I love adjectives too much they have given me writing arthritis.
The adverb rule applies here, I think. And that's If it ends in 'ly' seriously consider if it needs to be there.
"Well, that was worth it" Bob said, sarcastically.
Sarcastically doesn't need to be there. Take it out. The dialogue should be obvious enough to not need it. If its not, then the dialogue is your problem.
I don't think the job of the writer is to tell the reader exactly what to think, what to feel etc. but to tell the story. The way characters behave, the things they say, should tell the reader enough to build a picture of the characters, story world etc. that's close enough to what you're aiming for.
The LY rule of thumb helps a lot. A lot of adverbs end in LY and are pointlessly descriptive. But don't go so far that you take all of them out. Adjectives and adverbs and any parts of speechreally are like spices, balance them correctly and don't overdo it with any one of them unless its for a certain literary purpose lol If it doesn't advance the plot or isn't necessary for fully understanding the plot it shouldn't be there. Same with non fiction.
If you find that when you edit a piece that you've gone overboard with descriptors and adverbs etc. depending on the genre or if its non fiction, then maybe have the characters comment on how nice a day it is for the whatever they're doing instead of telling the reader its a nice, or pleasant, or peaceful, or crisp, or whatever the fuck kind of day lol
If its non fiction and you hate how you have too many adjectives or adverbs or whatever then try reading something like the descriptive chapters of the Grapes of Wrath. There's short beautiful chapters that just describe the farming life and stuff. Idk, just stuff that's helped me.
Some "rules" of writing are more social expectations. Adjectives should not be considered forbidden, but because of a preconceived notion of what good writing is, your work may not be taken as seriously if you have too many of them.
Same deal with poetry and the modern hangup against rhyming. "Free" verse was supposed to be "liberating" but instead it's its own conformity cliche in academia.
Edit: I meant "free" verse, not blank verse. My bad.
Argh, yes.
My brain glitched there. That wasn't a fun series of college classes but I should know better.
"You can't rhyme, even in a couplet. Write that part again, Ulysses. Poetry that rhymes will never be taken seriously." :maybe-later-honey:
Because Samuel Taylor Coleridge wasn't taken seriously and doesn't have fans like myself. :guts-rage:
Nothing's really dead in English literature. The sonnet's gone in and out of style how many times?
I agree with your top post - write what makes sense for what you're trying to say, not for what the "fashion" is. Maybe the composition demands a florid style. Not everything has to be Hemingway.
I had an especially smug "Ultra" liberal professor that also claimed he hated "genre" fiction and refused to accept any such work from students for a grade. Of course that meant his genre was not considered genre fiction, so if it was grimy bleak contemporary prose where more than half of each page is exhaustive descriptions of name branded products in the room while :grillman: characters cuss at each other, do drugs, and/or contemplate suicide, that has no genre at all. :galaxy-brain:
He was clearly a magnificent practitioner of the objective correlative, doing everything he could to make his readers want to do drugs and contemplate suicide.
I'm not in the poetry scene so I'm a bit bugged to hear they're not supposed to rhyme. I used to try for very complex rhyme schemes that still can evoke and hold it's own.
Maybe it sucked but I published it smh :/
You go through afterward and cut them down with ruthless efficiency.
The original version of that sentence had cold in there.
I couldn't think of good suggestions so I googled. The results were total crap and/or not useful. Example...
Best bet: Kill your adjectives and choose strong nouns.
[...]
Kill your adjectives for practice. Try this.
Choose a page or two from a rough draft or a completed short story or novel. This applies to non-fiction, too, if you tend to overuse adjectives. Save it as a separate doc or duplicate and kill your adjectives. What’s left? Is your meaning clear in all cases?
If removing adjectives means readers won’t know what you mean, replace nouns with stronger choices. You might need to add a few descriptive adjectives for clarity in some cases, but with fewer adjectives, you should end up with much better writing.
It's not bad advice but the article didn't explain how. So much stuff on the net about writing is some horrid combo of copypasta and attempts at SEO gaming.
I suggest you join a forum somewhere that people share their writing to be criticized. Before you share your own stuff - you could do searches for stuff like "How do I use fewer adjectives". Even a small, active forum should have at least a few times if the forum is any good.
I might be wrong but I'd stay away from sites like reddit where the vast majority of people have dreams but are unwilling to do anything to even improve a tiny bit. They are always searching for just the right post or comment to learn how they can write a bestselling, critically acclaimed novel in a month. If not three weeks.
Generally speaking, you can make your sentences more appealing by replacing excessive adjectives with better verbs and nouns. And if you want to be a fancy sounding writer you use more metaphors, sometimes just describing things as the metaphorical thing with no explanation.
"The concert was loud and fun."
"The music blared, the crowd ecstatically cheered with every pause."
"Devotees to the beat smilingly chanted but few else could hear; they repeated the sacred 35 decibel poems dictated by their shaman."
Not that any of the above is even close to good writing, but you get the idea. Also all of these things are a matter of style and imo clarity is the most important thing.
