02/04/2025, 11:52 Examples of Good Descriptive Paragraphs

Humanities › English › Writing

How to Write a Good

Descriptive Paragraph
By Richard Nordquist
Updated on May 17, 2024

A good descriptive paragraph is like a window into another world. Through

the use of careful examples or details, an author can conjure a scene that
vividly describes a person, place, or thing. Whether it's found in fiction or
nonfiction, the best descriptive writing appeals to multiple senses at once—
smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing.
See below for examples of strong descriptive paragraphs, and then get
some tips to start writing your own.

5 Examples of Strong Descriptive Paragraphs

In their unique ways, each of the following writers (three of them students,
two of them professional authors) have selected a belonging or place that
holds special meaning to them. After identifying that subject in a clear topic
sentence, they proceed to describe it in detail while explaining its
introspective significance.
"A Friendly Clown"
"On one corner of my dresser sits a smiling toy clown on a tiny unicycle―a gift I
received last Christmas from a close friend. The clown's short yellow hair, made of
yarn, covers its ears but is parted above the eyes. The blue eyes are outlined in
black with thin, dark lashes flowing from the brows. It has cherry-red cheeks,
nose, and lips, and its broad grin disappears into the wide, white ruffle around its
neck. The clown wears a fluffy, two-tone nylon costume. The left side of the outfit
is light blue, and the right side is red. The two colors merge in a dark line that runs
down the center of the small outfit. Surrounding its ankles and disguising its long
black shoes are big pink bows. The white spokes on the wheels of the unicycle
gather in the center and expand to the black tire so that the wheel somewhat
resembles the inner half of a grapefruit. The clown and unicycle together stand
about a foot high. As a cherished gift from my good friend Tran, this colorful figure
greets me with a smile every time I enter my room."

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Observe how the writer moves clearly from a description of the head of the
clown to the body to the unicycle underneath. More than sensory details for
the eyes, she provides touch, in the description that the hair is made of yarn
and the suit of nylon. Certain colors are specific, as in cherry-red cheeks
and light blue, and descriptions help the reader visualize the object: the
parted hair, the color line on the suit, and the grapefruit analogy.
Dimensions overall help to provide the reader with the item's scale, and the
descriptions of the size of the ruffle and bows on the shoes in comparison to
what's nearby provide telling detail. The concluding sentence helps to tie
the paragraph together by emphasizing the personal value of this gift.
"The Blond Guitar"
by Jeremy Burden
"My most valuable possession is an old, slightly warped blond guitar―the first
instrument I taught myself how to play. It's nothing fancy, just a Madeira folk
guitar, all scuffed and scratched and fingerprinted. At the top is a bramble of
copper-wound strings, each one hooked through the eye of a silver tuning key. The
strings are stretched down a long, slim neck, its frets tarnished, the wood worn by
years of fingers pressing chords and picking notes. The body of the Madeira is
shaped like an enormous yellow pear, one that was slightly damaged in shipping.
The blond wood has been chipped and gouged to gray, particularly where the pick
guard fell off years ago. No, it's not a beautiful instrument, but it still lets me make
music, and for that I will always treasure it."

Here, the writer uses a topic sentence to open his paragraph and then uses
the following sentences to add specific details. The author creates an image
for the mind's eye to travel across by describing the parts of the guitar
logically, from the strings on the head to the worn wood on the body.

He emphasizes its condition by the number of different descriptions of the

wear on the guitar, such as noting its slight warp; distinguishing between
scuffs and scratches; describing the effect that fingers have had on the
instrument by wearing down its neck, tarnishing frets, and leaving prints
on the body; listing both its chips and gouges and even noting their effects
on the color of the instrument. The author even describes the remnants of
missing pieces. After all that, he plainly states his affection for it.
"Gregory"
by Barbara Carter
"Gregory is my beautiful gray Persian cat. He walks with pride and grace,
performing a dance of disdain as he slowly lifts and lowers each paw with the
delicacy of a ballet dancer. His pride, however, does not extend to his appearance,

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for he spends most of his time indoors watching television and growing fat. He
enjoys TV commercials, especially those for Meow Mix and 9 Lives. His familiarity
with cat food commercials has led him to reject generic brands of cat food in favor
of only the most expensive brands. Gregory is as finicky about visitors as he is
about what he eats, befriending some and repelling others. He may snuggle up
against your ankle, begging to be petted, or he may imitate a skunk and stain your
favorite trousers. Gregory does not do this to establish his territory, as many cat
experts think, but to humiliate me because he is jealous of my friends. After my
guests have fled, I look at the old fleabag snoozing and smiling to himself in front
of the television set, and I have to forgive him for his obnoxious, but endearing,
habits."

The writer here focuses less on the physical appearance of her pet than on
the cat's habits and actions. Notice how many different descriptors go into
just the sentence about how the cat walks: emotions of pride and disdain
and the extended metaphor of the dancer, including the phrases "dance of
disdain," "grace," and "ballet dancer." When you want to portray something
through the use of a metaphor, make sure you are consistent, and that all
the descriptors make sense with that one metaphor. Don't use two different
metaphors to describe the same thing, because that makes the image you're
trying to portray awkward and convoluted. The consistency adds emphasis
and depth to the description.
Personification is an effective literary device for giving lifelike detail to an
inanimate object or an animal, and Carter uses it to great effect. Look at
how much time she spends on the discussions of what the cat takes pride in
(or doesn't) and how it comes across in his attitude, with being finicky and
jealous, acting to humiliate by spraying, and just overall behaving
obnoxiously. Still, she conveys her clear affection for the cat, something to
which many readers can relate.
"The Magic Metal Tube"
by Maxine Hong Kingston
"Once in a long while, four times so far for me, my mother brings out the metal
tube that holds her medical diploma. On the tube are gold circles crossed with
seven red lines each―"joy" ideographs in abstract. There are also little flowers that
look like gears for a gold machine. According to the scraps of labels with Chinese
and American addresses, stamps, and postmarks, the family airmailed the can
from Hong Kong in 1950. It got crushed in the middle, and whoever tried to peel
the labels off stopped because the red and gold paint came off too, leaving silver
scratches that rust. Somebody tried to pry the end off before discovering that the
tube falls apart. When I open it, the smell of China flies out, a thousand-year-old

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bat flying heavy-headed out of the Chinese caverns where bats are as white as dust,
a smell that comes from long ago, far back in the brain."

This paragraph opens the third chapter of Maxine Hong Kingston's "The
Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," a lyrical account
of a Chinese-American girl growing up in California. Notice how Kingston
integrates informative and descriptive details in this account of "the metal
tube" that holds her mother's diploma from medical school. She uses color,
shape, texture (rust, missing paint, pry marks, and scratches), and smell,
where she has a particularly strong metaphor that surprises the reader with
its distinctness. The last sentence in the paragraph (not reproduced here) is
more about the smell; closing the paragraph with this aspect adds emphasis
to it. The order of the description is also logical, as the first response to the
closed object is how it looks rather than how it smells when opened.
"Inside District School #7, Niagara County, New York"
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Inside, the school smelled smartly of varnish and wood smoke from the potbellied
stove. On gloomy days, not unknown in upstate New York in this region south of
Lake Ontario and east of Lake Erie, the windows emitted a vague, gauzy light, not
much reinforced by ceiling lights. We squinted at the blackboard, that seemed far
away since it was on a small platform, where Mrs. Dietz's desk was also positioned,
at the front, left of the room. We sat in rows of seats, smallest at the front, largest
at the rear, attached at their bases by metal runners, like a toboggan; the wood of
these desks seemed beautiful to me, smooth and of the red-burnished hue of horse
chestnuts. The floor was bare wooden planks. An American flag hung limply at the
far left of the blackboard and above the blackboard, running across the front of the
room, designed to draw our eyes to it avidly, worshipfully, were paper squares
showing that beautifully shaped script known as Parker Penmanship."

In this paragraph (originally published in "Washington Post Book World"

and reprinted in ​"Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art"), Joyce Carol Oates
affectionately describes the one-room schoolhouse she attended from first
through fifth grades. Notice how she appeals to our sense of smell before
moving on to describe the layout and contents of the room. When you walk
into a place, its overall smell hits you immediately, if it's pungent, even
before you've taken in the whole area with your eyes. Thus this choice of
chronology for this descriptive paragraph is also a logical order of
narration, even though it differs from the Hong Kingston paragraph. It
allows the reader to imagine the room just as if he were walking into it.
The positioning of items relative to other items is on full display in this
paragraph, to give people a clear vision of the layout of the place as a whole.
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For the objects inside, she uses many descriptors of what materials they are
made from. Note the imagery portrayed by the use of the phrases "gauzy
light," "toboggan," and "horse chestnuts." You can imagine the emphasis
placed on penmanship study by the description of their quantity, the
deliberate location of the paper squares, and the desired effect upon the
students brought about by this location.

Writing Your Own Descriptive Paragraph

Writing your own descriptive paragraph? Always start by observing your
subject closely, using all five senses. Think about and write down as many
details as you can; then, try to associate different metaphors or expressions
to convey those details. Don't forget to identify what your topic sentence
should be. And of course, be open to whatever your imagination explores.
Need ideas for a topic? Check out this list of 40 descriptive paragraph topic
suggestions.

Cite this Article

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