Using Setting to Encourage Precise, Descriptive, Sensory Language
Writers use setting to:
- Establish time and place.
- Set the mood.
- Reflect a character's personality and/or experience.
- Be a character!
| Examples of setting descriptions.pdf |
The following free-writing activity helps students focus on sensory details and descriptive language.
What you need: pen, paper, a timer.
What you do:
Rewrite your first description. How have you changed it? What details did you describe this time?
What you need: pen, paper, a timer.
What you do:
- Think of a place you know well. It could be your home, a classroom, a place of worship. Set the timer for 3-5 minutes and write a description of that place using as many sensory details as you can. Don't limit yourself to visual details and don't edit your work as you write. Just keep writing until the timer goes off.
- Think of a way to destroy the place you wrote about. (Fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, bomb, whatever comes to mind.) Set the timer for 3-5 minutes and write a description of the place after it has been destroyed.
- Compare your two descriptions.
- Did you incorporate all the senses?
- Did you use precise descriptive language?
- Did any of the details you wrote surprise you?
Rewrite your first description. How have you changed it? What details did you describe this time?
