kill your adjectives!
Grief-stricken, you clutch your pearls and wail, WHY GOD WHY?!
But no, you misunderstand. When the adjectives die, your writing gets better.
That's right.
Deep breath, and let's start again.
Not all the adjectives have to die, only the ones that are lightweight and easy to toss.
I'm talking about the snooze-worthy nuggets that don't add anything to your prose. They are interpretive, meaning they are open to the reader's own definition. One person's idea of what is small or sad might be different than another's. They have the power to mislead your prose, and we don't want that.
Big, little, blue, red, hard, soft, loud, quiet, fast, slow, dirty, clean, happy, sad, …blah blah blah
It's not that I hate these words, but using them should be a deliberate act. Grant it importance. My admonishment is to not just throw an adjective anywhere, but make it count.
Challenge your prose by eliminating these flimsy words. Try replacing it with a more precise noun or a more powerful adjective. Try using a metaphor or simile instead to describe.
Example: a big loud crowd
Big and loud aren't doing us any favors. Let's leave them to rot and die, shall we?
Ray Bradbury describes a crowd using simile and verbs in his short story "All Summer in a Day."
"The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed…"
Ahh, that's better. I see the crowd of children in my mind's eye, pressed and swaying lightly. They are joyful, expectant, and of different heights and shapes and colors. I see all of it, and he didn't have to say those words. They just appeared in my mind.
In the short story "Viewfinder," Raymond Carver describes a man that came to his home:
"A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so."
He didn't have to say anything about emotion, but sadness, grittiness, and possible loneliness appeared in my mind.
Carver is using the reader's assumptions about how people without hands are perceived. He uses these unsaid expectations to play into emotion and give way to a more human experience. Using the hooks to symbolize venerability and create empathy. Pretty amazing when you consider all that was achieved in two sentences with two adjectives.
You have that same brilliance inside of you.
Write something descriptive but limit your adjectives, using specific nouns and characteristics instead. This gives the reader access to your mind and curates precise detail.
Now you try.
OK write!