Description Practice

OK so now we have our poorly drawn cottage.

You remember the word cottage.

This is our cottage.

And hey the other word chimney.

There it is.

There is the chimney needs a little smoke.

I think obviously smoke.

Smoke makes that sound right.

That’s really not good smoke.

I’m sorry about being such a bad artist.

I’m not an artist.

I did my best.

I did draw this all by myself.

All right.

So we have a cottage.

It’s got a chimney a cottage it’s got a chimney.

And what’s the material we need to first pick out our adjectives and our main noun.

Well why don’t we just use cottage as our main noun.

Make it simple.

OK.

This is this will be r m n why not our M N will be our may now and then we have here.

What’s it made of those look like.

It looks like stone right.

OK so materials stone.

Is it is it big or is it small.

Was pretty simple it’s pretty small.

What feeling do I get when I look at this whole scene.

What is the atmosphere.

Remember we talked about atmosphere earlier in the class the feeling we get from a place where the atmosphere here is if I look at this scene little there’s a little lake here that’s supposed to be water lake some trees nothing else around.

Pretty lonely let’s use lonely and where is it.

Where is this place.

Well it’s let’s just say it’s in the countryside.

So we’ll add countryside that’s where it is and I’m gonna make countryside not the adjective for this I’m going to make countryside where it all is.

So we’ll use small stone lonely three adjectives and we’ll use cottage.

Remember we used with four for the car we say with for what the cottage has it’s got a it’s got a roof but it’s kind of a special roof.

Right.

It’s kind of a weird roof this kind of roof with straw on the top is called a thatched roof thatched.

I didn’t mention this in the vocabulary at the start of the class because if you don’t remember the word fat.

That’s OK.

It’s not a really common word so let’s just use fast as a way to describe the roof and it’s obviously beside a lake.

So I think we can put thatched countryside.

We can talk about the roof.

We can put all of this in our first sentence.

I will write it all down very clearly later on but we could say as our first sentence there is always a good way to begin a description of something you’re looking at.

There is a small lonely stone cottage with a thatched roof thatched roof beside a lake beside a lake and we could say beside Blue Lake or we could add adjectives there to beside a lake in the countryside.

There is a small lonely stone cottage with a thatched roof beside a lake in the countryside.

OK so that’s a pretty simple first sentence again.

I’ll write it down in a little bit but that’s a pretty easy way to describe it.

And the picture that you get in your mind is very clear.

But now we want to go further we want to describe the other things too.

There’s a lot more going on here.

What else does the cottage have.

Well it has a square window there’s a little a little square window it’s a little square window small that’s the size.

Don’t use small again because we already said Small.

And if you use small small small too many times that’s not good.

That’s called repetition.

We don’t usually want repetition if you can use another word like teeny or little or something like that.

That’s often better because it’s different.

It sounds better.

So little in the shape square window and that’s at the front of the house.

So there’s a little square window at the front and then beside that we can connect the door to the window and beside that beside what side the window beside that beside that is a single wooden door.

Wooden is the material.

If you want to say wood that’s a noun it is wood.

The adjective is wooden.

A single one wooden door beside that right.

With now we can connect this little this little thing here.

This is called a let’s call this a it’s a path and an adjective for the path man.

Maybe narrow and what’s the material of the path.

Well it’s it’s dirt it’s a dirt it’s a dirt path a DIY Artie.

So notice that it’s not only the first main noun that I’m adding more adjectives to I’m doing it for several of them.

OK so there’s a narrow dirt path that is leading away leading away from the from the front door or leading toward something leading away from means it begins there and goes away leading toward something is what it’s moving in the direction of.

Now is the path really moving.

No it’s not.

But we can use that action to make it feel like it is right.

The road is winding up the mountain is it really the road is is just there right.

Yes that’s true.

But the feeling of it is that it’s winding its winding up the mountain it’s winding its winding up the mountain.

So that can really help us make the description that we have feel very active.

It’s a really good way to describe things.

So I’ve talked about the door the window the path the roof the chimney the the actual cottage itself where it is.

It’s location.

We have a lot of information but I want to say a couple other things before I actually get to my my story part.

OK so what about the trees.

So we could say that the tree is beside the house.

Right.

We can use beside you could say beside the house there is right beside the house.

There is.

Or if you want to make it a little bit more active you could say standing standing beside the house there is.

Or standing beside the house is a tree.

And again we can try to make it more interesting by adding other adjectives.

This tree this tree here doesn’t look very.

Doesn’t look very healthy right.

So let’s use an interesting adjective let’s use.

I’m gonna use the adjective scraggly if I have room to write this I’ll write it down at the bottom.

This is about the tree.

OK.

S C R A G G L Y.

It’s an interesting adjective to use a scraggly tree scraggly tree beside the house of standing beside the house is a scraggly tree.

But there’s another tree.

Where’s the tree.

Well we could say that the tree is in the distance.

We could say the distance or we could say in the background in the distance in the background.

So if you look at this other tree here it’s in the distance and there’s kind of a row of something here.

Let’s call these bushes hedges.

Let’s call them hedges.

HEDGES HPD G.S.

so we have one tree here at scraggly we have another in the distance and it’s by a row a row a row of hedges.

So we kind of have all the pieces.

Now we want to put all the pieces together and then we want to use our imagination.

So what we’re going to do next is I’m going to put all this into one clear description a few sentences and then I’m going to add what I think is going on in this picture a little bit of a story based on my own imagination.

What I would like to add but it’s very important to understand and remember that when you’re describing first you start with the basic details.

First you make clear sentences that have lots of information.

You use lots of adjectives in front of main nouns and then you can add interesting stuff.

You can say who lives here you can say how long they’ve lived here but if you start with that in many cases it will be more confusing and people will go huh.

What’s he talking about.

Who’s living here.

Where are they living.

What.

So let’s look at how we can put it all together.