The descriptive plot is a type of narrative structure that presents the information in the text through the characteristics, qualities and details of the people, things, events or environments that intervene in the story.
With the descriptive plot the perception of the sensory world is expressed. That is, it consists of excessive detail in the approach of the material and sensitive from touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight.
Plots are the ways in which language adapts to convey the information, message or concepts of the texts. This type of organization determines how the events in the story of a text are told. Understanding by text not only something written, but as the maximum unit of transmission of a complete message.
This message can be written orally, and even visual, depending on the form of communication chosen. This type of plot, the descriptive one, can characterize an entire text or be housed in the middle of a more complex literary fabric.
In the descriptive plot the text is organized following a record of data, features and details. Applies to people, objects, sequence of events, spaces and sensations.
Its resources are enumeration, detail, representation, comparisons to allude to other mental images of the reader, contrast and the creation of context or environment.
Application of the descriptive plot
The function of the description is to detail and show. It focuses on how things are and how things happen. To do this, he exposes with words characteristics or qualities of the reality he is representing.
For this reason, he makes special use of adjectives, which will allow him to give certain qualities.
These give information on the location, composition, quantity, size, color, variation with time, age and other conditions that things may have permanently or temporarily.
Types of descriptive texts
Descriptive texts are of two types: technical and literary.
In the technicians, objectivity prevails, that is, the author is not going to intervene or expose his point of view.
It gives the feeling of being a more objective approach because it shows and tells things as they are. However, the truth is that in the descriptive plot the facts are told as the author sees or perceives them.
On the other hand, there is the descriptive literary text. In it the author is allowed to state his vision and represent his reality. They are clearly more subjective than the former.
Descriptive plot texts are used not only to know how things are but to locate them. The content is positioned in a culture, temporal space, in a locality, even a story can be determined only with a plot I describe.
Descriptive plot examples
In life there are numerous examples of how broad and complete a descriptive plot is. By reading the image of a well-detailed crime scene, the description will suffice to know what happened.
If the sensations that one has are told to a doctor, and also other signs are checked by means of medical devices, the description of symptoms is enough to give a diagnosis.
In both cases something happens: someone has been killed, and there is a disease in progress. We discover these events as the text progresses thanks to the details in the description.
However, the descriptive plot can include actions by themselves or ignore them, but the weight of the structure falls on the excessive details that provide information.
References
- Cordero Crespo, L. (2015). The exhibition plot. Recovered from lenguayliteratura8vos.blogspot.com
- The plot of a story or novel: to plan it or not to plan it. (2013). Recovered from tipoficcion.wordpress.com
- Pérez Torres, A. (2014). Types of texts. Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo. Recovered from uaeh.edu.mx
- Types of texts. (2016). Recovered from ittizimin.edu.mx
- Van Dijk, T. (1996). Structures and functions of discourse. Recovered from discourses.org.