Sometimes descriptive essays are seen in too simplistic terms as just essays which describe things. However, descriptive essays are organized around a dominant impression, usually personal, about some subject. The essay develops through the accumulation of concrete and specific details revealing the subject as it is seen (felt, experienced) by the narrator. Descriptive essays often conclude by emphasizing the personal value and importance of the subject to the narrator. If the subject is presented with sufficient detail and emotional expression, readers are drawn into and empathize with the narrator's perception of the subject.
Textbooks often oversimplify the definitions of narrative and descriptive essays by arguing narratives tell stories and descriptive essays use description. However, narrative essays can be very descriptive, and descriptive essays can include narrative.
A narrative essay focuses on a story that results in some change due to a conflict which climaxes within the story. Narrative essays, then, work much like short stories with action rising to a climax and then falling away to resolution--or at least an attempt at resolution.
Descriptive essays focus on the way something is or was. A descriptive essay can be about a person, place, object, event, or idea, and the essay, instead of focusing on a conflict like the narrative, focuses on a dominant impression of the thing being described. The dominant impression could be
- its essential nature (analysis),
- its main or most obvious characteristic (analysis),
- an associated feeling or mood (valuation),
- a new enhanced awareness of this person, place, object, event, or idea (interpretation), or
- the significance, importance, or relevance of this person, place, object, event, or idea in the broader context of culture, history, and/or current circumstances (synthesis).
In terms of organization, narrative essays are generally told in chronological order as the story moves through a change or series of changes toward a climax.
Descriptive essays may follow chronological order, but the sequence of events is not what is important, but rather the dominant impression being created to describe the topic. For that reason, descriptive essays may be organized according to some logical or spatial scheme of order.
A key means of identifying whether an essay is narrative or descriptive is to determine if a significant change has taken place between the beginning of the essay and the end as a result of a conflict. If so, the essay is narrative. No conflict, no narrative.