Adjectives reconsidered

Some time ago, somebody posted that he'd been told he
used too many adjectives, and I replied that you could
often replace a noun-adjective pair in English with a
single noun. I don't withdraw that comment, which was
accurate. I haven't read the manuscript in question, and
this might not apply to it. But I have just read the
beginning of a story -- not on Lit -- which needed the
adjectives excised, not replaced -- taken out.
Any person *can* be described with a great many adjectives.
He is weary, middling tall, sandy haired, clean shaven,
casually dressed, soft spoken, tanned, overweight,
underpaid, irreligious, llberally educated, etc. etc.
He *can* be described in all those ways; he *shouldn't* be
described in all those ways. What matters? Tell us that,
and leave off the rest.
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Here endeth the rant.

Just to prove that all rules can be broken successfully by real experts:

"...down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crow-black, fishing-boat-bobbing sea. ..." Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood

Dylan Thomas is Dylan Thomas. But what if he'd been describing someone in a Lit story combing their hair? Their "sloe-black, slow, black, crow-black" hair? That's over the top, even for DT (BTW, I just noticed that his initials are the same as "delirium tremens". Fate?)

What always irritates me is the habit of stopping a story in order to describe the character to us, as if we’re playing doll-house: "Now this is the Daddy. He's 36 years old, six foot two and 190 pounds with piercing blue eyes and not an ounce of fat on him…”
Characters reveal themselves in what they say and do and how they say and do it, and one telling gesture says more about a character than a raft of adjectives. That’s what make a lot of stories so silly: The guy tells us what a stud he is, then we see how clumsy he is when he meets a woman or makes love, and the story becomes a farce of itself.

---dr.M.

Is this the 'show don't tell' thread again?

I think it's probably best that unless you have a specific reason for detailing how someone looks; "Even though he was only 5'4" he was the star of the basketball team" or adding mood to a horror story; "the soot blackened brickwork of it's rumbling spires" then physical descriptions are basically a waste of time and best left to the reader's imagination. Then you have something to moan about when you leave the cinema "How did they think Danny Devito would make a good Heathcliff?"

Gauche

Good points Uther:

Some writers--none around here of course-- seem to believe that arousal comes from certain 'trigger' adjectives, which make a piece 'descriptive'.

So it's not words like 'crow black' that turn up, in excess, but (those like) "dripping hot wet" applied to the steaming precious dank treasure we blissfully, hopelessly long for.

"Cunt" is plain and unarousing, but "dripping hot wet cunt" is a real turn on. And I guess it is if you're a sixteen year old having got his hands on the first work of hardcore porn.

The amaterish placement of descriptions is another important issue: It's usually the first paras that are a kind of character list, like at the beginning of a screenplay.

If I might mention one other issue: placement of adjectives just before nouns (in strings of two or three) is often undertaken with a bit too much zeal, resulting is a far too large percentage, compared with most good writers. Hence even the stale "juicy" sounds a bit better in, "the cunt, juicy against my thigh."


J.

Pure said:

... The amaterish placement of descriptions is another important issue: It's usually the first paras that are a kind of character list, like at the beginning of a screenplay...

Click to expand...

And more and more frequently recently there is an explicit Dramatis personae as a preface to stories.