptive essay, check out the following examples.

Descriptive essay example about a Place

“Even though monarchy is long gone, Buckingham Palace is here to remind us of the aesthetic beauty of that era.”

Descriptive essay example about a Person

“One of the characteristics of Spider-Man is his youthfulness, and the fact that he talks to himself more than Hamlet.”

Descriptive essay example about an Emotion

“For numerous reasons, the dark forest is my greatest fear, though not a fear which is necessarily smart to face.”

Descriptive Essay Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs of the essay come next after the introduction and thesis statement. It is the main part that continues your essay.

Usually, an essay consists of three body paragraphs but you can add more if needed.

Don't add more than one central idea in one paragraph. Fusing different ideas will confuse the reader.

Build your paragraphs according to the thesis and introduction.

Start each body paragraph with the main sentence
Use transitions to move between paragraphs smoothly
Each paragraph should be five to six sentences long

Descriptive Essay Conclusion

The concluding paragraph is the last part of an essay, and probably your last chance to impress your reader.

The last part that the reader can keep in mind is the conclusion, which is as important as the rest of the essay.

To make it interesting and thought-provoking, include the following points:

Restate the thesis statement
Summarize the main points
Add an intriguing closing statement

After writing the conclusion, make a review of your essay, identify the mistakes and maintain a good tone throughout the essay.

Descriptive Essay Format Sample

Here is the descriptive essay format to help you understand how you can write a winning descriptive essay.

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY FORMAT (PDF)

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Descriptive Essay Topics Ideas

Descriptive essay topics are often related to physical settings, locations, living beings, and objects.

Make sure that your essay includes the five senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, or at least one of them. It depends on the topic and the kind of feeling that you want to arouse.

Below are some descriptive essay ideas and ways to achieve them.

Living Beings

When you want to write about a person like a family member, consider the following elements:

Gender, age, complexion, and expressions
Physical features
Height, body type, and approximate weight
Kind of clothes

These details will add depth to the description and your readers will actually see your narrative.

When animals are the subject, you can add the above points plus the following details:

Species and animal
Size, weight, color
Behavior patterns
Temperament
Trained or wild?
Real or fictional?

Inanimate Subjects

Geographic locations and structures.

When your subject is a place or a building, add the following points:

Research about the place and its historical background
The color and the building's type
A famous place or landmark to draw a comparison and inspire interest

Human behavior and psychology is a compelling descriptive essay subject. When writing about it:

Describe the consequences of a particular behavior
Discuss the emotional dimension of the topic and how you perceive it personally

Event Or Travel Experience

A travel experience makes a good descriptive essay since you have experienced the event first hand.

Give a detailed description of the place, people at the venue, and the atmosphere of the location.

Idea, Concept, or Occupation

When writing on such topics, focus on how an idea or concept affects society and its different aspects.

Example Descriptive Essay Topics for Students

Choosing a topic for your descriptive essay is quite interesting. You get to choose something that you have an emotional connection with.

When writing a descriptive essay about a person or place, adding their personal traits will be helpful.

Some examples of descriptive essay topics include:

Compose a detailed descriptive essay about your best friend.
Describe a fancy place that you have created.
Describe your dream vacation destination.
Describe your favorite mall or store.
Describe your childhood home.
Descriptive essay about nature.
Descriptive essay about a place you visited.
Describe the personality of your Maths teacher.
Discuss the main characters of your favorite movie.
Descriptive essay about chocolate.
Write an essay using unique Words to describe yourself.
What makes me unique?
My first love.

Descriptive Essay Examples

Study these descriptive essay examples and sample papers to understand the main idea, structure, and purpose of descriptive essays.

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY ON MARKET (PDF)

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY EXAMPLE PERSON (PDF)

To help you understand how to write a great descriptive essay, we have a whole blog post dedicated to it. We know that talking about something is one thing and demonstrating it is completely different.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the features of a descriptive essay.

A descriptive essay provides a perfect opportunity for writers to express their feelings on any subject. Descriptive writing has rich sensory details which appeal to all of your senses.

How do you start a descriptive essay introduction?

The introduction to the descriptive essay should set the scene and introduce the main topic. You can use these sensory details to get a sense of what the essay is all about.

What are the two types of descriptive essays?

There are two types of descriptive essays. The first type deals with people, and the second one is about objects.

What are the elements of a descriptive essay?

Here are the key elements of a descriptive essay.

Sensory details
Figurative language
Central and main theme
Precise and clear language
Proper organization of ideas

What makes good descriptive writing?

Good and effective descriptive writing consists of vivid sensory details that appeal to all senses including the sense of sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. Moreover, these essays also explain people’s feelings in writing.

Finance Essay, Literature

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Interesting Descriptive Essay Topics Recommended by Experts

Descriptive Essay Examples - 8 Examples To Help You Write Better

The Big List of Essay Topics for High School (120+ Ideas!)

Ideas to inspire every young writer!

What one class should all high schools students be required to take and pass in order to graduate?

High school students generally do a lot of writing, learning to use language clearly, concisely, and persuasively. When it’s time to choose an essay topic, though, it’s easy to come up blank. If that’s the case, check out this huge round-up of essay topics for high school. You’ll find choices for every subject and writing style.

Argumentative Essay Topics
Cause-and-Effect Essay Topics
Compare-Contrast Essay Topics
Descriptive Essay Topics
Expository and Informative Essay Topics
Humorous Essay Topics

Literary Essay Topics

Narrative and Personal Essay Topics
Personal Essay Topics
Persuasive Essay Topics

Research Essay Topics

Argumentative essay topics for high school.

When writing an argumentative essay, remember to do the research and lay out the facts clearly. Your goal is not necessarily to persuade someone to agree with you, but to encourage your reader to accept your point of view as valid. Here are some possible argumentative topics to try. ( Here are 100 more compelling argumentative essay topics. )

The most important challenge our country is currently facing is … (e.g., immigration, gun control, economy)
The government should provide free internet access for every citizen.
All drugs should be legalized, regulated, and taxed.
Vaping is less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The best country in the world is …
Parents should be punished for their minor children’s crimes.
Should all students have the ability to attend college for free?
Should physical education be part of the standard high school curriculum?

Should physical education be part of the standard high school curriculum?

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Schools should require recommended vaccines for all students, with very limited exceptions.
Is it acceptable to use animals for experiments and research?
Does social media do more harm than good?
Capital punishment does/does not deter crime.
What one class should all high schools students be required to take and pass in order to graduate?
Do we really learn anything from history, or does it just repeat itself over and over?
Are men and women treated equally?

Cause-and-Effect Essay Topics for High School

A cause-and-effect essay is a type of argumentative essay. Your goal is to show how one specific thing directly influences another specific thing. You’ll likely need to do some research to make your point. Here are some ideas for cause-and-effect essays. ( Get a big list of 100 cause-and-effect essay topics here. )

Humans are causing accelerated climate change.
Fast-food restaurants have made human health worse over the decades.
What caused World War II? (Choose any conflict for this one.)
Describe the effects social media has on young adults.

Describe the effects social media has on young adults.

How does playing sports affect people?
What are the effects of loving to read?
Being an only/oldest/youngest/middle child makes you …
What effect does violence in movies or video games have on kids?
Traveling to new places opens people’s minds to new ideas.
Racism is caused by …

Compare-Contrast Essay Topics for High School

As the name indicates, in compare-and-contrast essays, writers show the similarities and differences between two things. They combine descriptive writing with analysis, making connections and showing dissimilarities. The following ideas work well for compare-contrast essays. ( Find 80+ compare-contrast essay topics for all ages here. )

Public and private schools
Capitalism vs. communism
Monarchy or democracy
Dogs vs. cats as pets

Paper books or e-books
Two political candidates in a current race
Going to college vs. starting work full-time
Working your way through college as you go or taking out student loans
iPhone or Android
Instagram vs. Twitter (or choose any other two social media platforms)

Descriptive Essay Topics for High School

Bring on the adjectives! Descriptive writing is all about creating a rich picture for the reader. Take readers on a journey to far-off places, help them understand an experience, or introduce them to a new person. Remember: Show, don’t tell. These topics make excellent descriptive essays.

Who is the funniest person you know?
What is your happiest memory?
Tell about the most inspirational person in your life.
Write about your favorite place.
When you were little, what was your favorite thing to do?
Choose a piece of art or music and explain how it makes you feel.
What is your earliest memory?

What’s the best/worst vacation you’ve ever taken?
Describe your favorite pet.
What is the most important item in the world to you?
Give a tour of your bedroom (or another favorite room in your home).
Describe yourself to someone who has never met you.
Lay out your perfect day from start to finish.
Explain what it’s like to move to a new town or start a new school.
Tell what it would be like to live on the moon.

Expository and Informative Essay Topics for High School

Expository essays set out clear explanations of a particular topic. You might be defining a word or phrase or explaining how something works. Expository or informative essays are based on facts, and while you might explore different points of view, you won’t necessarily say which one is “better” or “right.” Remember: Expository essays educate the reader. Here are some expository and informative essay topics to explore. ( See 70+ expository and informative essay topics here. )

What makes a good leader?
Explain why a given school subject (math, history, science, etc.) is important for students to learn.
What is the “glass ceiling” and how does it affect society?
Describe how the internet changed the world.
What does it mean to be a good teacher?

Explain how we could colonize the moon or another planet.
Discuss why mental health is just as important as physical health.
Describe a healthy lifestyle for a teenager.
Choose an American president and explain how their time in office affected the country.
What does “financial responsibility” mean?

Humorous Essay Topics for High School

Humorous essays can take on any form, like narrative, persuasive, or expository. You might employ sarcasm or satire, or simply tell a story about a funny person or event. Even though these essay topics are lighthearted, they still take some skill to tackle well. Give these ideas a try.

What would happen if cats (or any other animal) ruled the world?
What do newborn babies wish their parents knew?
Explain the best ways to be annoying on social media.
Invent a wacky new sport, explain the rules, and describe a game or match.

Explain why it's important to eat dessert first.

Imagine a discussion between two historic figures from very different times, like Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I.
Retell a familiar story in tweets or other social media posts.
Describe present-day Earth from an alien’s point of view.
Choose a fictional character and explain why they should be the next president.
Describe a day when kids are in charge of everything, at school and at home.

Literary essays analyze a piece of writing, like a book or a play. In high school, students usually write literary essays about the works they study in class. These literary essay topic ideas focus on books students often read in high school, but many of them can be tweaked to fit other works as well.

Discuss the portrayal of women in Shakespeare’s Othello .
Explore the symbolism used in The Scarlet Letter .
Explain the importance of dreams in Of Mice and Men .
Compare and contrast the romantic relationships in Pride and Prejudice .

Analyze the role of the witches in Macbeth.

Dissect the allegory of Animal Farm and its relation to contemporary events.
Interpret the author’s take on society and class structure in The Great Gatsby .
Explore the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.
Discuss whether Shakespeare’s portrayal of young love in Romeo and Juliet is accurate.
Explain the imagery used in Beowulf .

Narrative and Personal Essay Topics for High School

Think of a narrative essay like telling a story. Use some of the same techniques that you would for a descriptive essay, but be sure you have a beginning, middle, and end. A narrative essay doesn’t necessarily need to be personal, but they often are. Take inspiration from these narrative and personal essay topics.

Describe a performance or sporting event you took part in.
Explain the process of cooking and eating your favorite meal.
Write about meeting your best friend for the first time and how your relationship developed.
Tell about learning to ride a bike or drive a car.
Describe a time in your life when you’ve been scared.

Write about a time when you or someone you know displayed courage.

Share the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you.
Tell about a time when you overcame a big challenge.
Tell the story of how you learned an important life lesson.
Describe a time when you or someone you know experienced prejudice or oppression.
Explain a family tradition, how it developed, and its importance today.
What is your favorite holiday? How does your family celebrate it?
Retell a familiar story from the point of view of a different character.
Describe a time when you had to make a difficult decision.
Tell about your proudest moment.

Persuasive Essay Topics for High School

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative , but they rely less on facts and more on emotion to sway the reader. It’s important to know your audience, so you can anticipate any counterarguments they might make and try to overcome them. Try these topics to persuade someone to come around to your point of view. ( Discover 60 more intriguing persuasive essay topics here. )

Do you think homework should be required, optional, or not given at all?
Everyone should be vegetarian or vegan.
What animal makes the best pet?
Visit an animal shelter, choose an animal that needs a home, and write an essay persuading someone to adopt that animal.
Who is the world’s best athlete, present or past?
Should little kids be allowed to play competitive sports?
Are professional athletes/musicians/actors overpaid?
The best music genre is …

What is one book that everyone should be required to read?

Is democracy the best form of government?
Is capitalism the best form of economy?
Students should/should not be able to use their phones during the school day.
Should schools have dress codes?
If I could change one school rule, it would be …
Is year-round school a good idea?

A research essay is a classic high school assignment. These papers require deep research into primary source documents, with lots of supporting facts and evidence that’s properly cited. Research essays can be in any of the styles shown above. Here are some possible topics, across a variety of subjects.

Which country’s style of government is best for the people who live there?
Choose a country and analyze its development from founding to present day.
Describe the causes and effects of a specific war.
Formulate an ideal economic plan for our country.
What scientific discovery has had the biggest impact on life today?

Tell the story of the development of artificial intelligence so far, and describe its impacts along the way.

Analyze the way mental health is viewed and treated in this country.
Explore the ways systemic racism impacts people in all walks of life.
Defend the importance of teaching music and the arts in public schools.
Choose one animal from the endangered species list, and propose a realistic plan to protect it.

What are some of your favorite essay topics for high school? Come share your prompts on the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out the ultimate guide to student writing contests .

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Parents should be punished for their minor children’s crimes.

100 Thought-Provoking Argumentative Writing Prompts for Kids and Teens

Practice making well-reasoned arguments using research and facts. Continue Reading

60 Descriptive Writing Prompts for the Classroom

Writing amazing descriptions are what makes movies, books, plays, and games so much fun. Without adequate descriptions, they wouldn’t be very interesting. Teaching kids to write with tons of descriptions takes time and energy. Instead of using your brainpower to come up with fun, descriptive writing prompts, try using these 60 prompts that kids will love. Be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom to sign up to have a PRINTABLE list of all prompt ideas emailed directly to you!

Describing Personal Events – Fiction or Nonfiction

Use these descriptive writing prompts to let students reflect on their past and future. They will love sharing their lives with the class and using descriptive writing to do so.

Describe the most interesting person you have ever met.
Talk about a person you envy in detail. What do they look like or what do they have.
Describe an inspirational friend or family member.
Tell us about a place you love to visit with plenty of detail.
Think of your favorite sport or hobby. Describe an object you would use to play that sport or do that hobby.
Tell us about the first time you rode a bicycle.
Imagine you are on a walk or hike, tell us all about it.
Describe your favorite happy memory.
What are you like first thing in the morning? Describe it.
Detail your favorite outfit. Why do you love it so much?
Describe your own face and what makes you unique.
What type of music makes you happy? Talk about it in detail.
Describe a time you felt excited.
Tell us about a time something totally unexpected happened.
Describe the house you currently live in (or one you grew up in).

Describing Hypothetical Scenarios

Hypothetical scenarios are super fun to write about. They are a great tool for descriptive writing prompts because they let kids use their imagination a little bit.

Pretend you came across a spooky place or haunted mansion. Tell us what you see and hear.
You’re at the art museum. Talk about a piece you see there. It can be a sculpture, painting, or something else.
You found a lucky object, describe it to us.
Invent a pet you’ve never had and tell us about it.
Write about a day at the beach using all five senses.
Tell us about a trip to an amusement park using all five senses.
You’re at the zoo! What do you see and hear?
Imagine you wake up in the hospital. What would you see and hear? What would you do?
You have to describe Thanksgiving to an alien. How would you tell them what it is?
It’s a snow day! Talk about what you experienced.
Tell a time traveler what a smartphone is!
Imagine you meet someone famous! Who are they and how is your experience?
Describe a peaceful place you’ve visited or made up.
Your birthday party is crashed by all sorts of birds! What’s it like?
Monkeys took over your kitchen to bake a pie. What’s inside?

Describing Food and Other Objects

Food is the perfect way to describe things in our writing. These descriptive writing prompts allow kids to write about the good and bad of food, as well as other objects.

Your parents served the worst vegetable ever for dinner. Describe it in detail.
Your sister brought in something nasty from outside. What is it? Tell us all about it.
The best dessert ever is __________. Tell us how it tastes.
How is your favorite food made? Use tons of details using the senses.
How would you describe a field of green grass?
Tell us what you would do in a field of wildflowers on a summer’s day.
Describe a normal trip to the grocery store. Walk us through the whole trip.
What is your least favorite meal? Use details to describe why that is.
Tell us about your favorite drink. Talk about the color, the taste, and whether it’s hot or cold.
Something in the trash stinks. What is it?
You wake up and smell something amazing coming from the kitchen. Tell us what you smell.
You’re having a campfire with your friends. Describe what you see, hear, smell, and taste.
What is the most disgusting food you have ever tried?
You accidentally ate dog food! What’s it taste like?
Your mom poured you a glass of sour milk on accident! Describe it.

Random Descriptive Writing Prompts

Use these random descriptive writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing in the classroom. Some are silly and some are more serious, but they will all help build students’ writing skills.

Do you think using descriptive writing is important?
Describe your bed sheets, pillows, and other objects in your room.
Tell us about your favorite day. Talk about the weather, what you would wear, where you would go, etc.
Describe the Fourth of July to someone with tons of detail.
Walk us through a typical day at school. What might you see, hear, smell, and do?
Pick your favorite teacher and describe them in detail.
Use tons of descriptive words to describe a sunset!
Pick a classmate in the room and write about their best qualities.
Write a descriptive story using these 3 things: a whole pizza pie, a bucket of slugs, and a pack of wolves.
Write about how it would feel to sit in the hot summer covered in a blanket.
Tell us how you imagine it would feel to be trapped in a giant freezer.
Describe a place you have dreamed about that doesn’t exist.
Tell us about a trip to the dentist gone wrong!
Write about something that makes you laugh.
Tell us about something that annoys you. It could be the sound of someone chewing, noises on the chalkboard, etc.

If you liked these descriptive writing prompt ideas, fill out the form below to have a printable list emailed directly to you so that you always have it!

60 Descriptive Writing Prompt Ideas

This FREE printable list of 60 descriptive writing prompt ideas can be sent straight to your inbox! Simply drop your personal email address below & I’ll send it right over!

*Using a school email address makes it very likely that you won’t receive your freebi e!

Use these pre-planned descriptive writing prompts to make your descriptive writing lessons easier! All you have to do is pick one, model it for your students, and let the creative process begin!

To learn more about Teaching Descriptive Writing , check out these fun ideas.

You may also enjoy using my Weekly Descriptive Writing Prompts ! They are available in paper and digital forms. Simply pin the image below to save this post for later!

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100 descriptive essay topics for easy writing.

July 18, 2019

What is descriptive writing? Descriptive writing is used as a tool to help develop your ability to paint a picture – in a sense – by using citing details that bring the subject to life. You see this often in fiction writing, but it has its merits in academic writing as well since writers are always trying to capture the reader’s attention. It is, then, a great skill to learn early in your academic life (like in high school or early college) since it can assist you in a number of other writing assignments by having you expand your vocabulary and keep the reader captivated with your descriptions.

What Is a Descriptive Essay?

This kind of writing assignment asks you to describe an object, a place, a person, or something that evokes the use of the five senses. It’s really open to anything the writer chooses and does not require an argument or opinion. It is usually limited to about a few hundred words, but some assignments may be as long as several pages. The trick is to write on a subject that you are comfortable with describing in extended detail since this is what most grading rubrics will be scoring on.

How to Start a Descriptive Essay

So now you’re probably wondering “How to start a descriptive essay?” The best approach is to simply start writing with keenness to the five senses. Write about sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. A great descriptive paragraph will paint a picture in the reader’s mind. Professional writers can help you get started. Afterward this you can create a basic outline and then revise your content accordingly. You will always want to stick with your chosen subject, but the more vivid your writing is the great your success will be in creating a great written work.

100 Good Descriptive Essay Topics

Our descriptive essay topics list was put together by educators, students, and college admissions officers as a means to expose students to the most interesting ideas worth writing and reading about. They aren’t the only things you can write about but you can certainly get a sense of what piques their mind. Even if you don’t’ have a descriptive essay assignment on the horizon, you can benefit from a little practice, and the descriptive essay topics below are great places to find a little inspiration.

Easy Essay Topics

Write a descriptive essay about a place you’ve never visited in your life.
Describe something that you are addicted to (e.g., a food, an activity, a song, etc.).
Write about a favorite vacation spot from your childhood.
Describe a favorite “natural” location such as a forest or a desert.
Write an essay about a favorite photograph from your childhood.
Describe your favorite book, movie, song, or television show.
Write about a childhood memory that scares you.
Describe a room that has a special memory or evokes a feeling.
Write about a favorite place that you have visited in the past.
Describe a person you have met that you are afraid of or threatened by.

Essay Topics about Sports

Describe your favorite sport in a way that would convince others to try.
Write about your favorite professional sports memory.
Describe the worst sports injury you have personally suffered.
Write about your favorite professional athlete and the reasons why.
Describe your favorite moment from 2019’s Women’s World Cup.
Write about your all-time inspired sports moment.
Describe the best professional sporting event you have seen.
Write about an oddball sport that no one knows about.
Describe the positive effects of participating in sports.
Write about motorsports and their place in American sports.

Topics on Politics and Government

Describe government choices that have changed a country’s history.
Write about the different types of political terrorism.
Describe the different consequences and early causes of war.
Write about a political figure that has influenced you.
Describe the different types of election processes.
Write about one of the major political parties in the U.S.
Describe a progressive ideal which has been accepted widely.
Write about a political bargaining tool used in negotiations.
Describe government branches and their different purposes.
Write about socio-political changes in your city or town.

Topics on Information Technology

Describe how social media has changed the landscape of communication.
Write about the most popular trends in marketing and social media.
Describe how dictatorships limit internet access for political gain.
Write about how mobile technology is making Americans illiterate.
Describe how social media helps poorer populations’ access benefits.
Write on the place information technology has affected globalization.
Describe how home health care managed is changed by information tech.
Write about how the nuclear family home as changed because of IT.
Describe how information technology improves our abilities to invest.
Write about small business needs when considering information tech.

Topics on the Globalization and Environment

Describe the cultural and social manifestations of environmental issues.
Write about the effects of globalization on international politics.
Write about intelligence sharing and how globalization affects it.
Describe how brain-drain has been affected by environmentalism.
Write about how the world’s environmental landscapes are changing.
Describe the difference between globalization and knowledge exchange.
Write about how political parties influence environmental global issues.
Describe the needs populations have to protect environmental areas.
Write about the main reasons globalization has affected international trade.
Explain how environmental issues have increased in the last 20 years.

Topics on Local Government and Public Issues

Write about your community’s efforts to clean up public pollution.
Explain why it is important to keep your streets clean and safe.
Write about a problem that affects your community because of nature.
Describe a local issue that has brought the public in turmoil.
Write on how public community service helps bring people together.
Describe small government rules to protect gun owners’ rights.
Write about the rules and regulations concerning elderly rights.
Describe how local governments benefit from more recreational spots.
Write about local rules regarding abortion rights for women.
Describe Planned Parenthood funding through taxes in your town.

Topics on Space Exploration and More

Write about the reasons why the U.S. should consider a Mars expedition.
Describe how a mixed group of astronauts from different nations is best.
Write about the needs to invest in more space research for human advances.
Explain how the United States should invest in more spaceship technology.
Describe your favorite interstellar space mission from the last half-century.
Write about how non-rocket space launches revolutionize NASA’s program.
Explain why companies like Space-X should be sharing technology internationally.
Describe what it means for the world to invest in space exploration in general.
Write about the benefits of returning for a manned mission to the earth’s moon.
Explain the different types of spacecraft that are most popular around the world.

Topics on Educational Issues in Public Schools

Describe the benefits of having shorter school days at the high school level.
Explain why students are more inspired when they receive less standard homework.
Write about the subjects that are most important in today’s curriculum.
Describe what it’s like to have new, more socially conscious subjects in the curriculum.
Explain the benefits of teaching religion in public schools in today’s society.
Write about the educational system’s use of cursive writing lessons today.
Describe the use of homework each day to evaluate elementary students’ progress.
Explain how technology is used to enhance daily lessons and encourage learning.
Explain the reasons why schools are considering late start times for students.
Describe how standardized tests are created and scored by administrators.

Topics on Descriptive Personal Experiences

Write about a childhood adventure that is something you want to do again.
Describe a situation at school or in your personal life where you have been stressed.
Write about something that motivates you to put in more effort than usual.
Explain a difficult obstacle high school students must learn to overcome.
Write about the different types of common household pets that are friendly.
Describe something that makes people fail and ways to overcome the challenge.
Write about something that elementary students find annoying in their daily lives.
Explain how people use comfort zones to avoid trying new cultural foods or cuisines.
Describe a type of food from an international culture you have recently discovered.
Write about different types of desserts offered at five or four-star restaurants.

Topics about Travelling to Distant or International Places

Explain what it’s like to attend school abroad in cultural and societal terminology.
Describe how different countries treat leisurely travelers from the United States.
Explain what travel agencies do to ensure travelers feel welcome and safe abroad.
Explain how traveling with friends adds an element of safety when one is abroad.
Write about a country you would like to visit that isn’t a popular tourist destination.
Describe a travel-based piece of writing that explains everything about going abroad.
Write about a historic city with plenty of public places that emphasize local culture.
Describe the most visually stunning religious sites most people know little about.
Explain the ways European travel between countries is easier than on other continents.
Write about traveling with the military or similar opportunities by armed forces.

The above descriptive essay topics for college students are completely free to use. Share them with your classmates and don’t hesitate to brainstorm modifications to them. These are all suggestions and should be customized to your specific needs. If you need more help, you should try to find descriptive essay examples on the web, preferably those created by professional writing sites. You can also find a lot of great resources to help with different types of academic assignments such as expository writing, persuasive writing , narrative writing, and more.

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50 Writing Prompts For High School Sophomores [PDF Included]

Greetings, young scribes, and literary daredevils! Are you ready to soar through the clouds of creativity and dive into the depths of your imagination? Well, grab your feather quills and boundless journals because we’re about to embark on a whimsical adventure of writing prompts designed specifically for high schoolers and sophomores!

Buckle up, because these prompts are as quirky as a unicycling giraffe, as imaginative as a time-traveling taco, and as unexpected as a disco-dancing dinosaur! So let’s unleash your inner bard, and let the words flow like a river of pure creative genius!

Unique and creative writing prompts for sophomores

Writing prompts can be incredibly helpful for both experienced and inexperienced writers. They provide a starting point for your writing, giving you a topic or idea to build upon. Furthermore, they can also be used in many creative writing activities. So, here’s a list of 50 creative writing prompts to help young sophomores experiment with their creativity!

Write a story about a time traveler who goes back in time to prevent a tragedy.
Imagine a world where animals can talk. Write a story about a young girl who befriends a talking horse.
Write a story about a young hero who embarks on a quest to save a magical kingdom from an evil sorceress.
Imagine a world where everyone has superpowers. Write a story about a young girl who discovers her own unique powers.
Write a story about a young boy who must find the courage to stand up to a bully.
Imagine a world where robots rule. Write a story about a young girl who teams up with a rogue robot to take down the oppressive government.
Write a story about a young girl who is transported to a magical world filled with talking animals and enchanted forests.
Imagine a world where people can control the weather. Write a story about a young boy who must save his village from a dangerous storm.
Write a story about a young girl who must use her wit and cunning to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
Imagine a world where the dead can be brought back to life. Write a story about a young boy who must decide whether to bring his best friend back from the dead.
Write a story about a young girl who must navigate the treacherous waters of high school politics.
Imagine a world where everyone can read minds. Write a story about a young boy who must learn to control his thoughts in order to protect his secrets.
Write a story about a young girl who discovers a hidden garden filled with magical creatures.
Imagine a world where time moves backward. Write a story about a young boy who must navigate his way through the backward timeline in order to save the future.
Write a story about a young girl who must overcome her fears in order to save her friends from a monster.
Imagine a world where the government controls people’s dreams. Write a story about a young boy who must resist the government’s control and find his own path.
Write a story about a young girl who must face her fears in order to find a hidden treasure.
Imagine a world where people can control fire. Write a story about a young boy who must use his powers to stop a dangerous arsonist.
Write a story about a young girl who must use her knowledge of science to save the world from a deadly virus.
Imagine a world where people can fly. Write a story about a young boy who must use his powers to save his city from an aerial attack.
Write a story about a young girl who discovers a mysterious box that has the power to grant wishes.
Imagine a world where ghosts can be seen by the living. Write a story about a young boy who must confront a ghost from his past.
Write a story about a young girl who must use her intelligence to solve a complex mystery.
Imagine a world where everyone has a unique superpower. Write a story about a young boy who must use his powers to save his friends from a dangerous criminal.
What do you believe is the role of technology in society and how can it be used Responsibly?
Write about a time when you had to learn a difficult skill and how you accomplished it.
What are your values and how do they guide your decisions and actions?
Write about a book or movie that has had a lasting impact on you and why it is significant.
How do you see yourself contributing to your community and what steps are you taking to make a difference?
Write about a time when you had to face your fears and what you learned from the experience.
What is the role of education in shaping the future and how can it be improved?
Write about a friend who has impacted your life and why they are so special.
How do you define happiness and what steps are you taking to achieve it?
Write about a time when you had to apologize and what you learned from the experience.
What do you believe is the importance of cultural diversity and how can it be celebrated and preserved?
Write about a time when you had to forgive someone and why it was important.
How do you stay motivated and maintain a positive attitude when faced with challenges?
Write about a time when you had to be creative and what you learned from the experience.
What do you believe is the role of government in society and how can it be improved?
Write about a time when you had to help someone and what you learned from the experience.
How do you balance your personal and academic responsibilities?
Write about a time when you had to stand up for what was right and what you learned from the experience.
What is the role of communication in relationships and how can it be improved?
Write about a time when you had to work with a team and what you learned from the experience.
How do you handle stress and maintain a healthy lifestyle?
What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing society today and how would you go about solving it?
Write about a teacher who has made a lasting impact on you and why they are so special.
How do you define success and what steps are you taking to achieve it?
What do you believe is the meaning of life and how do you live according to that belief?
What is the role of community service and how can it be used to make a difference?

Writing prompts: Helping develop a daily practice

Developing a daily writing practice is a fantastic way for sophomores to boost their creativity and improve their writing skills. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of writing prompts.

Writing prompts are creative and quirky suggestions for what to write about. They can range from serious and introspective to whimsical and fantastical, and they provide a structure for daily writing that can help students develop their own writing style and voice.

For example, a writing prompt might ask the writer to imagine a world where everyone can control the elements, and then write a story about a young boy who must use his powers to save his village from a natural disaster. This type of prompt not only provides a specific topic to write about but also encourages the writer to think outside the box and be creative in their writing.

Improves writing skills: Writing regularly can help students develop their writing abilities, including grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure. Writing prompts can provide a starting point for students to improve their writing skills and create interesting and well-written pieces.
Enhances creativity: Writing prompts can encourage students to think outside the box and be creative in their writing. This can help them develop their own unique voice and perspective, and also provide an outlet for exploring their imagination.
Builds confidence: Regular writing can help students feel more confident in their writing abilities, and writing prompts can provide a supportive and structured environment for students to practice their writing.
Encourages self-expression: Writing prompts can be a way for students to express their thoughts, opinions, and emotions. This can be therapeutic and can help students develop their self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Supports personal growth: Regular writing can be a reflective process that allows students to examine their own experiences and personal growth. Writing prompts can provide a structure for this reflection and help students identify areas for improvement and growth.

In short, incorporating writing prompts into a daily writing practice can be a fun and effective way for sophomores to build their writing skills, expand their creativity, and explore new and exciting ideas. So why not give it a try today! Furthermore, if you came across during a career exploration session or activity, that you wish to establish a career in writing, then these prompts can be all the more useful for a budding writer like you!

By using writing prompts, you can unlock your creativity, build your confidence as a writer, and explore new genres and styles of writing. Writing prompts can also help one overcome writer’s block and get their creative juices flowing. So if you’re looking to improve your writing, break out of a creative rut, or just have some fun, try incorporating writing prompts into your writing routine. Who knows what amazing stories, poems, or essays you’ll create!

Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.

Explore a plethora of invaluable resources and insights tailored for high schoolers at TheHighSchooler, under the guidance of Sananda Bhattacharya’s expertise. You can follow her on Linkedin

Descriptive Analysis: How-To, Types, Examples

We review the basics of descriptive analysis, including what exactly it is, what benefits it has, how to do it, as well as some types and examples.

From diagnostic to predictive, there are many different types of data analysis . Perhaps the most straightforward of them is descriptive analysis, which seeks to describe or summarize past and present data, helping to create accessible data insights. In this short guide, we'll review the basics of descriptive analysis, including what exactly it is, what benefits it has, how to do it, as well as some types and examples.

What Is Descriptive Analysis?

Descriptive analysis, also known as descriptive analytics or descriptive statistics, is the process of using statistical techniques to describe or summarize a set of data. As one of the major types of data analysis, descriptive analysis is popular for its ability to generate accessible insights from otherwise uninterpreted data.

Unlike other types of data analysis, the descriptive analysis does not attempt to make predictions about the future. Instead, it draws insights solely from past data, by manipulating in ways that make it more meaningful.

Benefits of Descriptive Analysis

Descriptive analysis is all about trying to describe or summarize data. Although it doesn't make predictions about the future, it can still be extremely valuable in business environments . This is chiefly because descriptive analysis makes it easier to consume data, which can make it easier for analysts to act on.

Another benefit of descriptive analysis is that it can help to filter out less meaningful data. This is because the statistical techniques used within this type of analysis usually focus on the patterns in data, and not the outliers.

Types of Descriptive Analysis

According to CampusLabs.com , descriptive analysis can be categorized as one of four types. They are measures of frequency, central tendency, dispersion or variation, and position.

Measures of Frequency

In descriptive analysis, it's essential to know how frequently a certain event or response occurs. This is the purpose of measures of frequency, like a count or percent. For example, consider a survey where 1,000 participants are asked about their favourite ice cream flavor. A list of 1,000 responses would be difficult to consume, but the data can be made much more accessible by measuring how many times a certain flavor was selected.

Measures of Central Tendency

In descriptive analysis, it's also worth knowing the central (or average) event or response. Common measures of central tendency include the three averages — mean, median, and mode. As an example, consider a survey in which the height of 1,000 people is measured. In this case, the mean average would be a very helpful descriptive metric.

Measures of Dispersion

Sometimes, it may be worth knowing how data is distributed across a range. To illustrate this, consider the average height in a sample of two people. If both individuals are six feet tall, the average height is six feet. However, if one individual is five feet tall and the other is seven feet tall, the average height is still six feet. In order to measure this kind of distribution, measures of dispersion like range or standard deviation can be employed.

Measures of Position

Last of all, descriptive analysis can involve identifying the position of one event or response in relation to others. This is where measures like percentiles and quartiles can be used.

How to Do Descriptive Analysis

Like many types of data analysis, descriptive analysis can be quite open-ended. In other words, it's up to you what you want to look for in your analysis. With that said, the process of descriptive analysis usually consists of the same few steps.

Collect data

The first step in any type of data analysis is to collect the data. This can be done in a variety of ways, but surveys and good old fashioned measurements are often used.

Another important step in descriptive and other types of data analysis is to clean the data. This is because data may be formatted in inaccessible ways, which will make it difficult to manipulate with statistics. Cleaning data may involve changing its textual format, categorizing it, and/or removing outliers.

Apply methods

Finally, descriptive analysis involves applying the chosen statistical methods so as to draw the desired conclusions. What methods you choose will depend on the data you are dealing with and what you are looking to determine. If in doubt, review the four types of descriptive analysis methods explained above.

When to Do Descriptive Analysis

Descriptive analysis is often used when reviewing any past or present data. This is because raw data is difficult to consume and interpret, while the metrics offered by descriptive analysis are much more focused.

Descriptive analysis can also be conducted as the precursor to diagnostic or predictive analysis , providing insights into what has happened in the past before attempting to explain why it happened or predicting what will happen in the future.

Descriptive Analysis Example

As an example of descriptive analysis, consider an insurance company analyzing its customer base.

The insurance company may know certain traits about its customers, such as their gender, age, and nationality. To gain a better profile of their customers, the insurance company can apply descriptive analysis.

Measures of frequency can be used to identify how many customers are under a certain age; measures of central tendency can be used to identify who most of their customers are; measures of dispersion can be used to identify the variation in, for example, the age of their customers; finally, measures of position can be used to compare segments of customers based on specific traits.

Final Thoughts

Descriptive analysis is a popular type of data analysis. It's often conducted before diagnostic or predictive analysis, as it simply aims to describe and summarize past data.

To do so, descriptive analysis uses a variety of statistical techniques, including measures of frequency, central tendency, dispersion, and position. How exactly you conduct descriptive analysis will depend on what you are looking to find out, but the steps usually involve collecting, cleaning, and finally analyzing data.

In any case, this business analysis process is invaluable when working with data.

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Home Numéros 59 1 - Tisser les liens : voyager, e... 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teac...

36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau

L'auteur américain Henry David Thoreau est un écrivain du voyage qui a rarement quitté sa ville natale de Concorde, Massachusetts, où il a vécu de 1817 à 1862. Son approche du "voyage" consiste à accorder une profonde attention à son environnement ordinaire et à voir le monde à partir de perspectives multiples, comme il l'explique avec subtilité dans Walden (1854). Inspiré par Thoreau et par la célèbre série de gravures du peintre d'estampes japonais Katsushika Hokusai, intitulée 36 vues du Mt. Fuji (1830-32), j'ai fait un cours sur "L'écriture thoreauvienne du voyage" à l'Université de l'Idaho, que j'appelle 36 vues des montagnes de Moscow: ou, Faire un grand voyage — l'esprit et le carnet ouvert — dans un petit lieu . Cet article explore la philosophie et les stratégies pédagogiques de ce cours, qui tente de partager avec les étudiants les vertus d'un regard neuf sur le monde, avec les yeux vraiment ouverts, avec le regard d'un voyageur, en "faisant un grand voyage" à Moscow, Idaho. Les étudiants affinent aussi leurs compétences d'écriture et apprennent les traditions littéraires et artistiques associées au voyage et au sens du lieu.

Index terms

Keywords: , designing a writing class to foster engagement.

1 The signs at the edge of town say, "Entering Moscow, Idaho. Population 25,060." This is a small hamlet in the midst of a sea of rolling hills, where farmers grow varieties of wheat, lentils, peas, and garbanzo beans, irrigated by natural rainfall. Although the town of Moscow has a somewhat cosmopolitan feel because of the presence of the University of Idaho (with its 13,000 students and a few thousand faculty and staff members), elegant restaurants, several bookstores and music stores, and a patchwork of artsy coffee shops on Main Street, the entire mini-metropolis has only about a dozen traffic lights and a single high school. As a professor of creative writing and the environmental humanities at the university, I have long been interested in finding ways to give special focuses to my writing and literature classes that will help my students think about the circumstances of their own lives and find not only academic meaning but personal significance in our subjects. I have recently taught graduate writing workshops on such themes as "The Body" and "Crisis," but when I was given the opportunity recently to teach an undergraduate writing class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, I decided to choose a focus that would bring me—and my students—back to one of the writers who has long been of central interest to me: Henry David Thoreau.

2 One of the courses I have routinely taught during the past six years is Environmental Writing, an undergraduate class that I offer as part of the university's Semester in the Wild Program, a unique undergraduate opportunity that sends a small group of students to study five courses (Ecology, Environmental History, Environmental Writing, Outdoor Leadership and Wilderness Survival, and Wilderness Management and Policy) at a remote research station located in the middle of the largest wilderness area (the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness) in the United States south of Alaska. In "Teaching with Wolves," a recent article about the Semester in the Wild Program, I explained that my goal in the Environmental Writing class is to help the students "synthesize their experience in the wilderness with the content of the various classes" and "to think ahead to their professional lives and their lives as engaged citizens, for which critical thinking and communication skills are so important" (325). A foundational text for the Environmental Writing class is a selection from Thoreau's personal journal, specifically the entries he made October 1-20, 1853, which I collected in the 1993 writing textbook Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers . I ask the students in the Semester in the Wild Program to deeply immerse themselves in Thoreau's precise and colorful descriptions of the physical world that is immediately present to him and, in turn, to engage with their immediate encounters with the world in their wilderness location. Thoreau's entries read like this:

Oct. 4. The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing. The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost. Bumblebees are on the Aster undulates , and gnats are dancing in the air. Oct. 5. The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds extremely like a loon on the pond. How fit! Oct. 6 and 7. Windy. Elms bare. (372)

3 In thinking ahead to my class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, which would be offered on the main campus of the University of Idaho in the fall semester of 2018, I wanted to find a topic that would instill in my students the Thoreauvian spirit of visceral engagement with the world, engagement on the physical, emotional, and philosophical levels, while still allowing my students to remain in the city and live their regular lives as students. It occurred to me that part of what makes Thoreau's journal, which he maintained almost daily from 1837 (when he was twenty years old) to 1861 (just a year before his death), such a rich and elegant work is his sense of being a traveler, even when not traveling geographically.

Traveling a Good Deal in Moscow

I have traveled a good deal in Concord…. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; 4)

4 For Thoreau, one did not need to travel a substantial physical distance in order to be a traveler, in order to bring a traveler's frame of mind to daily experience. His most famous book, Walden , is well known as an account of the author's ideas and daily experiments in simple living during the two years, two months, and two days (July 4, 1845, to September 6, 1847) he spent inhabiting a simple wooden house that he built on the shore of Walden Pond, a small lake to the west of Boston, Massachusetts. Walden Pond is not a remote location—it is not out in the wilderness. It is on the edge of a small village, much like Moscow, Idaho. The concept of "traveling a good deal in Concord" is a kind of philosophical and psychological riddle. What does it mean to travel extensively in such a small place? The answer to this question is meaningful not only to teachers hoping to design writing classes in the spirit of Thoreau but to all who are interested in travel as an experience and in the literary genre of travel writing.

5 Much of Walden is an exercise in deftly establishing a playful and intellectually challenging system of synonyms, an array of words—"economy," "deliberateness," "simplicity," "dawn," "awakening," "higher laws," etc.—that all add up to powerful probing of what it means to live a mindful and attentive life in the world. "Travel" serves as a key, if subtle, metaphor for the mindful life—it is a metaphor and also, in a sense, a clue: if we can achieve the traveler's perspective without going far afield, then we might accomplish a kind of enlightenment. Thoreau's interest in mindfulness becomes clear in chapter two of Walden , "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," in which he writes, "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" The latter question implies the author's feeling that he is himself merely evolving as an awakened individual, not yet fully awake, or mindful, in his efforts to live "a poetic or divine life" (90). Thoreau proceeds to assert that "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" (90). Just what this endeavor might be is not immediately spelled out in the text, but the author does quickly point out the value of focusing on only a few activities or ideas at a time, so as not to let our lives be "frittered away by detail." He writes: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; … and keep your accounts on your thumb nail" (91). The strong emphasis in the crucial second chapter of Walden is on the importance of waking up and living deliberately through a conscious effort to engage in particular activities that support such awakening. It occurs to me that "travel," or simply making one's way through town with the mindset of a traveler, could be one of these activities.

6 It is in the final chapter of the book, titled "Conclusion," that Thoreau makes clear the relationship between travel and living an attentive life. He begins the chapter by cataloguing the various physical locales throughout North America or around the world to which one might travel—Canada, Ohio, Colorado, and even Tierra del Fuego. But Thoreau states: "Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after." What comes next is brief quotation from the seventeenth-century English poet William Habbington (but presented anonymously in Thoreau's text), which might be one of the most significant passages in the entire book:

Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography. (320)

7 This admonition to travel the mysterious territory of one's own mind and master the strange cosmos of the self is actually a challenge to the reader—and probably to the author himself—to focus on self-reflection and small-scale, local movement as if such activities were akin to exploration on a grand, planetary scale. What is really at issue here is not the physical distance of one's journey, but the mental flexibility of one's approach to the world, one's ability to look at the world with a fresh, estranged point of view. Soon after his discussion of the virtues of interior travel, Thoreau explains why he left his simple home at Walden Pond after a few years of experimental living there, writing, "It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves" (323). In other words, no matter what we're doing in life, we can fall into a "beaten track" if we're not careful, thus failing to stay "awake."

8 As I thought about my writing class at the University of Idaho, I wondered how I might design a series of readings and writing exercises for university students that would somehow emulate the Thoreauvian objective of achieving ultra-mindfulness in a local environment. One of the greatest challenges in designing such a class is the fact that it took Thoreau himself many years to develop an attentiveness to his environment and his own emotional rhythms and an efficiency of expression that would enable him to describe such travel-without-travel, and I would have only sixteen weeks to achieve this with my own students. The first task, I decided, was to invite my students into the essential philosophical stance of the class, and I did this by asking my students to read the opening chapter of Walden ("Economy") in which he talks about traveling "a good deal" in his small New England village as well as the second chapter and the conclusion, which reveal the author's enthusiasm (some might even say obsession ) for trying to achieve an awakened condition and which, in the end, suggest that waking up to the meaning of one's life in the world might be best accomplished by attempting the paradoxical feat of becoming "expert in home-cosmography." As I stated it among the objectives for my course titled 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Or, Traveling a Good Deal—with Open Minds and Notebooks—in a Small Place , one of our goals together (along with practicing nonfiction writing skills and learning about the genre of travel writing) would be to "Cultivate a ‘Thoreauvian' way of appreciating the subtleties of the ordinary world."

Windy. Elms Bare.

9 For me, the elegance and heightened sensitivity of Thoreau's engagement with place is most movingly exemplified in his journal, especially in the 1850s after he's mastered the art of observation and nuanced, efficient description of specific natural phenomena and environmental conditions. His early entries in the journal are abstract mini-essays on such topics as truth, beauty, and "The Poet," but over time the journal notations become so immersed in the direct experience of the more-than-human world, in daily sensory experiences, that the pronoun "I" even drops out of many of these records. Lawrence Buell aptly describes this Thoreauvian mode of expression as "self-relinquishment" (156) in his 1995 book The Environmental Imagination , suggesting such writing "question[s] the authority of the superintending consciousness. As such, it opens up the prospect of a thoroughgoing perceptual breakthrough, suggesting the possibility of a more ecocentric state of being than most of us have dreamed of" (144-45). By the time Thoreau wrote "Windy. Elms bare" (372) as his single entry for October 6 and 7, 1853, he had entered what we might call an "ecocentric zone of consciousness" in his work, attaining the ability to channel his complex perceptions of season change (including meteorology and botany and even his own emotional state) into brief, evocative prose.

10 I certainly do not expect my students to be able to do such writing after only a brief introduction to the course and to Thoreau's own methods of journal writing, but after laying the foundation of the Thoreauvian philosophy of nearby travel and explaining to my students what I call the "building blocks of the personal essay" (description, narration, and exposition), I ask them to engage in a preliminary journal-writing exercise that involves preparing five journal entries, each "a paragraph or two in length," that offer detailed physical descriptions of ordinary phenomena from their lives (plants, birds, buildings, street signs, people, food, etc.), emphasizing shape, color, movement or change, shadow, and sometimes sound, smell, taste, and/or touch. The goal of the journal entries, I tell the students, is to begin to get them thinking about close observation, vivid descriptive language, and the potential to give their later essays in the class an effective texture by balancing more abstract information and ideas with evocative descriptive passages and storytelling.

11 I am currently teaching this class, and I am writing this article in early September, as we are entering the fourth week of the semester. The students have just completed the journal-writing exercise and are now preparing to write the first of five brief essays on different aspects of Moscow that will eventually be braided together, as discrete sections of the longer piece, into a full-scale literary essay about Moscow, Idaho, from the perspective of a traveler. For the journal exercise, my students wrote some rather remarkable descriptive statements, which I think bodes well for their upcoming work. One student, Elizabeth Isakson, wrote stunning journal descriptions of a cup of coffee, her own feet, a lemon, a basil leaf, and a patch of grass. For instance, she wrote:

Steaming hot liquid poured into a mug. No cream, just black. Yet it appears the same brown as excretion. The texture tells another story with meniscus that fades from clear to gold and again brown. The smell is intoxicating for those who are addicted. Sweetness fills the nostrils; bitterness rushes over the tongue. The contrast somehow complements itself. Earthy undertones flower up, yet this beverage is much more satisfying than dirt. When the mug runs dry, specks of dark grounds remain swimming in the sunken meniscus. Steam no longer rises because energy has found a new home.

12 For the grassy lawn, she wrote:

Calico with shades of green, the grass is yellowing. Once vibrant, it's now speckled with straw. Sticking out are tall, seeding dandelions. Still some dips in the ground have maintained thick, soft patches of green. The light dances along falling down from the trees above, creating a stained-glass appearance made from various green shades. The individual blades are stiff enough to stand erect, but they will yield to even slight forces of wind or pressure. Made from several long strands seemingly fused together, some blades fray at the end, appearing brittle. But they do not simply break off; they hold fast to the blade to which they belong.

13 The point of this journal writing is for the students to look closely enough at ordinary reality to feel estranged from it, as if they have never before encountered (or attempted to describe) a cup of coffee or a field of grass—or a lemon or a basil leaf or their own body. Thus, the Thoreauvian objective of practicing home-cosmography begins to take shape. The familiar becomes exotic, note-worthy, and strangely beautiful, just as it often does for the geographical travel writer, whose adventures occur far away from where she or he normally lives. Travel, in a sense, is an antidote to complacency, to over-familiarity. But the premise of my class in Thoreauvian travel writing is that a slight shift of perspective can overcome the complacency we might naturally feel in our home surroundings. To accomplish this we need a certain degree of disorientation. This is the next challenge for our class.

The Blessing of Being Lost

14 Most of us take great pains to "get oriented" and "know where we're going," whether this is while running our daily errands or when thinking about the essential trajectories of our lives. We're often instructed by anxious parents to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, if only for the sake of basic safety. But the traveler operates according to a somewhat different set of priorities, perhaps, elevating adventure and insight above basic comfort and security, at least to some degree. This certainly seems to be the case for the Thoreauvian traveler, or for Thoreau himself. In Walden , he writes:

…not until we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. (171)

15 I could explicate this passage at length, but that's not really my purpose here. I read this as a celebration of salutary disorientation, of the potential to be lost in such a way as to deepen one's ability to pay attention to oneself and one's surroundings, natural and otherwise. If travel is to a great degree an experience uniquely capable of triggering attentiveness to our own physical and psychological condition, to other cultures and the minds and needs of other people, and to a million small details of our environment that we might take for granted at home but that accrue special significance when we're away, I would argue that much of this attentiveness is owed to the sense of being lost, even the fear of being lost, that often happens when we leave our normal habitat.

16 So in my class I try to help my students "get lost" in a positive way. Here in Moscow, the major local landmark is a place called Moscow Mountain, a forested ridge of land just north of town, running approximately twenty kilometers to the east of the city. Moscow "Mountain" does not really have a single, distinctive peak like a typical mountain—it is, as I say, more of a ridge than a pinnacle. When I began contemplating this class on Thoreauvian travel writing, the central concepts I had in mind were Thoreau's notion of traveling a good deal in Concord and also the idea of looking at a specific place from many different angles. The latter idea is not only Thoreauvian, but perhaps well captured in the eighteen-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's series of woodblock prints known as 36 Views of Mt. Fuji , which offers an array of different angles on the mountain itself and on other landscape features (lakes, the sea, forests, clouds, trees, wind) and human behavior which is represented in many of the prints, often with Mt. Fuji in the distant background or off to the side. In fact, I imagine Hokusai's approach to representing Mt. Fuji as so important to the concept of this travel writing class that I call the class "36 Views of Moscow Mountain," symbolizing the multiple approaches I'll be asking my students to take in contemplating and describing not only Moscow Mountain itself, but the culture and landscape and the essential experience of Moscow the town. The idea of using Hokusai's series of prints as a focal point of this class came to me, in part, from reading American studies scholar Cathy Davidson's 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , a memoir that offers sixteen short essays about different facets of her life as a visiting professor in that island nation.

17 The first of five brief essays my students will prepare for the class is what I'm calling a "Moscow Mountain descriptive essay," building upon the small descriptive journal entries they've written recently. In this case, though, I am asking the students to describe the shapes and colors of the Moscow Mountain ridge, while also telling a brief story or two about their observations of the mountain, either by visiting the mountain itself to take a walk or a bike ride or by explaining how they glimpse portions of the darkly forested ridge in the distance while walking around the University of Idaho campus or doing things in town. In preparation for the Moscow Mountain essays, we read several essays or book chapters that emphasize "organizing principles" in writing, often the use of particular landscape features, such as trees or mountains, as a literary focal point. For instance, in David Gessner's "Soaring with Castro," from his 2007 book Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , he not only refers to La Gran Piedra (a small mountain in southeastern Cuba) as a narrative focal point, but to the osprey, or fish eagle, itself and its migratory journey as an organizing principle for his literary project (203). Likewise, in his essay "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot," Chicago author Leonard Dubkin writes about his decision, as a newly fired journalist, to climb up a tree in Chicago's Lincoln Park to observe and listen to the birds that gather in the green branches in the evening, despite the fact that most adults would consider this a strange and inappropriate activity. We also looked at several of Hokusai's woodblock prints and analyzed these together in class, trying to determine how the mountain served as an organizing principle for each print or whether there were other key features of the prints—clouds, ocean waves, hats and pieces of paper floating in the wind, humans bent over in labor—that dominate the images, with Fuji looking on in the distance.

18 I asked my students to think of Hokusai's representations of Mt. Fuji as aesthetic models, or metaphors, for what they might try to do in their brief (2-3 pages) literary essays about Moscow Mountain. What I soon discovered was that many of my students, even students who have spent their entire lives in Moscow, either were not aware of Moscow Mountain at all or had never actually set foot on the mountain. So we spent half an hour during one class session, walking to a vantage point on the university campus, where I could point out where the mountain is and we could discuss how one might begin to write about such a landscape feature in a literary essay. Although I had thought of the essay describing the mountain as a way of encouraging the students to think about a familiar landscape as an orienting device, I quickly learned that this will be a rather challenging exercise for many of the students, as it will force them to think about an object or a place that is easily visible during their ordinary lives, but that they typically ignore. Paying attention to the mountain, the ridge, will compel them to reorient themselves in this city and think about a background landscape feature that they've been taking for granted until now. I think of this as an act of disorientation or being lost—a process of rethinking their own presence in this town that has a nearby mountain that most of them seldom think about. I believe Thoreau would consider this a good, healthy experience, a way of being present anew in a familiar place.

36 Views—Or, When You Invert Your Head

19 Another key aspect of Hokusai's visual project and Thoreau's literary project is the idea of changing perspective. One can view Mt. Fuji from 36 different points of views, or from thousands of different perspectives, and it is never quite the same place—every perspective is original, fresh, mind-expanding. The impulse to shift perspective in pursuit of mindfulness is also ever-present in Thoreau's work, particularly in his personal journal and in Walden . This idea is particularly evident, to me, in the chapter of Walden titled "The Ponds," where he writes:

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distinct pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. (186)

20 Elsewhere in the chapter, Thoreau describes the view of the pond from the top of nearby hills and the shapes and colors of pebbles in the water when viewed from close up. He chances physical perspective again and again throughout the chapter, but it is in the act of looking upside down, actually suggesting that one might invert one's head, that he most vividly conveys the idea of looking at the world in different ways in order to be lost and awakened, just as the traveler to a distant land might feel lost and invigorated by such exposure to an unknown place.

21 After asking students to write their first essay about Moscow Mountain, I give them four additional short essays to write, each two to four pages long. We read short examples of place-based essays, some of them explicitly related to travel, and then the students work on their own essays on similar topics. The second short essay is about food—I call this the "Moscow Meal" essay. We read the final chapter of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), "The Perfect Meal," and Anthony Bourdain's chapter "Where Cooks Come From" in the book A Cook's Tour (2001) are two of the works we study in preparation for the food essay. The three remaining short essays including a "Moscow People" essay (exploring local characters are important facets of the place), a more philosophical essay about "the concept of Moscow," and a final "Moscow Encounter" essay that tells the story of a dramatic moment of interaction with a person, an animal, a memorable thing to eat or drink, a sunset, or something else. Along the way, we read the work of Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stafford, Paul Theroux, and other authors. Before each small essay is due, we spend a class session holding small-group workshops, allowing the students to discuss their essays-in-progress with each other and share portions of their manuscripts. The idea is that they will learn about writing even by talking with each other about their essays. In addition to writing about Moscow from various angles, they will learn about additional points of view by considering the angles of insight developed by their fellow students. All of this is the writerly equivalent of "inverting [their] heads."

Beneath the Smooth Skin of Place

22 Aside from Thoreau's writing and Hokusai's images, perhaps the most important writer to provide inspiration for this class is Indiana-based essayist Scott Russell Sanders. Shortly after introducing the students to Thoreau's key ideas in Walden and to the richness of his descriptive writing in the journal, I ask them to read his essay "Buckeye," which first appeared in Sanders's Writing from the Center (1995). "Buckeye" demonstrates the elegant braiding together of descriptive, narrative, and expository/reflective prose, and it also offers a strong argument about the importance of creating literature and art about place—what he refers to as "shared lore" (5)—as a way of articulating the meaning of a place and potentially saving places that would otherwise be exploited for resources, flooded behind dams, or otherwise neglected or damaged. The essay uses many of the essential literary devices, ranging from dialogue to narrative scenes, that I hope my students will practice in their own essays, while also offering a vivid argument in support of the kind of place-based writing the students are working on.

23 Another vital aspect of our work together in this class is the effort to capture the wonderful idiosyncrasies of this place, akin to the idiosyncrasies of any place that we examine closely enough to reveal its unique personality. Sanders's essay "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," which we study together in Week 9 of the course, addresses this topic poignantly. The author challenges readers to learn the "durable realities" of the places where they live, the details of "watershed, biome, habitat, food-chain, climate, topography, ecosystem and the areas defined by these natural features they call bioregions" (17). "The earth," he writes, "needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants" (16). By Week 9 of the semester, the students have written about Moscow Mountain, about local food, and about local characters, and they are ready at this point to reflect on some of the more philosophical dimensions of living in a small academic village surrounded by farmland and beyond that surrounded by the Cascade mountain range to the West and the Rockies to the East. "We need a richer vocabulary of place" (18), urges Sanders. By this point in the semester, by reading various examples of place-based writing and by practicing their own powers of observation and expression, my students will, I hope, have developed a somewhat richer vocabulary to describe their own experiences in this specific place, a place they've been trying to explore with "open minds and notebooks." Sanders argues that

if we pay attention, we begin to notice patterns in the local landscape. Perceiving those patterns, acquiring names and theories and stories for them, we cease to be tourists and become inhabitants. The bioregional consciousness I am talking about means bearing your place in mind, keeping track of its condition and needs, committing yourself to its care. (18)

24 Many of my students will spend only four or five years in Moscow, long enough to earn a degree before moving back to their hometowns or journeying out into the world in pursuit of jobs or further education. Moscow will be a waystation for some of these student writers, not a permanent home. Yet I am hoping that this semester-long experiment in Thoreauvian attentiveness and place-based writing will infect these young people with both the bioregional consciousness Sanders describes and a broader fascination with place, including the cultural (yes, the human ) dimensions of this and any other place. I feel such a mindfulness will enrich the lives of my students, whether they remain here or move to any other location on the planet or many such locations in succession.

25 Toward the end of "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," Sanders tells the story of encountering a father with two young daughters near a city park in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives. Sanders is "grazing" on wild mulberries from a neighborhood tree, and the girls are keen to join him in savoring the local fruit. But their father pulls them away, stating, "Thank you very much, but we never eat anything that grows wild. Never ever." To this Sanders responds: "If you hold by that rule, you will not get sick from eating poison berries, but neither will you be nourished from eating sweet ones. Why not learn to distinguish one from the other? Why feed belly and mind only from packages?" (19-20). By looking at Moscow Mountain—and at Moscow, Idaho, more broadly—from numerous points of view, my students, I hope, will nourish their own bellies and minds with the wild fruit and ideas of this place. I say this while chewing a tart, juicy, and, yes, slightly sweet plum that I pulled from a feral tree in my own Moscow neighborhood yesterday, an emblem of engagement, of being here.

Bibliography

BUELL, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture , Harvard University Press, 1995.

DAVIDSON, Cathy, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , Duke University Press, 2006.

DUBKIN, Leonard, "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot." Enchanted Streets: The Unlikely Adventures of an Urban Nature Lover , Little, Brown and Company, 1947, 34-42.

GESSNER, David, Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , Beacon, 2007.

ISAKSON, Elizabeth, "Journals." Assignment for 36 Views of Moscow Mountain (English 208), University of Idaho, Fall 2018.

SANDERS, Scott Russell, "Buckeye" and "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America." Writing from the Center , Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 1-8, 9-21.

SLOVIC, Scott, "Teaching with Wolves", Western American Literature 52.3 (Fall 2017): 323-31.

THOREAU, Henry David, "October 1-20, 1853", Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers , edited by Scott H. Slovic and Terrell F. Dixon, Macmillan, 1993, 371-75.

THOREAU, Henry David, Walden . 1854. Princeton University Press, 1971.

Bibliographical reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” , Caliban , 59 | 2018, 41-54.

Electronic reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” , Caliban [Online], 59 | 2018, Online since 01 June 2018 , connection on 23 August 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/3688; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.3688

About the author

Scott slovic.

University of Idaho Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA. The author and editor of many books and articles, he edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment from 1995 to 2020. His latest coedited book is The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (2019).

By this author

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Foreword: Thinking of “Earth Island” on Earth Day 2016 [Full text] Published in Caliban , 55 | 2016

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69-70 | 2023 Caliban at 60
67-68 | 2022 Religious Dispute and Toleration in Early Modern Literature and History
65-66 | 2021 Peterloo 1819 and After: Perspectives from Britain and Beyond
64 | 2020 Animal Love. Considering Animal Attachments in Anglophone Literature and Culture
63 | 2020 Dynamics of Collapse in Fantasy, the Fantastic and SF
62 | 2019 Female Suffrage in British Art, Literature and History
61 | 2019 Land’s Furrows and Sorrows in Anglophone Countries
60 | 2018 The Life of Forgetting in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century British Literature
59 | 2018 Anglophone Travel and Exploration Writing: Meetings Between the Human and Nonhuman
58 | 2017 The Mediterranean and its Hinterlands
57 | 2017 The Animal Question in Alice Munro's Stories
56 | 2016 Disappearances - American literature and arts
55 | 2016 Sharing the Planet
54 | 2015 Forms of Diplomacy (16 th -21 st century)
53 | 2015 Representing World War One: Art’s Response to War
52 | 2014 Caliban and his transmutations

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COMMENTS

15 Good Descriptive Essay Examples for All Students
Descriptive Essay Example 5 Paragraph. 5 paragraphs essay writing format is the most common method of composing an essay. This format has 5 paragraphs in total. The sequence of the paragraphs is as follows; Introduction. Body Paragraph 1. Body Paragraph 2. Body Paragraph 3. Conclusion.
Easy Ways to Teach Descriptive Writing
A fun descriptive writing activity is to ask students to bring in a picture (or provide them) of a vacation spot. Day 1: Have students write a descriptive paragraph for their pictures. Encourage them to be so descriptive that readers will be able to see the picture in their mind. Collect the writing and pictures.
How to Write a Descriptive Essay
An example of a short descriptive essay, written in response to the prompt "Describe a place you love to spend time in," is shown below. Hover over different parts of the text to see how a descriptive essay works. On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green ...
Descriptive Writing
Here are some routines and structures for teaching descriptive writing: The RAFT strategy encourages descriptive writing and supports writing in general by encouraging students to think through the writer's Role, the Audience, the Format, and the Topic. ReadWriteThink offers this RAFT Writing Template.; This Sense Chart (opens in a new window) — organized into sight, sound, smell, taste ...
12 Creative Descriptive Essay Prompts
The 12 descriptive essay prompts here, give you the freedom to develop your content in different ways, and with a lot of sensory details. They are divided into 4 categories: person, place, object, and experience. Each type has 3 descriptive essay writing ideas. For each writing prompt, brainstorm how you can develop that essay.
How to Teach Descriptive Writing
Below are a few of my favorite relatable poems to teach descriptive writing techniques. When you teach descriptive writing with poetry you need to read the poem aloud to students, multiple times. The first time, read it all the way through without stopping, this is called a cold read. The second time, tell students to pay attention to the ...
Descriptive Writing Assignment
Descriptive Writing Assignment. Use one of the pictures linked below or a picture of your favorite park, your car, or even your room. First you will write a descriptive paragraph about the picture you choose. It should be 12-14 sentences in length. It should also contain at least FIVE examples of figurative language.
Descriptive Essays
What is a descriptive essay? The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe something—object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation, etc. This genre encourages the student's ability to create a written account of a particular experience. What is more, this genre allows for a great deal of artistic ...
How to Write a Descriptive Essay: Step-by-Step Guide
Best Tips for Writing a Descriptive Essay. Outline the essay in sections and create a thesis statement to base the essay on. Then, write a strong introduction and describe the subject matter using creative and vivid adjectives. Use similes, metaphors, and your own emotions to help you bring the topic to life. Part 1.
Descriptive Essay
Descriptive writing should create a picture in the reader's mind. You may be required to write a descriptive essay as a high school or college essay assignment. For a compelling essay, using adjectives and adverbs, details, and figurative language is fundamental. Without proper usage of words, you will not be able to invoke the readers' emotions.
120+ Fascinating Essay Topics for High School Students
The following ideas work well for compare-contrast essays. ( Find 80+ compare-contrast essay topics for all ages here.) Public and private schools. Capitalism vs. communism. Monarchy or democracy. Dogs vs. cats as pets. WeAreTeachers. Paper books or e-books. Two political candidates in a current race.
Descriptive Writing Activities for High School
This means that students will need to be able to master descriptive writing. These activities will give them opportunities to practice using language to create vivid imagery in their writing ...
43 Dynamic Writing Prompts for High School
Writing prompts for high school can be tricky to navigate. You don't want to be too basic, but maybe not too niche, either. ... Descriptive Writing Prompts for Teens. Many high school composition assignments focus on descriptive writing.
PDF Grab-and-Go Writing Activity: Writing More Descriptive, Specific
Writing More Descriptive Sentences: Sample Student Essay Directions: Here is a sample review essay paragraph from a student outlining a menu option available at a local tea house. Identify sentences that you think could benefit from more specific and descriptive language. Underneath the paragraph, edit a few of these sentences using some of
Descriptive Writing Rubric
Descriptive Writing Rubric. (Adapted from GAVL assignment) Total points possible = 50. Word Count (250-500) 5 points. Introduction and Conclusion 10 points. One Simile 5 points. One Metaphor 5 points. Sensory language (3 out of 5 senses) 15 points. MLA format 10.
60 Descriptive Writing Prompts for the Classroom
Describing Personal Events - Fiction or Nonfiction. Use these descriptive writing prompts to let students reflect on their past and future. They will love sharing their lives with the class and using descriptive writing to do so. Describe the most interesting person you have ever met. Talk about a person you envy in detail.
Descriptive Writing Project: Creative Middle and High School ELA Assignment
With clear guidelines and inspiring examples, this project fosters essential writing skills and highlights the impact of descriptive writing. Ideal for high school English and language arts classes, this resource brings literary merit into the classroom and provides a meaningful, enjoyable writing experience.
100 Great Free Descriptive Essay Topics For College
These 100 topics for descriptive essay writing assignments are excellent for high school or college-aged students alike. Use them as is or as inspiration. Questions? Call us: Toll Free +1(888) 462-2522. ... Explain a difficult obstacle high school students must learn to overcome.
50 Writing Prompts For High School Sophomores [PDF Included]
Furthermore, they can also be used in many creative writing activities. So, here's a list of 50 creative writing prompts to help young sophomores experiment with their creativity! Write a story about a time traveler who goes back in time to prevent a tragedy. Imagine a world where animals can talk. Write a story about a young girl who ...
The basics of english comp 1.1 (Sophia) Flashcards
Age. Select the true statement about purpose in writing. A writer's purpose will determine the mode of composition. Avery is writing an email to her circle of friends, urging them to vote in the upcoming election.Considering her audience and purpose, Avery should use which type of language in her email? Personal.
English comp 2.2 (Sophia) Flashcards
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Russell is writing an 8-10 page informative essay on the causes of the American Civil War.Select the topic that would be too narrow given the specifics of the assignment., Anya is writing a one-page informative essay.Select the topic that would be most appropriate given the specifics of the assignment., Margo is writing a one ...
Descriptive Analysis: How-To, Types, Examples
In descriptive analysis, it's also worth knowing the central (or average) event or response. Common measures of central tendency include the three averages — mean, median, and mode. As an example, consider a survey in which the height of 1,000 people is measured. In this case, the mean average would be a very helpful descriptive metric.
36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in
BUELL, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, Harvard University Press, 1995. DAVIDSON, Cathy, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan, Duke University Press, 2006. DUBKIN, Leonard, "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot." Enchanted Streets: The Unlikely Adventures of an Urban Nature Lover, Little, Brown ...

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12 Creative Descriptive Essay Prompts

“Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.” –Stephen King

How to Select a Descriptive Essay Prompt

Descriptive WritingTopics About a Person

# 2 Describe a person you envied .

# 3 Describe an inspiring friend or family member.

Descriptive Writing Topics About a Place

# 5 Describe a place you loved as a child.

# 6 Describe a beautiful location in nature.

Descriptive WritingTopics About an Object

# 7 Describe a lucky object.

# 8 Describe a piece of art.

# 9 Describe an object used in your favorite sport or hobby.

Descriptive Essay Topics About an Experience

# 11 Describe a hike or special walk you took .

# 12 Describe a happy memory.

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Physical Features

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Use Of Specific Vocabulary

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Living Beings

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Event Or Travel Experience

Idea, Concept, or Occupation

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