Be specific about what you want to identify, advice which is not as obvious as it may seen. Author Jesse Seldess tells young writers to zero in on a particular person, a specific memory and exact objects before even attempting to describe them. For example, rather than writing about “community events,” your essay would describe a “Fall Festival.”
Practice sitting down and describing what’s in front of you with as much specificity as possible. Note the colors and shapes of things, attributes of people and even noises you hear. This pre-writing strategy trains you to notice things you normally would not.
Decide on a subject and then jot down the first words that come to your mind when you think of it. This will help you build associations and then stronger descriptions in your essay. For example, when you think of a car, the words “Rolls Royce” or “stretch limousine” may pop into your head. Then try to describe these and you might end up with something like, “a luxurious machine with state of the art design.”
Add focus to descriptions as you move past the introduction of the essay. For example, you may have opened the essay by speaking about beautiful gardens. But if you focus the reader’s attention properly, you’ll start describing why some flowers stand out more than others. Doing so helps your essay avoid general descriptions, which weaken reader impact.
Remember the oft-quoted advice for descriptive essays: “show, don’t tell.” See, for example, Seldess’ website for examples of each. In one “description”, the writer says, “I grew tired after dinner.” But the writer in the second description says, “As I leaned back and rested my head against the top of the chair, my eyelids began to feel heavy, and the edges of the empty plate in front of me blurred with the white tablecloth.” With such excellent descriptions, your essay never needs to tell the reader what the writer is feeling because it’s so apparent.
Write an essay introduction that makes a general statement of description but move on to more specific ones in the body. This advice from writing coaches at Roane State University helps you more clearly paint a picture of the subject you’re describing. For example, you might say in your opening, “As a young girl, I always wanted to have a dog.” Then introduce more details, such as the kind of dog you wanted and how you imagined playing with the dog.