Tag Archives: adjectives

Descriptive Writing Tip 2

Use adjectives.

The reader needs details so that they can picture the number/quantity, size, shape, weight, colour, brightness, texture, condition, sound, smell, taste, speed, temperature, age, distance, time, origin, location, emotion towards or opinion of the thing being described.

Take this sentence: “The car raced through the town

I’ve got a good verb – “raced” but otherwise I know very little about either of the things being described – the car or the town. If I add a few adjectives, suddenly these nouns come to life!

“The tiny battered Mini raced through the sleepy seaside town”

You’ll notice I changed “car” to “Mini” so you could picture an actual make and model – “car” is a pretty crap noun because it’s a common noun but other than ‘engine, four wheels’, it doesn’t give you a specific picture in your mind.

For a vast list of adjectives, click on this link.

WARNING: Too many adjectives can make your writing worse, particularly when you select over-used adjectives such as big/small, happy/sad, good/bad, fast/slow. Writing which draws attention to itself – or rather which draws loads of attention to itself by being overly flowery – is known as purple prose.

THIS IS NOT A COMPLIMENT.

PURPLE PROSE IS BAD!

You’ll annoy the reader because they’ll feel like you’re showing off and you’ll probably slow the pace of your sentences to a crawl as well.

Here is an example of just enough adjectives to keep the flow of the writing and at the same time offer us a clear picture:

“I could see a blue light flashing in the distance. My head was throbbing and when I lifted my swollen hand to my temple, sticky, wet blood smeared my fingertips. A low moan of pain was just barely audible amid the screaming sirens and the screeching whirr of the chainsaw that was going to cut me out of the train wreckage. It was only later I realised that I was the one moaning. Everyone else was dead”

Here’s an example of purple prose – add in 11 more adjectives (the ones I’ve underlined) and suddenly it goes from descriptive & well-paced to incredibly dragged out and intensely irritating!

“I could see a vivid blue light flashing in the far-off distance. My heavy headachy head was throbbing and when I lifted my swollen sore hand to my aching temple, sticky, wet blood smeared my shaking fingertips. A low moan of intense pain was just barely audible amid the screaming sirens and the screeching whirr of the vicious chainsaw that was going to soon cut me out of the twisted train wreckage. It was only later I realised that I was the one moaning. Everyone else was dead”

Some writers prefer a very minimalist style to keep a fast pace in their writing – something like this:

“I could see a blue light flashing. My head was throbbing. I lifted my swollen hand to my temple and blood smeared my fingertips. A moan of pain was just barely audible amid the sirens and the whirr of the chainsaw that was cutting me out of the train wreckage. It was only later I realised I was the one moaning. Everyone else was dead”

So, you don’t HAVE to include loads of adjectives to write descriptively…

 

Verbinology

Today the fact that formal grammar isn’t taught in schools anymore became scarily clear to me. Presented with ten sentences, one of my classes had varying degrees of difficulty, from mild to severe, in identifying verbs, nouns and adjectives. And let’s just say it’s a while since they were fresh-cheeked first years 😉

I’m not sure how this could have happened, how 13 years of formal education could fail to produce a knowledge of the parts of speech; nor do I absolve myself of blame. I think perhaps that although we focus on it in detail when students are in first year, beyond that point we presume that the knowledge is there, is fixed and doesn’t need to be constantly revisited, a presumption which of course fails to recognise the all important reality that true knowledge arises from repetition, repetition, repetition until the info becomes hard-wired into the subconscious. So although it may seem ‘basic’ when I finish Romeo & Juliet with my second years to return to punctuation and parts of speech; and bordering on insulting to do the same with my Junior Certs when we’ve finished the masterpiece that is To Kill A Mockingbird; although it seems utterly absurd to go from Wordsworth’s sonnets to verbs and nouns with my fifth years and downright depressing to still be repeating the mantra ad nauseum to a gang of Leaving Certs today taught me what it also is. Necessary. Vital. Urgent.

With this in mind, one of our top performers today, Maeve, just sent me a message on edmodo with this handy little ditty that her mam learnt whilst at school and impressively still remembers – I’d never heard it before but now intend to learn it off myself!

Three little words you often see
are articles a, an and the-e.
The noun is the name of anything
as hoop or garden, school or swing.

Instead of the noun, the pronoun stands,
his head, her coat, your arm, my hand.
The adjective tells us more about the noun
like great, small, pretty, white or brown.

The verb tells something to be done
like read, laugh, count, jump or run.
How things are done the adverb tells
like slowly, quickly, ill or well.

The preposition stands beside the noun
as in or through, after, on.
The conjunction joins two words together
like men and women, wind or weather.

The interjection shows surprise
ahh! How pretty!… Ohh! How wise!
The whole are called 9 parts of speech
which reading, writing and speaking teach.