Writing Workshop Writing a Descriptive Essay Assignment Prewriting Choose a Character Consider Audience and Purpose Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support Write Your Thesis Statement Practice and Apply Feature Menu
Jan 20, 2016
Writing WorkshopWriting a Descriptive Essay
Assignment
Prewriting
Choose a Character
Consider Audience and Purpose
Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support
Write Your Thesis Statement
Practice and Apply
Feature Menu
Assignment: Write an essay in which you describe a character from literature. Your character can come from a novel, epic poem or play.
Build on the description of your character in the poem by visualizing him or her in action, as if in a movie. Then, add layers of your own description—speech, thoughts, feelings, and actions—until the character comes to life as a real person.
Writing a Descriptive Essay
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Choose a character from a narrative poem or an epic poem that creates a distinctive impression on you.
• A major character appears throughout poem.
• A minor character appears briefly at important point in poem.
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Choose a Character
Beowulf Gilgamesh Hector
Hector’s wife in the Iliad Grendel’s mother
Beowulf’s fate is sealed at his final encounter with the dragon.
Focus on one scene or action that is important to the character.
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Choose a Character
Grendel’s mother fights savagely with Beowulf but is finally slain.
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Your audience:
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Consider Audience and Purpose
Think about:
• what your audience already knows about your character
• what you want them to learn from your essay
• teachers • classmates
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• which character would be most interesting to you and your audience
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Consider Audience and Purpose
Your purpose:
To expand exact words and phrases from a narrative poem into a descriptive essay
Think about:• what makes this character
especially interesting or deserving of a detailed description
• any insights you gain from your detailed description of this character [End of Section]
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support
Write down exact words and phrases from the poem that describe how your character looks, speaks, thinks, acts, and feels.
“Then he drew himself up beside his shield. / The fabled warrior in his warshirt and helmet” (297–298)
Beowulf
These specific details from the poem will be the basis for your essay—its skeleton.
“Then he drew himself up beside his shield. / The
fabled warrior in his warshirt and helmet” (297-
298)
Place exact words or phrases quoted from the poem within quotation marks.
Place line numbers from the poem in parentheses.Show line breaks with slashes.
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support
Use narrative details and descriptive details to expand on:
• the sequence of events depicted in the scene—its plot
• the character’s thoughts, actions, and appearance in the scene
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support
Add to the words and phrases you have taken from the poem.
Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Gather, Evaluate, and Organize Support
Present your prose description in an order that is logical and makes sense to you. Three common ways of organizing information are
• Chronological Order
• Order of Importance
• Spatial Order
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Writing a Descriptive EssayPrewriting: Write Your Thesis Statement
The thesis statement sums up what you think about your character and guides the rest of your essay.
As Beowulf faces the dragon for the last time, his appearance, actions, thoughts, and feelings show how this noble warrior faces what he believes is certain death.
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Use the preceding instructions to
• select the novel, epic, or drama and a character to describe
• establish your purpose and tone
• gather and organize narrative and descriptive details
Writing a Descriptive Essay
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