Descriptive Essay Ideas You May Find Motivating

Descriptive Essay Ideas

The first question to be answered is, “What is a descriptive essay?” And the easy and obvious answer is that it is a piece of writing in which the author describes a person, place, thing, event, idea, or circumstance. So, don’t make it any more difficult than this for yourself. You know the purpose.

Now the task is to come up with ideas for a descriptive essay about which you will actually enjoy writing, for the assignment will be nothing but grueling if you don’t. My guess is that most students will not want to write a description of a pastoral scene or a cloud. So, the first thing you need to do is think of events, people, places, and so forth that were really impactful, funny, sad, etc., because in a way you will be telling a story about your relationship with this topic. Here are some possible descriptive essay ideas that may get you thinking.

• The time you did battle with a spider in your room
• Your room on its worst day; your room on its best day
• The worst nightmare you ever had; the best dream you ever had
• The day you got your pet; the day your pet died
• Your favorite movie
• Your favorite superhero
• Your best date; your worst date
• A road trip
• The most life-changing event in your life thus far
• Sitting in the dentist’s office
• You worst day; your best day
• The best prank you ever played; the best prank ever played on you
• A political rally you attended

Getting that Essay Written

1. It’s All About the Details: You will have to hook your reader in with the details – lots of very specific detail. If you did battle with a spider in your room, give the reader a blow-by-blow description of every step of that battle. And use some figurative language as you do so – simile, personification, metaphor. “He looked at me with those beady evil eyes as if to say, “Just try to get me and I’ll jump on you and put my sticky webbing all over your face.” Or, “I’ll just hide from you until you go to sleep and then I’ll crawl into your bed and bit you in a really bad place.” And with that he scrambled up to the ceiling and sat there, laughing at me.
2. It’s All About the Senses: You must also make sure that your reader can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel what you did. So, in your descriptive detail, you must include as many sensory images as possible. “I lifted the lid off the pot expecting to get a whiff of a culinary delight just waiting to be devoured. Instead, I got a noseful of what can only be described as the smell of an open sewer on a hot humid day.”
3. Descriptive Analysis: Often a descriptive essay can be analytical, because in describing something, you may have to break it down into separate elements and describe each one. This is usually true when describing a concept or an idea.

When you write a descriptive essay, you should try to have fun with it. This is one of those few times when you can choose a humorous topic.