How to Write a Good Descriptive Essay

There are different types of essays that you can be required to write during the course of your student life. Some of them can be narrative, whereas some of them can be informative.

Descriptive essays are also quite common, and you can find yourself having to write one quite frequently.

In a nutshell, a descriptive essay is an essay that is written to describe something, be it a place, an event, a person, or an object. If the topic in question is being described, the essay will be said to be a descriptive essay.

But enough of that. We know what descriptive essays are now, sure. But how do you write them to begin with? That is the answer that we will be exploring in this blog post.

Steps to Write a Good Descriptive Essay

The First Step: Be Scrupulous About Your Topic

The first thing that you need to do when it comes to writing a good descriptive essay is to be careful about the topic.

If you pick a topic that you can easily write on, then you will be able to create a nice and engaging piece without trouble. On the other hand, if you pick a topic that you have little to no knowledge of, you’ll struggle with the basic stuff.

For example, it will be a lot easier for you to write on a topic such as “My Hometown” as compared to “The Science and Logic Behind Air Turbulence.”

So, in a nutshell, when choosing a topic, take to pick one that:

1. is interesting to you;
2. you have considerable knowledge about;
3. you can easily describe and delineate;
4. Is in line with the criterion set by your institute.

The Second Step: Lay Down a Proper Outline

The next thing that you have to do in your essay-writing process is to create a nice and comprehensive outline. The outline should cover the main sub-topics you’re going to be covering in your essay. Ideally, the outline should also demarcate the number of words you’re going to include in each section. That way, you won’t end up making one part of the essay too long and another one too short.

When creating the outline, you should keep in mind the standard format, i.e., the intro, main body, and conclusion. Although you can stretch out the main body to include as many sub-headings as you want, the main map should include these three parts.

Here is an example of how an outline could look like for a descriptive essay:

The Third Step: Start Writing

So, this is the main step of the whole process, and it is the one that requires the most focus and attention. And keeping that in mind, we will also elongate this section to include the necessary stuff.

Now, when it comes to writing, there are a number of different things that you have to be mindful of. Let’s take a look at them one by one:

1. Firstly, you have to consider the guidelines provided by your institute regarding the writing process. For one, there could be different instructions regarding the formatting of the content as well as the number of words to be included in it. You have to take care of all of these.
2. Then, when you start writing, keep your sentences and paragraphs short. You have to take care to keep the former under 20 words and the latter under four lines at the maximum.
3. You should also use easy-to-understand words for maximum readability. The more readable your content will be, the more easily it will be understood by the checkers.
4. When writing a descriptive essay, you should always substantiate all the claims that you make using statistics and studies. That way, the facts mentioned therein will be more convincing and believable.
5. Use descriptive words throughout the essay. Since you’ll be writing a descriptive essay, you need to make your writing as rich as possible. For example, instead of writing “in a confusingly winding way,” you can write “meandering.”

When writing the essay, you should strictly adhere to the outline created beforehand.

The Fourth Step: Checking and Editing

Once you are done with the writing phase, you have to move on to the last phase, i.e., the checking and proofreading. Here are some of the main things that you have to check during this process:

1. Grammar errors. This is probably the most important factor that you have to keep in mind when proofreading your essay. Grammar errors are quick to be made by you and easy to spot by others. You can take the help of a grammar checker if you don't trust yourself enough to find the errors on your own.
2. Plagiarism. If there is any plagiarism in your essay, it will most likely get rejected and turned down. Just as is the case with grammar errors, you can take help from online tools for spotting plagiarism.
3. Readability issues. Readability issues can spoil the quality of your essay. If there are any errors with the word choice or sentence structure, you can take the help of a sentence rephraser online. These types of tools can rephrase problematic sentences and make them flow nicely.

Conclusion

So, there you have it. Writing a descriptive essay isn’t that hard. You just have to take care of the steps that we’ve mentioned above, and you will be able to do it easily. We hope you had fun reading this and will be back for more in the future.

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