Effective Writing and Description Techniques

Posted on Jan 16, 2025 in Social Anthropology

Unit 1: Writing

Reading is the most effective way to learn words and use them correctly.

Steps to Writing:

  • Selection of Topic
  • Finding Information
  • Development of Outline
  • Preparation of Draft
  • Final Draft

Searching for Information

This step involves gathering the information needed to master the subject. A recommended method is using a questionnaire or examination to generate questions.

Steps to Make an Outline:

  1. Identify the main idea
  2. Select the supporting ideas
  3. Express these ideas in sentences
  4. Establish the order of your topic

Unit 2: Concept and Classification of Description

Description is the drawing or verbal representation that provides a complete picture of something.

Criteria for Classifying Descriptions:

  1. Mobility of the subject and the describer
  2. Internal or external aspects
  3. Prevalence of form or content

Types of Descriptions:

  • Pictorial Description: Both the describer and the model are static.
  • Topographical Description: The model is static while the describer moves around it.
  • Cinematographic Description: Two versions are possible: 1) the describer is static as the model moves, or 2) both move.
  • Static Description: Regardless of the inner reality of beings, it contains only their outward appearance.
  • Dynamic Description: Emphasizes interior details.
  • Informative Description: Focuses on the content of the message and aims to present an object objectively.
  • Expressive Description: Pays more attention to the delivery of the message than the content itself, aiming to evoke feelings in the receiver.

Specific Description Types:

  • Character: Outlines the qualities, defects, and customs of a person.
  • Table: Represents objects or events quickly, as if it were a painter’s canvas.
  • Timeline: Describes the time when an event takes place.
  • Landscape: Describes the view offered by a certain amount of land.
  • Vision: Traces a past, future, or possible time.
  • Portrait: Draws real or fictional characters in detail.

Unit 3: Structure and Resources of Description

Elements of Description:

  • Structure
  • Resources
  • Process

Perspective and Viewpoint

  • Perspective: A visual strategy used to give an image a sense of depth and distance.
  • Viewpoint: The way to perceive and portray people or objects.

Lessons in Perspective:

  • Scale: Draws beings at the first level larger than those in the background.
  • Contour: Makes the characters at the first level partially block those in the back.
  • Linear: Used when prolonged lines converge at a distant point.
  • Texture: Objects at the first level are seen clearly, becoming diffuse as they move away from the observer.
  • Air: Bright colors are used at the first level, fading into the distance.

Figures of Speech (Tropes)

  • Trope: The use of a word or phrase in a sense other than its own but with some similarity.
  • Simile: A formal comparison between a real word and another figurative one.
  • Metaphor: Involves the transfer of meaning of a word.
  • Allegory: Evident in discourse through successive metaphors or special meanings, expressing something different.
  • Metonymy: Involves the transfer of meaning between words referring to items that have continuity.
  • Synecdoche: Involves the transfer of meaning between things that are understood to be linked by a relationship of coexistence.