An essay that most people are using to describe something is the descriptive essay. A descriptive essay is an essay that is meant to be written to describe something. For example, if you are selling your laptop in a website, you could write a descriptive essay that would state your laptops, hard drive, optical drive, processor, RAM, size of screen and brand. To describe the physical look, you could write, minor scratches on the back and a dent on the left side near the USB port. This descriptive essay is useful when you are dealing with a storys character. In one flew over the cuckoos nest, you could summarize the whole story by making a descriptive story about a very sane man who dimmed himself to be insane. In that context alone, you would know that the man in the story has some serious problems with his mind and in the process; he enrolled himself to a mental institution. With a few more descriptive words, you would know, if you are the reader the main plot of the story and why the writer chose that title.