For the Love of Descriptors!
“The very big, red ball bounced on top of the dark, solid table, down the long, carpeted hallway, before noisily hitting the shiny, metal, clanking cymbals.”
Sounds like an advanced first grader practicing adjectives and adverbs, right? Or maybe a high school student trying to pad the word count on an essay.
For the love of everything holy, please stop inserting words that do nothing but clutter your writing.
Before littering your writing with a slew of meaningless descriptors, ask yourself these questions:
Do adverbs and adjectives add vital information?
If your story involves choosing between a red or blue pill (go watch The Matrix), color matters.
If you’re describing various textures, fabrics, hues, and sizes as you walk the aisle in a secondhand store, those details could be relevant when you add them to set the tone, improve your prose, show your attention to detail, or foreshadow a twist.
But if you’re telling us about a red ball bouncing off a solid table down a carpeted hallway, you better have a point for adding so many descriptors
Do superlatives add to my credibility?
One of the most important (critical, essential, central, fundamental, core, vital, imperative…) recommendations I offer new writers is to limit the use of superlatives in their writing. Overusing superlatives can be a writer's greatest error.
(See what I did there? Twice, in fact.)
Here’s how “Merriam-Webster” defines superlative (and the many overwrought, over-used batch of them):
1. Of, relating to, or constituting the degree of grammatical comparison that denotes an extreme or unsurpassed level of extent
2. Surpassing all others; SUPREME
3. Of very high quality; EXCELLENT
Mount Everest is the world’s “tallest” (superlative) mountain, right? Except, an orologist (someone who studies mountains; I looked it up) would tell you that Everest obtains that status only when measuring its height above sea level. If you include measurements from the base to a mountain’s peak, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller. Another rival, though, is Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo. Since the earth is not round, Chimborazo’s summit is farthest (an appropriate superlative) from the center of the Earth, making it nearly 7,000 feet taller than Everest.
I see superlatives most abused in self-help and business books. “The best way to lose stubborn belly fat” or “the most important leadership trait” are opinions, not facts. Adding “best” or “most important” doesn’t magically transform the tip that follows into an absolute truth.
At times, precise, factual terminology matters (especially to -ologists). But overusing superlatives suggests to the reader that you’re an expert when few of us are. When a reader knows your superlatives are inaccurate, you lose credibility with them.
So, write about the mountain in Napal, share your ideas about losing visceral fat, and let us know your thoughts about essential leadership traits. But leave superlatives in the dictionary where they belong.
Do intensifiers make scenes more intense?
Despite its name, intensifiers don’t add oomph to your writing.
This gem from Mark Twain, written over 125 years ago, still holds: “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it, and the writing will be just as it should be.”
“Damn” no longer raises eyebrows as it once did, but I find overusing weak words just as offensive. I’ve read enough manuscripts sprinkled with reallys, actuallys, eventuallys, and other lazy words to top endless cupcakes.
Is your reader going to think you and your dreadfully (and rather frightfully) rambling sentence literally (and figuratively) makes the colossally (exceptionally, excessively, extremely, insanely) bold assumption that everything appearing on the page is often (really, very, exceptionally, quite, remarkably) profound? Let me assure you that while you might find each word totally (sweet-ass, super, fantastically, fully, or somewhat) poignant, your reader will beg to differ.
As attributed to Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And writing is the stronger for it.
Happy writing!
