How to Improve Descriptive Writing?

Writing to describe is an essential skill for students.

Importantly, it's tested at GCSE, and it's a skill I teach as an English tutor.

Take a look at this extract from the great Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles:

"We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip."

“Baskerville Hall,” said he.

Why is it so effective?

There are so many details - the sun, the streams, the road, the boulders (and so on...!)

And it's so cleverly interwoven with the plot of the story - the characters finally see Baskerville Hall, at the heart of this murder-mystery.

My Hartland English Guides  distill over 30 years of teaching, and I use their content in my online tutoring.

You can find out more here.