We don’t need to tell smart, intuitive readers everything and we rarely need to tell them details more than once. They will fill in the blanks as long as the blanks are not critical to the story. You can describe a protagonist (male) as 60ish with long gray hair, bronze skin, and a leathery, weathered face, and the reader will know what your American Indian character looks like. But if you say he’s an Arapahoe elder, won’t the reader form a similar mental picture without all the extra words?
Adverbs are the most likely candidates for elimination. Many can be found by searching on the letters ly. Examples of words you might find are silently, carefully, actually, and quietly. In the sentence, “He silently crept across the room in his stocking feet,” the word silently can be eliminated without changing the meaning. “Crept” implies carefully, silently, and slowly.
Since not all adverbs and adjectives can found so easily, this step may be combined with others in your sentence-by-sentence editing read. Look for redundancies, such as emerald green eyes or huge, cavernous room. Emerald and green tell the reader the same thing, as do huge and cavernous.
Adjectives that are quantifiers or indicators of size are often too general to be useful. Words such as large, small, big, tall, short, huge, some, many, and most are examples. “Some” is the word I find sprinkled throughout my own manuscripts as well as those I critique for others. It’s best to use precise measures or quantities instead.
Not all adjectives and adverbs are bad, of course. In some cases, details are important to the story and may even be clues or red herrings in mysteries or thrillers. In other cases, a character’s appearance might explain his odd behavior. Sometimes descriptive words are needed to create a mood. Even so, use adverbs and adjectives in moderation and be precise. Don’t use two or three when one will do the job.
An exercise: Write an accurate description of the above scene using the least number of adjectives and adverbs possible. What adjectives or adverbs would you have liked to use? How important would they be in a story about a bird lover’s war with squirrels?
I found several sites that listed adverbs and adjectives and I copied and printed them out. That’s really helped me eliminate unnecessary and overused ones.
Hi Diane. It takes awhile to do all the searches, but it’s the time. Good tight writing is not easy, even when I’ve progressed to the third draft stage.
Hi, Pat,
This is always a problem for me as I tend to use more adjectives and adverbs than I should. That’s why good editing is so important.
And I have one of the best editors ever, Jacqueline. Deni Dietz has taught me so much over the years, and she does freelance editing too. No matter how much I self-edit, she always finds more to fix. 😀
Squirrel meets feeder.
Simple!
The LY words are easy to spot. I’ve become very creative in how I eliminate them.
That says it all, Alex. I like your style!
Pat, your “sat down” quirk is similar to my head shaking redundancy. I was startled to find I had characters nodding yes, or shaking their head no. I finally realized “he nodded,” or “he shook his head,” is sufficient–nobody nods no or shakes their head yes.
i think I’ve written those things too, Allan. I’m gradually catching myself as I write instead of as I edit.
Well Patricia, I see you’ve been reading my manuscripts again. Such fine examples you’ve managed to find! The ones that always, and I mean every time, stop me is the double redundancies Every I read those with my eyes I always, every time, come to a complete stop, as in not moving forward, and shake my head side-to-side.Yup, that’s the truth, ain’t lying at all..
Dean, did I miss any examples you’re especially familiar with? My personal favorite redundancy in my own writing is “sat down.” I mean really, would one ever sit in any other direction?
You’re absolutely right, Pat, about being judicious with description. Just a few words often suffice, particularly if the few that one uses are really powerful (such as Arapaho elder or blonde starlet). And I’ve found, too, that one can fit description in with the story, rather than do an ‘aside’ to the reader. For example, one can say, Pete ran a hand through his dark, curly mop of hair as a part of a scene instead of taking a whole extra few sentences to describe Pete. You’re also right about adverbs. Instead of saying ran quickly, one can use a more specific verb, like raced. It makes for a tighter story.
Descriptions can be beautiful, Margot, but they don’t always belong in a novel. I’m amazed when I still find well-known authors stopping the action to describe what a character is wearing. It might be important to know one thing, that the character is wearing muddy boots for instance, but not the color and style of every single stitch of clothing.