Feb 26 2008
Don’t Overuse Adjectives
Adjectives are necessary, but they are overused by many writers who are willing to take the lazy way out.
It may be perfectly fine – even necessary – to say, “He found the green ball in the small basket.” The adjectives “green” and “small” tell us which ball and which basket. If there are multiple balls and multiple baskets, those two words are important.
But let’s say we need to convey even more information about the ball and basket. Let’s say we’re writing a mystery novel and the green ball is bloody because it has been used to murder someone and the little basket has been hidden by the killer to avoid detection. Here are two ways to handle it:
- He found the green, blood-stained ball in the small, hidden basket.
- He found the green ball in the small basket. The ball was stained with blood and the basket had been hidden.
Which of the two treatments is best?
The second is better, even though it’s longer. It’s better because the facts that the ball had blood on it and the basket had been hidden are too important to treat with two simple adjectives. Besides, when you string two or more adjectives together, they can become cumbersome and readers have a greater tendency to ignore them.
That brings up another problem with using too many adjectives: they can bog down your writing and make it “flowery.”
So please, don’t muddy your writing with multiple, flowery, cumbersome adjectives. Doing so will make you a lazy, lousy, boring, awful writer and you will never produce excellent, effective, successful, hard-hitting, award-winning, money-making manuscripts.
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