This little phrase gets bandied about like some sort of magic spell, but most people (at least those the message is meant for) seem to have no clue what it means, so I'll have a go. If your sentences comprise multiple adjectives and adverbs (more than a couple), and your paragraphs comprise multiple multiple-adjective/multiple-adverb sentences in series, it's an indicator that you should lose all the descriptors and pick better words.
Rather than
"He walked cautiously, slowly, and scarily down the forlorn, treacherous street lined with scary, creepy characters,"
go for something like
"He shuffled his feet, hesitated, and then traversed the avenue lined with ne'er-do-wells."
The picture is the same, but the lack of clutter in the second version allows the reader to better visualize the scene. The first is overly descriptive, but with ambiguous and general words that convey little but take up a lot of space that could be freed or replaced with additional information. Don't see it? OK, let's dissect a bit more:
"He walked cautiously, slowly, and scarily": this tells us how the character feels rather than letting his actions convey his emotional state. The alternative phrasing tells us what he's doing, but we are left to determine why.
More specifically:
- "walked cautiously" can be replaced by a more-descriptive phrase such as "halting steps," "shuffling feet," or "nervous shuffle."
- "slowly" is redundant if a properly descriptive word is used. All the examples, including "cautiously," have the concept of slow built into them.
- "scarily" is nonsensical in this context. This is a common descriptor error—the character is not doing the scaring; he's scared. Not to mention that, again, if the right words are used, the concept of scared is already embedded.
- "forlorn"—poor word choice, as this word typically describes a living being rather than an inanimate object such as a street (in this case)
- "treacherous"—probably OK, though describing the characters lining the street would convey treachery without having to state it explicitly.
- "street"—maybe avenue, thoroughfare, boulevard, alley?
- "scary" and "creepy" and "characters"—throwaway words that rarely convey much unique meaning. We already know that they are characters; some other word, any other word, would be better here.
Other tips in this multipart post (and a few others):
Cheers.
Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment