The Zonal System

Once you've got an emotional tone for a picture, or some kind of narrative hook or idea behind it, you need to take another look at it. If you try to describe the whole thing you'll run out of things to say pretty quickly. The image directly below here, for example, is a picture of a sunset reflected in a pool, in the middle of some grassland. And that's it. I've blown it now, I've said everything there is to say about it, and I've still got 44 minutes of writing time left.

So instead of trying to describe the whole picture, break it up into sections and describe each of them separately - give each of them a paragraph and you're away.

Now, rather than having just one picture to describe I've got seven - that's SEVEN paragraphs of descriptive writing to fill my 45 mins.

The sky, the sunset, the horizon line, the grass, the red bit of pool, the blue bit of pool, and the scraggy bush to the left of the frame.

To be honest, I'd probably push the two bits of pool into one paragraph but I like how the pool changes colour - like ink was bleeding through it...

The key thing with this is that it forces you to look over the picture and pick out the little details that will help bring your description to life.