Make sure to choose a meaningful person, place, or thing. Before you begin your paragraph, you have to be sure to pick something that is worth describing. If you want to describe a character, make sure the person is interesting in some way. If you want to describe an object, make sure it has some deeper meaning beyond itself so you have enough to write about. If you pick a place, make sure you can describe it in a unique way that can capture a reader's attention.For example, in the opening pages of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield describes a baseball mitt. The mitt itself is not that remarkable, but he describes it in a way that fills ...view middle of the document...
Introduce the person, place, or thing you are describing. If you want to get the reader's attention, then you should let him or her know what you're describing as soon as possible instead of leaving them guessing. Here is an example of some opening lines in a descriptive paragraph:Natasha's basement was our sanctuary. I return to it in my best dreams and wake up feeling like I could die happy.These opening sentences introduce the subject that is being described, the basement of the narrator's friend. They make it clear that this place is very important to the narrator.Engage your reader's sense of sight. You can start with what the reader can see and appeal to his or her sense of sight to help introduce the object. Since sight is the most helpful sense, any good descriptive paragraph must first discuss what the writer wants the reader to visualize. Using strong adjectives to illustrate your scene, moment, experience or item to the reader will help provide a visual picture in your reader's mind. Keep in mind that, while adjectives can help convey a sense of the subject, overusing them can lead to boring, overwrought writing. Here's an example of the opening of a descriptive paragraph:Even today I could paint a perfect picture of it, right up to the last piece of neglected pizza crust festering under the ping-pong table.Immediately, the reader is given a visual description of some things in the basement: old pizza crust and a ping-pong table. The reader is given a sense of a messy, chaotic place.
