• Descriptive writing activities help develop your writing skills.pen image by Rog999 from Fotolia.com
  
  Starting in elementary school students are engaged in descriptive writing of some sort. Whether you are interested in penning novels, essays or becoming a journalist, understanding the principles of descriptive writing is vital. Descriptive writing normally uses elaborate, vivid language; however, this language must be coherent and easily absorbed by the reader. Performing daily descriptive writing exercises will help to strengthen your writing abilities and point out what areas you need to work on.
  
  

Photography Writing

• Find a photograph on the Internet, in a book or in your personal photo albums and write a 400 word descriptive essay on this picture. Prior to writing take you time to absorb the theme and personality of this photograph. If it is a picture of a tree, how does the tree look? What has happened underneath the shade of the tree? What feelings does this tree invoke? Answering these questions will help you outline and create a descriptive essay that draws readers into the story.
  
  

Undercover Writing

• Visit an area within your city where people tend to gather. Bring your laptop or a notebook with you and find a comfortable area to relax and observe. Watch the people walking around you; study their movements and come up with questions regarding who they are and what their purpose is. Select up to five people to write a short descriptive paragraph. What are they wearing? How are they walking? What's their body language? Studying the movements and personalities of people will help you when writing a descriptive novel or possibly a journalistic article. The goal of this exercise is to help describe human beings so the reader can gain a true glimpse as to what they look like, how they present themselves and what their attitude is.
  
  

Music Writing

• Sit down in a comfortable surrounding and have a friend select a song from any genre to play for you. It is important that you do not select the song as this exercise is responsible for testing your ability to instantly create emotions and explain the personality of the song. Describe how the song makes you feel. What is the overall emotion the song exudes? What do you hear? What can the song be compared to? The goal of this exercise is to test your ability to clearly describe audible details and correlate these details to a story.