Review descriptive paragraphs

 

Guided by the steps below, you will begin by selecting one of your belongings and then drafting a list of details that describe it. Next, you will put these details into sentences and organize the sentences into a paragraph. Finally, you will revise the paragraph to make sure that it is unified and clearly organized.
For good examples of the finished product, see Model Descriptive Paragraphs.

1) Find and Explore a Topic

Before you can write an effective descriptive paragraph, you need to do two things:

• find a good topic;
• study the topic carefully (a strategy that we call probing).

For guidelines and examples, visit Discovery Strategy: Probing Your Topic.

2) Draft a Descriptive Paragraph

Once you have settled on a topic for your descriptive paragraph and collected some details, you're ready to assemble those details in a rough draft that begins with a topic sentence. You will find a common model for organizing a description at Draft a Descriptive Paragraph.

3) Revise a Descriptive Paragraph

Now you will revise your descriptive paragraph, concentrating on its organization. That is, you will check to see that your sentences follow a clear and logical order, each detail related to the one that came before and leading to the one that follows. These two exercises will give you practice in revising effectively: