CREATIVE PROCESS
Adjectively Adjacent
Kill the Clutter
Use plain, simple language, short words, and brief sentences. That is the way to write English.
— Mark Twain
Have you ever caught yourself in the throes of passion … the descriptive kind?
Does your pen runneth amok with exuberant, gleaming, and splendiferous adjectives? Are your words overblown, over-zealous, and even (the greatest sin of all) pretentious?
Like so many of us, you may rely too heavily on adjectives in description.
After all, what are adjectives used for in descriptive writing if not to describe?
Let’s refresh ourselves.
Adjectives are words that describe a noun, fun, provocative, soothing, blue, curious. They also attribute magnitude, zillions, some, twenty.
Example
Bloom is my sweet, beautiful Greek rescue Harehound. She frolics with abandonment over my lush and bountiful garden, digging up the many colourific and splendorous borders and kicking up the dense, dark brown soil all over my perfect, soft green lawn.
