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VIVID DESCRIPTIONS.  Any time you write, you should always try to include clear, easy to understand descriptions that let your reader see exactly what.

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Presentation on theme: "VIVID DESCRIPTIONS.  Any time you write, you should always try to include clear, easy to understand descriptions that let your reader see exactly what."— Presentation transcript:

1 VIVID DESCRIPTIONS

2  Any time you write, you should always try to include clear, easy to understand descriptions that let your reader see exactly what you're talking about. You can't describe every second and every item in strenuous detail you have to pick-and-choose the most important parts of your writing, carefully selecting to describe parts that will have the most impact for the reader and which are most important to your story or essay.

3  Sensory details – which appeals to the sense of sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste. Example: It smelt like rotting food in a garbage can…It looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat, swung it widely, trashing the place….It tasted like stale, moldy bread.  Concrete and specific details, not general and abstract. Example: Peter Wright, a student in grade 12, wrote a prose poem about social networking on Twitter.  Authentic details. Your details ought to be original. A good way to start is by freewriting and learning how to think “outside of the box.” In other words, you need to learn creating thinking skills, such as changing perspective, asking why, brainstorming, seeking out alternative ways of describe something.  Precise details, getting it “just right.” Use a dictionary and thesaurus.  Don’t be literal. Instead use figurative devices, such as simile, metaphor, symbol, allusion, personification.

4 COLOR  Don't just say "green", be specific about what shade or hue, and feel free to get into some similes and metaphors or other comparisons to help the reader picture it exactly as you see it in your head.  Example: The leaves of the tree in spring were glittering emeralds, shimmering in the light; in places, the green was as dark as a shadow at midnight, while in others, it sparkled like LED beacons.

5 SIZE  As with color, be specific and give easy-to-relate-to comparisons that allow the reader to get a strong mental image of what you're describing.  Example: Instead of saying, " The horse was big "... My father, a tall man, was dwarfed by the horse; his head barely reached the beast's shoulders. It had to be nearly ten feet tall from the ground to the tip of its ears.

6 SOUND  Nowhere is comparison and analogy more important than when discussing sound. There are few words that can accurately capture volume, and people have a very wide range of tolerances for sound that one person's "loud" is another person's "inaudible".  Example: Instead of saying, " The music was loud "... The music coming out of the speakers caused Jim's insides to shake and rumble. Items on his shelves were bouncing in time to the beat, getting ready to jump to the floor, which itself was vibrating.

7 EXAMPLES  Plump shrimp, sautéed with chili flakes and served with a salad of oyster mushrooms, cucumber and corn, turned out to be everything I wanted on a Saturday morning: fresh, vibrant and crunchy, with just enough spicy zing to wake me up.

8 EXAMPLES  Broiling a nice juicy steak until it spatters and hisses and crusts up in all the right places is wonderful. Roasting a chicken and seeing the skin crisp up in the oven while the meat goes tender beneath is lovely, too. And most of the ills in the world can be cured with a few savory pork-stuffed dumplings, dripping broth and juice.

9 WHAT TO AVOID  You should avoid using the following types of detail:  Trite details (boring; not fresh or original)  Clichés (Language that has been overused in speech and writing)  Abstractions, which appeal to the intellect, not the senses. Use concrete and specific details instead. Example: Don’t say he was kind. Say” He smiled, opened the oak door, allowed me to enter the church first.  Vague details. You must be precise and specific.


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