Descriptive writing engages the senses--sight, touch, taste, sound and smell. It makes it possible for your readers to experience places, people and things they have never before encountered. For example, even if they have never tasted Thai sweet chili sauce, a good restaurant review can tickle their taste buds. Descriptions also allow readers to step into your shoes and see the world through your eyes--or through the eyes of characters you create. This sparks emotions, generates empathy and keeps readers invested in your story or ideas. It also conveys authenticity. Say you write a travel article about a winter holiday in Portland, Oregon, but never once describe the famous bridges spanning the Willamette River. Readers who have visited or lived there might wonder if you know your stuff--especially since Portland goes by the nickname "Bridge City."
You don't have to choose a strange or unusual subject to create powerful descriptive writing; instead, you can make a familiar subject seem strange. When Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her classic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," she conveyed depression and madness through relentless descriptions of ordinary wallpaper. At one point, the narrator of the story smells a "yellow smell," which she finds "hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait" for her.
All of your lovely descriptions might mean nothing if readers cannot follow your ideas. Good descriptive writing needs a clear organizational strategy, such as starting with general details and moving to specific ones, according to the Roane State Community College Online Writing Lab website. You might also try moving through a scene in spatial order--describing a room from left to right, for example--according to St. Cloud University's Literacy Education Online website.
Writing teachers often advise to "show, don't tell." They mean that you can use descriptive writing to show emotion instead of simply "telling" readers how to feel. For example, if you tell readers a character feels enraged by a letter, they might understand your meaning, but they will not experience the emotion. However, if you describe her clenching her fingers around the paper until it scrunches into a ball, readers experience the rage along with her. In fact, you can use description strategically to provoke a specific emotional reaction or dominant impression, according to the Roane State Community College Online Writing Lab website. Imagine war reporting without a single description of the sounds of the blasts or the look of the rubble. Without description, writing rings hollow and meaningless. It lacks emotional heart.
Successful description avoids peppering prose with adjective after adjective, according to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Writer Center website. Strange as it sounds, too many adjectives--like too many cooks--spoil the soup. Specific, lively nouns can do the work of a thousand adjectives sometimes. Consider the adjective "broken down" to describe a car. Why not just call it a clunker instead?
Many people associate descriptive writing with fiction and poetry, but descriptive writing can pop up anywhere. When police file a report, they describe suspects and scenes. Doctors describe patients' symptoms in medical charts. Teens gossip about peers' outfits. You even use descriptive writing in cover letters to prospective employers.