Vivid Description of People and Places: Using Names and Details

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 Analyze 
Use the basic features.

To learn more about the describing strategies of naming and detailing, see Chapter 15.

Describing—naming objects and detailing their colors, shape, size, textures, and other qualities—is an important strategy in remembered event writing. Writers use this strategy to create vivid images of the scene in which the story takes place. They also use describing to give readers thumbnail portraits of people.

ANALYZE & WRITE

Write a paragraph analyzing Dillard’s use of naming and detailing in “An American Childhood”:

  1. Reread paragraph 4, noting the names of her friends and underlining the details she gives to describe each boy. How do these details help you imagine what each boy was like?
  2. Look closely at Dillard’s description of an iceball to see how she uses these describing strategies:

Naming

Detailing

I started making an iceball—a iceball, from perfect iceball, from perfectly white snow, perfectly spherical, and squeezed perfectly translucent so no snow remained all the way through. (par. 6)

What attributes of the iceball does she point out? Why do you think she repeats the words perfect and perfectly? Notice also that in the next sentence, she tells us that it was against the rules to throw an iceball at someone. So why do you imagine she tries to make such a “perfect” iceball?

Question