Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Problem With Adverbs & Adjectives




When I was in elementary school, I was taught to incorporate as many adjectives and adverbs into my stories as possible.


My writing sounded like this:


The big, fat, yellow sun shined brightly against the light blue sky.


Colorful, isn’t it? And yet, sometimes those colors are the very things that distract the reader from the story. Literary agent, Sally Apokedak, puts it this way: “…too much description makes the colors all bleed together.”


Nowadays, adjectives and adverbs are considered to be lazy writing. They tend to tell the action, emotion, scenery, etc. instead of allowing the reader to experience it for themselves.




2 comments:

  1. I agree so much with this post! Too often I see young writers my age making this mistake, because it's what we learn in school, but we tend to forget that storytelling is different than an essay.
    Thank you for this!
    -Gray Marie
    graymariewrites.blogspot.com

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