Descriptive Writing With Literary Devices

Now that you have chosen a specific topic and written a draft, it's time to look at how we can revise what you have to make it better. As a writer, you always have to have your reader or your audience in mind. The writer uses literary devices to show the reader his or her story. With good writing, a reader can use his or her good reading strategies to understand what the writer has written. 


Your goal is to write as descriptively as you can so the reader gets a clear picture and understanding in his or her head.

There are many literary devices or literary elements you can use:

simile

metaphor

using the 5 sense

alliteration

personification

onomatopoeia

anaphora

rhyme

strong adjectives

vivid verbs

One of my favorite mentor texts sentences right now is from Curveball by Jordan Sonnenblick. If you are in middle school or high school and haven't read one of his books, I highly reccomend them. They are great realistic fiction. 

Here's the GoodReads summary of his latest book Curveball:

"Sometimes, the greatest comebacks take place far away from the ball field.Meet Peter Friedman, high school freshman. Talented photographer. Former baseball star. When a freakish injury ends his pitching career, Peter has some major things to figure out. Is there life after sports? Why has his grandfather suddenly given him thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment? And is it his imagination, or is the super-hot star of the girls' swim team flirting with him, right in front of the amazing new girl in his photography class? In his new novel, teen author Jordan Sonnenblick performs his usual miraculous feat: exploring deep themes of friendship, romance, family, and tragedy, while still managing to be hilariously funny."

Here's the snatch of text that I loved from Curveball: 

“Freshman year rolled along, kind of. Well, parts of it rolled along, parts of it lurched along, and parts of it scraped and screeched along in the manner of scrap metal being dragged across a chalkboard.”                                 

p. 100

What do you notice about this snatch of text? What did Sonnenblick do to help you visualize as a reader? I found at least four different literary devices at work here. Can you name them? Visit Mrs. Whelan's blog to share you answers! Then try writing with some of these literary devices on your own.

If this book sounds good to you, you might also enjoy: 

Other books by Jordan Sonnenblick 

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

Notes From a Midnight Driver

After Ever After 

Zen and the Art of Faking It

Sleeping Freshman Never Lie by Dave Lubar

Schooled by Gordon Korman

Territories and Choosing a Topic

Mrs. Whelan shared some examples of Writing Territories and some more examples of Writing Territories on her blog! The next stop is to choose one of your territories and then narrow down that territory to one single moment or experience. You are going from a really big idea to a very specific idea that you will write about.

One of my Writing Territories is that I work with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. This year I have focused on trying to help students own their hearing loss and to really advocate for themselves. I believe it is important for students who are deaf and hard of hearing to meet other students who also have a hearing loss. In the fall I organized a author chat with Tom Angleberger through Skype and the kids got to learn about him and his books and also to meet each other. I'm hoping to do this again in May. I decided I would like to write about what it might be like to be a student who is hard of hearing and how that student might feel insecure about wearing hearing aids.

My Writing Territory is "Kids deaf/hh". Under that, I made the idea more specific and wrote that I want to talk about an "event to socialize". The point of this would be "meeting other kids". Finally, I awnt to talk about how a student was uncomfortable wearing her hearing aids and how it was important for her to see how it's okay to wear hearing aids.

I have already done some free writing about this topic. I wrote about how I think I would feel if I was in this students' shoes. Your task is to choose a Writing Territory, and then draw in inverted pyramid and narrow down your topic so you have just one specific topic to write about. Then go ahead and take 10-15 minutes to write and get your ideas down on paper. Really try to be descriptive about your topic. Try to freeze one moment in time and explain everything you can about what is happening. This is a technique that authors use. I call it Exploding A Moment. For an example of this you can read pages 27-28 in Gary Schmidt's book Okay For Now to see how he describes the first the main character, Doug, sees one of Audubon's drawings of a bird. He uses various literary devices to really show the reader what the character is experiencing.

Sometimes it helps me to think about exactly why I am writing so you might want to do that. I am going to share my writing with other hearing itinerant teachers in the district as part of an invitation for them to help support me as I plan my May activity where kids can get together and meet each other. Head over to Mrs. Whelan's Hearing News Blog to see what other students chose to write about!

Reading and Writing - Your Writing Territories

Okay For Now is one of my favorite 2011 books! I have also ready The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt and that book is great also. Okay For Now is set in 1968 and is about a boy named Doug who moves to a new town. He doesn't know anyone in this new town and he doesn't have a great family life but he really is a nice kid. This book is all about how he handles living in a new town and his family dynamics.

I have read parts of Okay For Now with some of my older students to think about how the author writes. It's so important to read a lot in order to be a good writer. Mrs. Whelan, another hearing itinerant teacher who I work with, suggested we do an activity between our two blogs about reading and writing. We'll talk about Okay For Now and Doug's story a little bit later. For now, we want you to generate a list of territories - or a list of topics that you can write about, topics that you really own because you know what they are all about.

Sharon Draper is the author of Out of My Mind and other books for kids and teens. I have been able to hear her speak a few times and one time she said that it is so important for an author to know what he or she is writing. She said an author has no business writing about something if he or she doesn't know the topic. Either they should know the topic personally they better go do lots of research so they truly understand the topic. Sharon Draper took ten years to do background research to write her book Copper Sun.

If we are going to do some writing, it's really important that we first have a list of territories - topics that we own because we really know them inside and out, they are ours.

Here's my list of writing territories:

It's a little bit hard to see, but hopefully you can see some big ideas that I could write about and get an idea of what Mrs. Whelan and I would like you to do! Your job now is to write your own list of writing territories! You can visit Mrs. Whelan's blog to see some samples of my students wrting territories and then make your own. Make sure you share your territories list in the comment section here or on The Hearing News Blog. Next week, we'll talk about narrowing down one of our territories to one small moment that we can write about!