Style Lab: Adjectives

We've all got wonderful plots and fantastic characters, bursting with life. Or at least, they would be bursting, where they written concisely. Instead, we've got wonderful plots buried in too many words, and fantastic characters wrestling against their weighty descriptions. Adjectives can be a writer's greatest weakness. This article [1] helpfully describes the inherent problem with too many adjectives that distract from the meaning and power of your prose.

This is the first of a few threads relating to style problems and how we can all become better writers. Replies should deal with how you use metaphors and adjectives and problems related to. It 's encouraged to post very short pieces of prose that you think or "weighty" and would like help on clearing up.

edited 18th Oct '10 11:51:13 AM by Amarys

Amateur cook Professional procrastinator

Even though I've developed a far more descriptive styling in recent chapters (much to the comparison of the almost Beige Prose in early stuff) I find the easiest rule of thumb regarding adjectives per sentence is...

Unless you are staging an elaborate Overly Long Gag, use no more than three adjectives per sentence. Even then use 2 or less more frequently.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I have the opposite problem. Most of my characters get no more physical description than gender and approximate age, and the scenery fares no better.

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

I usually follow Major Tom's rule. Purely descriptive things usually take a few more, but not by much.

This is this.

I usually line up the adjectives in whatever way I see fit. What's the problem with flowery writing? It used to be quite the fad at many points in the history of Literature, starting with the Bard himself.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Same problem as Ettina, though I'll go one further—my stories aren't long enough. I've been told multiple times that I cover a novella's worth of content in a short. I don't want to pad my stories, but description is the thing they're most commonly mentioned as lacking, so I need to learn how to appropriately insert adjectives without breaking the flow of the story. (This is especially a problem for location description—I describe characters when they speak and act, but I don't normally write locations that speak and act, so I'm at a loss as to when to describe them.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

feotakahari: Don't the characters move around and hear a change from carpet to hardwood? Don't they have to shield their eyes from intense glare or fumble around for a light switch? Dig around for a clean pair of socks on a messy floor, or sweep a speck of dust off of immaculate tile? Characters interact with the environment, too.

WARNING: INTENSE LITERARY ANALYSIS OF MY OWN WORK, AND ALSO THERE IS MATH BECAUSE I AM STUDYING FOR A STATISTICS TEST

Here is a paragraph from a story currently in Limbo for the past few months.

There are several ways one can analyze this paragraph in terms of math. I'll use the most obvious ones.

• Nouns Vs. Spicy Nouns
  • 7 out of 13 nouns have an adjective attached. Based on this, I appear to use adjectives a little more than half of the time. Let's round it to 55% because I am a lazy mathematician.

• Adjectives Per Total Words
  • 6 adjectives out of 66 words total. 2.3 adjectives per 22 word sentence. Simplified, it's about 9%.

Wait. What? One version says I use adjectives half the time, but the other suggests that I only use them a tenth of the time? That, my non-math-inclined writing friends, is what we call A HUGE FUCKING DISPARITY.

Lo Cuento, Es Muy Picante*

I am very sorry if I completely destroyed the Spanish language

Clearly, counting "nouns vs spicy nouns" causes the adjectives to be put under a microscopic focus, and they appear more prominent than they really are. But "adjectives vs word count" is too broad, and the adjectives are drowned out by the articles and verbs and everything else in the pot.

Like being in the general vicinity of a tiger, it is easier and less painful to move farther away from data than it is to get closer. So we're going to look at "nouns vs spicy nouns" again. But this time, we're going to back out of range of the data's sharp teeth and claws in order to appreciate the beauty of its exotic striped coat.

Hmm. The last two are repeats. And the one before the repeats has too many. They're probably the ones that skewed the data in the beginning, so let's cut those three bastards out.

Now we're left with 1 spicy noun for every 4 plain nouns, 1/2, and 1/3. Since math is all about glossing shit over, then according to this data I use adjectives about 1/3 of the time. It is less than one half, but more than one tenth, and that looks about right.

Okay But What Do All These Scary Numbers MEAN?

Just that, for this particular story, I used adjectives a third of the time. Also, that I have way too much time to think about these sorts of things.

I don't know if "a third of the time" is more or less often than the amount of adjectives everyone else adds to their story, by extension whether this is florid or sparse. But does anyone need to know this, as long as they have an audience which likes their writing style?

Based on this data, I don't know how the quality of my adjectives contributes to the tone of the story.

I guess this might mess with the narrative voice, solely because I've never heard a first-person protagonist who grew up in the slums utter five adjectives before a noun.

But does that mean it would be out of character for a sufficiently angry and creative character to say "I hate your sopping, grimy, shit-stink, ghetto old house"? Merciful heavens, the adjectives! But wait! They're all adjectives that the character would know, based on how the author established him. And, well, when some people get mad, they spew words all over the place, especially if they knock stuff over to punctuate their ranting. I could see this character kicking in a few windows and dropping every insulting word he can think of.

If you go the other way, let's have that hypothetical character say "I repudiate your chateau". Is it a simpler sentence due to having no adjectives at all? Yes. Is it something that would believably come out of the previously established character's mouth? No. For the reason that I am a college student majoring in English, and I needed a thesaurus to write that sentence, and just no.

Long Story, Shortened For Your Convenience

If you use a lot of adjectives, it's kind of nice to see that your nouns can stand alone every once in a while.

If you repudiate adjectives, it's kind of nice to spice up a sentence for your readers.

But ultimately, a matter of quality, not quantity. Worry about what kind of adjectives there are in your work. Use a thesaurus, not a calculator.

Don't do what Leradny did.

edited 1st Mar '12 1:33:40 PM by Leradny

I'm generally with Ettina, and I don't see that as a problem.

I'm just not inclined to take advice from Alexander Mc Call Smith, since I think his works are the worst sort of pretentious faux-literary schlock.

I try to think like there's an actual person in front of me and I'm telling them this story. If it starts to feel like they would get impatient, or I'm wasting their time, I cut back on the verbosity.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

What Ettina said. I seldom bother with more than a generic, "mid-20s, brown hair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt."

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.