Description of a Place

Welcome to week four. Since two of the classes had a week off due to the Monday holiday, maybe it gave those of you who started late a chance to catch up. And since I was unable to put this into the Internet on time for the Friday class because the university server was down, I am very sorry about that. Maybe some of you were planning on working on your text yesterday and could not; if it caused any of you any inconvenience, then you may take the week off, too. Internet is a great thing but it is not perfect and there is no reason to let it put us under extra pressure. But I hope all of you are enjoying practicing your writing skills and getting some helpful feedback on your writing. This week we are sticking with the descriptive topic before moving on to less 'colorful' types of writing. So we will spend another week with a paint brush in our hands. Now that we have described someone, this week we are going to describe something, such as a building, a town square, an object, or a flower. The order of information can be similar to that when describing a person. It, too, is usually done spatially. The important thing to remember is that the description must be organized so that the reader can vividly imagine the scene being described. Imagine that you are describing a room for an artist to paint. Would you have the artist paint the ceiling white and the bed blue and then go back and put posters on the walls before painting the walls? Of course not! Those directions might irritate the artist. The same applies to describing for the reader, for you are the describer with words, and your reader is the painter who mentally re-creates what you are describing in the paragraph. Therefore, it will depend on the subject in what order the details are introduced. However, the selection and the description of details depend on the describer's purpose. Suppose that your cousin wrote and asked you to describe your room. Remember that your cousin is very interested in what you think about your life in the dorm. You might write the description like this: My dormitory room, on the second floor of Bienville Hall, is small and crowded. The dark green walls and dirty white ceiling make the room seem dark, and thus even smaller than it is. As you walk into the room, you are stopped short by my bed, which fills half of the room. The two large windows over the bed are hidden by heavy dark gold drapes. Against the wall on your left, pushed into a corner behind the head of the bed, is a large bookcase that is crammed with papers, books, and knickknacks. Wedged in between the bookcase and the wall opposite the bed is a small grey metal desk. It has a brown wooden chair that seems to fill the left end of the room. Stuffed under the desk is a woven wastepaper basket overflowing with paper and debris. The wall above the bookcase and desk is completely taken up with two small posters. On the right hand side of the room is a narrow closet with clothes, shoes, hats, tennis racquets, and boxes bulging out of its sliding doors. Every time I walk out of the door, I think, "Now I know what it is like to live in a closet." Sometimes, though, the description can focus on some object that dominates the scene or on something that is unusual in the scene. In this case, it may be desirable to focus on that object and describe it first, since it is the first thing noticed. In the paragraph describing a room, for example, the first thing the writer describes is the first thing the viewer sees: the walls, ceiling, and the bed straight ahead. Read the following description of a backyard and note the organization of the details. What is the controlling idea in the description? Our backyard is dominated by a huge old live oak tree. The base of the trunk measures approximately ten feet around. The thick muscular trunk rises solidly for about eight feet and then separates into four main branches. From these, the lower branches spread out horizontally over the ground, reaching into the neighbour's yards. The main branches continue to rise, up and up, where they compete with each other for air and sunlight. From these heights, the neighbourhood cardinals and blue jays sing to each other, keeping a sharp eye out for cats. As the birds sway in the wind, they look as if they are riding a ship across a gently swelling ocean. From these heights, too, it is easy to see the variety of shrubs and sweet-smelling flowers lining the two long sides of our rectangular yard, the small walkway along the back of the house, and the back fence that runs along the alley. If we look at the two example paragraphs, we see that both have a topic sentence that introduces the topic and has a strong controlling idea that reigns over the whole paragraph. In other words all of the details included pertain to that idea. So now it is your turn to pick up the brush and begin painting a scene for your reader. Be colorful! As for the corrections this week, I thought that in response to feedback I have received from other semesters that this week the peer editors could try and find every mistake. That of course still does not mean that you should try so hard that you mark something incorrectly. I will be glad to answer any queries if you are uncertain of something. In addition, everyone with a password beginning with 1 to 10 can send me their text for corrections this week. And ... Please keep me informed if you have any problems.

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