Descriptive Essays.

Visual is less. Words are more.

“ She cradled her daughter in her right arm...the left, she kept free to pick alms...dressed in a magenta sari...she stood out starkly against the rainy white scene outside my taxi's foggy window. Her hands looked heavily wrinkled, like that of my old grandfather, while her face still said that she was not above thirty. The daughter's untidy hair...but angelic eyes, made quite a demure picture. She, too, was looking at me expectantly like her mother, as though her mom had promised her that she'll get her darling a candy when she gets some coins.”

Words are open-ended – different people interpret different words in different ways.

Descriptions in words never attempt to capture photographic reality.

Instead, they invoke the reader’s imagination, and allows him to “read between the lines”, so that he can “picture” the picture described in the pages.

A few words about the person has a stronger impact than a static photograph.

What impression does the person in the next slide give you?

Hmm…???

Does the man’s portrait betray that he was the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful armies? No? But words do. By the way, who is that person?

Descriptions recreate sense impressions, ideas and feelings by translating them into words.

“ My turbaned friends jostled to douse me with their color, their red color, the same red as their turbans. Red. The color of each man, the shade of love, the vivaciousness captured in the red color was unlike any other in God’s own rainbow. It was Holi, the festival of colors, when the triumph of good over evil was celebrated by smearing our loved ones with the gulal. Their happiness merged with colors around us, and flowed freely as the colored water. After all, it was the burning, intrinsic red on us. Red”

Sensory impressions decay in seconds, but written descriptions survive indefinitely.

Subjective descriptions frequently make use of figurative language – similes and metaphors that forge connections with the reader’s mind.

“ His highly inquiring, black eyes stood out perfectly against his milk white tee. His eyes bored me down as if to seek some unwilling answer to a question – “where have you hidden my toy gun”? Or maybe he was concealing something from me, as his tight lips revealed. Or maybe, he just didn’t care, as his tousles curved down on his cheek like a swan’s neck.”

Words help to transform things from being “just a physical thing” into a symbol.

id

id – id destroyer – a project for underworld hackers that secures a target personality from many of the billion people whose identities lie naked on the internet, erases all their records from government books, bank accounts, as well as erase their existence from peoples mind by radiating an excruciatingly complex radiation.

or…??

id - an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The company was founded by four programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. id software is now considered the most influential of the many game development companies in the Dallas area, known as the Dallas Gaming Mafia. Id has immemorial games like doom, wolfenstein in it’s repertoire.

DESCRIBE AN OBJECT OR A PLACE 1

Indescribable, huh??

First task : Select what you want to describe.

A fresh and perceptive way only will leave an impression on the reader.

Just connect to the past experiences (or pre-conceived notions) of the readers.

“ A character partially inspired by Pepe PeLew and Keith Richards.”

Is it enough ?

Justified selectivity is needed when describing an object or a place.

DESCRIBE A PERSON 2

What is it about this person that is worth describing ?

It is always other than physical attributes.

ORGANIZATION OF A DESCRIPTION 3

Principles of Order – Which sensory impact will convey the most to the reader?

Lotsa adjectives and adverbs ?

Precise and vivid nouns and verbs will do the trick.

VISUALIZING A DESCRIPTION 4

Limitations of words.

Kirchoff's Current Law (KCL): At every node, the sum of all currents entering a node is equal to the sum of all currents leaving the node. Kirchoff's Voltage Law (KVL): The voltage law says that the sum of voltages around every closed loop in the circuit must equal zero.

Exercise: Please apply Kirchoff's Current and Voltage laws to the following figures.

1 Choose your subject carefully. In conclusion,

2 Observe your subject in a fresh way. In conclusion,

Pick out details, selectively. In conclusion,

Choose a pattern of organization. In conclusion,

Intense and graphic words. In conclusion,

Hrishikesh Neeraj