Saturday 8 June 2013
Adjectives are us
Many of us use way too many adjectives in our writing. Without getting too tied up with grammar, adjectives are used to describe nouns, as in "the red dress" or "the grumpy man". I love this quote from the grammar.ccc website, "Let your broad-shouldered verbs and nouns do the hard work of description". Take the following sentence as an example: "Her red dress rose in the cold wind, sending pinprick shivers up her slim, brown body." Without adjectives it reads thus: "Her dress rose in the wind, sending shivers across her body". If you're interested in seeing how a published author does it, check out the work of Raymond Carver, whose short stories are renowned for their lack of adjectival flounce. Such writing allows the reader to "see" the action more clearly - it's almost like reading a screenplay with directions to the actors. Have a go at writing for 10 minutes without any adjectives, beginning with the words "There were pigeons on the window sill".
A useful overview of adjectives is to be found here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm
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There were pigeons on the windowsill, two of them, about to leave, she turned to pour the tea and when she looked back they had gone. Monday morning ten thirty and she was alone. The hours till 3pm, she counted them on her fingers. One hour for housework, an hour for guitar practice, ten minutes for writing. She really should do some form of exercise. As she unwrapped the muffin she figured half an hour of some yoga poses and some situps would be plenty. There was no wind today so she sat on the steps and watched the passers by. She lived across from the path that followed the coast and climbed the headland. Maybe later she’d see if she could spot some whales, they were just starting to migrate north to have their babies. Sometimes they would stop in the bay and roll and play. Other peoples Monday mornings played out before her, mothers with strollers, women in pairs in workout gear, guys on bikes with surfboards under their arms. Why was a wetsuit pulled down to the waist so eyecatching? When she had lived in the hills she would sit on the steps to drink her tea and watch the birds, listen to all the country noises, but the lack of people made her anxious, the hours ahead of her would feel heavy and she would need to get online and find people there. Here there was a stream of people, she didn’t need to talk to them just to see them there was reassuring.
ReplyDeleteyeah pammy. isn't it a clean, clear way to write?
ReplyDeleteThere were pigeons on the window sill. A cat sat at the window. Its tail flicked, her ears bent low. Her body quivered as the birds sat within paw’s reach, a pane of glass protecting them. The birds could not see the cat, only their own reflection. They cooed and pecked in the sun, oblivious. Behind the cat, lying on the floor, was a dog. He watched the cat. Every time the cat meowed at the pigeons his tail thumped the floor, his body squirmed, he whimpered. The cat eluded him. The cat was an enigma. He didn’t understand the cat’s aloofness. Why didn’t the cat behave like him? Like a dog?
ReplyDeletesee? it makes the action so much clearer :)
ReplyDelete