Look! Put simply, that's the watchword of this project and the motto of all good writers: pay attention to the details and show the reader what you mean. Specific details create word pictures that can make writing more interesting and easier to understand. In this project, you will practice organizing those specific details into an effective descriptive paragraph.

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:

• Practice in Supporting a Topic Sentence with Specific Details
• Practice in Organizing a Descriptive Paragraph

4) Revise, Edit, and Proofread

You're almost done. It's now time to invite someone else (a classmate, for example, or your instructor) to read your descriptive paragraph and suggest ways to improve it. Taking your reader's comments into consideration, revise the paragraph one last time, using as a guide this Revision Checklist for a Descriptive Paragraph. For examples of the finished product, see Model Descriptive Paragraphs.