Description paragraphs can describe anything—a mean teacher, a Big Mac, your gay uncle’s apartment. Descriptions depict; that is, they paint a word picture that is based on experience. Experience has to do with the five senses. Using the sense of smell or taste, you can describe a Thanksgiving meal. Using the sense of hearing, you can describe a concert. Using a combination of sight, smell, and hearing, you can describe a burning building. A description paragraph is made up of sensory details. Arrange your sensory details in logical order. As a general rule, arrange details spatially, as you would to describe a room. You also want to make sure that this logical order produces an effect. The effect, or mood, can be sad or joyous, strange or sentimental, fascinating or comical. It doesn’t matter, but to achieve that effect, choose your details carefully. When describing a room, do not include every scrap of paper tacked to the bulletin board, only those that help build an effect. In the following paragraph example, the details help us picture an alcoholic guitar teacher in his tiny world.

My guitar teacher lives in a dark, industrial section of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park—a neighborhood crowded with trucks by day, abandoned by night—in a cluttered apartment he shares with his chubby wife, his six-year-old daughter, an angry weight-lifer, and a yappy dog. Every Tuesday night, I drive there for my lesson, climb a metal staircase attached to the outside of the building, and wait as the dog alerts my teacher, who opens the door and cheerfully leads me to his studio, a ten-foot square clutter of musical mementos and electronics. On all sides of this tiny space he has squeezed a carnival of objects that, far as I can tell, he never moves. To my left is a small, electric keyboard, on top of which sits a toy outhouse, always resting on middle C. The keyboard sits on a waist-high shelf that runs the length of the wall and has a groove cut in it for a guitar rest. The same guitar always rests there. Six other guitars are part of the decor; two electric, two acoustic, and two electric basses. A large cello leans against the wall behind me. Covering the walls above the shelf are hundreds of videotapes, CDs, books on jazz, blues, and rock, and back issues of Guitar Player and Bass Magazine. Alongside the tapes and books are knickknacks, meticulously arranged: toy guitars, posters—including a Fender poster that seems to include every famous bass player in the world—four spice containers in a neat row (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme), a TV set, a loft bed piled high with clothes and electronic junk, under which is a miniature recording studio, a backpack with a tiny amplifier in front (“Amp-in-a-Bag”), and an enormous Bluenote record label stuck to the ceiling. In a tiny space in the middle of the room sits my 55-year-old teacher on a backless chair, caressing a can of Miller Lite, his eyes misty as he talks about never having the musical “endowment” to make it big.

Paragraph Example 2

After he got the call that his daughter hadn’t attended  school that day, he waited in the darkened living room until she came home at  10 PM, drug-eyed and annoyed, tossing her book-bag on the couch before going to bed. After waiting fifteen minutes, he emptied the bag, sat on the couch and studied the contents:  a used Wendy’s soda cup, a joker playing card, a black and gold box of Zig-Zag rolling papers, a yellow and blue box of Top rolling papers, a box of Newport regulars, empty save for a badly-rolled joint, and two unused disposable syringes, each one a clear casing with black numerical markings, a white plunger, and an orange needle cap.

Choose one of the topics below for a description paragraph:

A favorite hangout                        A photograph
Your mother’s face                        An object in your bedroom
Your favorite meal                        An interesting piece of clothing
A painting or sculpture                A song or piece of music
An accident you witnessed          A strange relative
A sound that bothers you            A beautiful building
Your neighbor’s desk at work     Choose your own topic