Hunting Adjectives with Elephant Guns

Bonnie's post on Monday made me sit up and pay attention. Bonnie climbed into the bully pulpit for the sake of nouns, the building blocks readers use to create story worlds and those shadows we all hope to leave with our readers. (Sharon's post on Wednesday made me rethink my daily words, the ones I fling about recklessly. Thanks for that, friend. I am resolved to do better.)

And so I went a-hunting for adjectives as she had done. I found few extraneous uses, but they're there. I also admired strong nouns like never before.

This was such a powerful exercise that I've done the work for you. I've collected seven random samples from novels we've all loved. Some are more adjective-rich than others. I hope you'll look at these 50-word snippets and help me decide if any of the adjectives should be scratched, or if a more descriptive noun could have been used.

Remember, adjectives aren't the bad guys. We do tend to lean heavily on them in our writing. The trick is to use the strongest noun possible (cottage rather than house; beret rather than hat) to minimize the need to slow-down-the-action adjectives.

Yep, this is how writers have fun, so jump in!

[Note: I italicized the adjectives for you. I didn't italicize adjectives with linking verbs. That makes things messy but does show what a complex task lay before us each day. Also, I have missed a few or thousands.]

I finished reading the letter and closed my eyes. I was thinking, So many tears for Elder Sister, so much joy for me. I was grateful that we followed the custom of my not falling into your husband's house until just before the birth of your first child. I still had...Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See

We had been wandering for so long I forgot what it was like to live within the walls or sleep through the night. In that time I lost all I might have possessed if Jerusalem had not fallen: a husband, a family, a future of my own. My girlhood disappeared in...The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman

A day after the Evers funeral, Miss Leefolt's mama stop by for a visit. She live up in Greenwood, Mississippi, and she driving down to New Orleans. She don't knock. Miss Fredericks just waltz on in the living room where I'm ironing. She give me a lemony smile. I go...The Help, Kathryn Stockett

When he was pushed out by the rest of his family, the relief struggled inside him like an obscenity. It was something he didn't want to feel, but nonetheless, he felt it with such gusto it made him want to throw up. How could he? How could he? But he did...The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Restlessness rippled through the schoolroom like waves of wind through wheat. A teacher on a discipline rampage can be a fearsome thing; every student ever born knows that. But we never expected that kind of behavior from Morrie. Nonetheless he seemed to go out of his way to pick fault...The Whistling Season, Ivan Doig

The polar bears lies on his stomach, head and snout stretched in front of him. In repose he looks harmless--cuddly even, with most of his bulk concentrated in the lower third of his body. He takes a deep, halting breath and then exhales a long, rumbling groan. Poor thing. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
Note: Some would have italicized polar bear, but when it's a species, as the animals in the following example, I prefer to read the two-word phrase as a noun.

The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart. She rowed upstream to see wood ducks, canvasbacks, and ospreys and to search for tiger salamanders in the ferns. She drifted downstream to find painted turtles sunning on fallen trees...Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell

Did any of our authors go crazy with adjectives? Did they use adjectives when a strong noun would have been more powerful? Look at your own writing, too. Is this a new awareness for you? What are you doing this weekend? I'm going to a mineral hot springs with the family. Thanks for spending time with us. We so enjoy your company.

We Need to Talk About Your Adjectives

Adverbs. We’ve made a big deal about them in recent years. Readers, it has been declared, hate them (fine, though I strongly suspect most don’t care that much if they enjoy the story), They weaken prose, so off with their heads.

I could argue that well-chosen adverbs make for punchy prose packed with panache (just ask Arthur Plotnik), but the general point is well made. Killing off the “ly” words does tidy up the place. And writers have complied. We’ve had our ah-ha moments and killed off swaths of  “ly” words.

Before we take too deep a bow for our writerly stroke of genius, I draw your attention to the forgotten noun. Or, more accurately, the flabby adjective your nouns are resting on like sleeping old men atop waterbeds.

Nouns matter.

Last week Latyane pointed us to some neuroscience experiments that have recorded physical effects on the brain from reading fiction. This makes sense because most complex tasks inflict physical changes in the brain and reading fiction—words that are complex symbols that represent symbols of real things—is nothing if not complex.

I’ve pounded the noun drum before and I’m tattooing again in the context of thelingering shadows in a reader’s brain. When we read, we accomplish an astonishing array of tasks all without moving a muscle. Our brain scans words on a page, interprets the symbols correctly, and builds a complex system that, if it were extracted from a reader’s brain, would resemble a close proximity to real life with all its subtlety, brutality, and interact relationships. Reading is an act of stunning creativity. And what aids

readers in their creative act is nouns they can build on.

Recently I read a new writer’s attempt to create a scene. There were the usual newbie mistakes, including a floating POV, overly descriptive prose, and telling rather than showing. Still, it was the writer’s use of adjectives that stood out to me. In two sentences the writer used nine adjectives.

Nine.

I panicked a little. Went to my work-in-progress and scanned the manuscript looking for adjectives. I found a sample roughly the same length as the one with all the adjectives. Because I suspected I was a more experienced writer, I decided to count the adjectives in four sentences, rather than two.

One.

The adjective? Bowline.

Maybe I was just lucky. I chose another passage, another four sentences.

Zero.

Then I hunted up some favorite novels, the kinds that have stayed with me and played out in my memory for years.

I’m certain you can guess the outcome.

Nouns are the objects in which our brains build the worlds suggested to us in novels. Shadow-makers. The stronger the noun, the more certain the building blocks.

Adjectives are helpful when clarity is needed.

“His left arm.”

“She rolled into a protective ball.”

Precision is the goal for all writing—better to use a precise noun than to try to prop it up with an adjective.

So, where is the fun in adjectives? Modern writing is full of them (thank heavens!), and it’s important that we don’t leave this article thinking the point is to kill all the adjectives and leave it at that.

Kill the flabby ones and replace the noun it was propping up. Then, have some fun with adjectives, using them freely and creatively in ways that help readers build worlds in their imaginations.

Here is an example from my current work-in-progress, Trillium, with the adjectives highlighted:

I was drowning. Being eaten alive by a shallow creek. Dying beside a cow, of all things. No one believes they would die beside a cow. Every breath found only liquid. I thrashed, kicking my legs while trying to free my right arm from the elbow-deep mud, which meant pushing down with my left arm, sinking it deeper into the muck.

There was a splash. Loud. Nearby. Not made by me. I was kicking in mud, and this was the sound of water. My name. Drawn out like a yodel, Fiiiioooooooooooona. Splash. Twice more. My yodel name, then splash. “Grab the rope!”

Rope. Cory. Help.

Hit your manuscripts and go adjective hunting. If you want, come back and tell us how it went. How many frivolous ones did you kill? What about the creative uses? Can you think of a novel you read that dragged you down in adjectives? Share your thoughts, examples, grousings, and chocolate cookies in the comment section. 

Micro-editing

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Before a manuscript becomes a book it will, or should, go through a series of edits, some by the author and some by a publisher's in-house editor. On Monday, Patti talked about macro-editing the first draft of her WIP. That's where you look at the manuscript as a whole for continuity, loose ends, POV or tense problems, etc. I love her octopus-in-a-jar analogy, and I'm super impressed with her color-coded outline. Arguably anal? Not if it works, Patti. Ideally, it helps to take a break between completing a manuscript and starting the read-through for the macro edit. It gives you a fresh look at the story. I know FIRM deadlines like Patti mentioned can make it difficult to let the manuscript sit for a while, but when possible put it aside for a couple of weeks before starting the read-through.

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Another type of edit is the micro edit, where you look at the manuscript line by line to make sure every word is the right word, that the meaning comes through loud and clear. This is the time to replace passive verbs with active, and ferret out superfluous words, phrases, sentences, even paragraphs. William Brohaugh in his excellent book Write Tight (which I recommend), says, "The goal is to deliver 60,000 words with 60,000 words of value ... Whatever the length, you must deliver value." In other words, every word must count. Go through the manuscript and delete as many adjectives and adverbs as you reasonably can. Leave in only the ones that add something unique or surprising, or that are absolutely necessary. Often, adjectives or adverbs are crutches used to make up for a weak noun or verb. When you find the right noun or verb the modifier can usually be cut. And when you come across a noun modified by two or more adjectives, in most cases you should select only the strongest and eliminate the others. When I finish a manuscript I do a search from a list of words I've compiled that I tend to use and overuse: really, very, quite, some, just --it's a growing list -- and send them packing.

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Adjectives and adverbs aren't the only culprits in our writing. Redundant words and phrases make for flabby prose. Consider the phrases absolutely certain or follows behind. When you're certain about something, there's no room for doubt, so absolutely is redundant. And when you follow someone, you don't do it from the front, so behind is another wasted word. Little things like that clutter what might otherwise be a good manuscript. This may seem trivial or nitpicky, but consider this: The typical proposal consists of a summary, a synopsis, author bio, promotion ideas and three sample chapters. But the editor or agent who picks up your manuscript may not get through three paragraphs if the writing isn't crisp and above par.

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Long passages of narrative can be a problem as well. I'm not saying there shouldn't be passages of narrative. I have a favorite author whose fiction is 80% narrative. But the narrative needs to serve a purpose beyond describing the landscape or weather, unless the landscape or weather contributes to the plot. Use just enough to establish the setting of a scene, then get on with it. As author Elmore Leonard said, "... leave out the parts that people skip." I know, that's easier said than done, but take note of the expendable passages in the books you read for pleasure, the passages you're tempted to skim, then try to leave those out of your own writing.

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In chapter 2 of Write Tight, "Sixteen Types of Wordiness and How to Trim Them," Brohaugh says this about "weed words ... the stuff that grows so hardily in your manuscripts. Trouble is, like some weeds, these parasitic undergrowths can deceive you. They're pretty, and they don't look like weeds. Wordweeds, prunable leaves and branches ... fall into these general categories:

1. The redundant
2. The already understood
3. The empty
4. The evasive
5. The passive
6. The weak, the noncommital and the hesitant
7. The affected
8. The circuitous
9. The self-indulgent
10. The overkill
11. The inflated and the deflated
12. The invisible and therefore unnecessary
13. The imprecise
14. The clever and the show-offy
15. The nonsensical
16. The beautiful

Whew! Seems like a lot to eliminate. What's left, you wonder? A stronger, tighter manuscript that rises above the slush pile. I know, I used two adjectives, and sometimes that's alright. But tell me, what one word would you use to replace the two I used to get the exact meaning across? Do you have your own list of words you search and destroy in your manuscript?