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My writing teacher told me to cut all my adjectives and it ruined a story
Took a class at the community center last fall. The instructor said to remove every single descriptive word to make prose stronger. I tried it on a short story about a guy fixing an old radio. Ended up with just actions and dialogue, no feeling. The piece read like a repair manual. A friend read it and said it was boring, had no mood. Took me three weeks to rewrite it with some description put back in. Anyone else get advice that sounded smart but made your work worse?
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the_julia8d agoMost Upvoted
Oh man, that is some TERRIBLE advice. I had a teacher tell me to cut all adverbs once and my characters just stood there doing things, no idea HOW they felt about it. It made everything so flat and weird. Sometimes you NEED those little descriptive words to build the mood, like the static from that old radio or the smell of dust. Sounds like you figured out the right balance in the end, which is the whole point.
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carr.luna8d ago
@the_julia what was the worst line you had to cut?
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william_craig77d ago
I get what you mean about adverbs, but saying they tell you "HOW they felt about it" isn't quite right. An adverb describes the action itself, like "she said sadly." The feeling behind it is better shown through the action or a bit of internal thought. Cutting all of them is too far, but they often cover for weaker verbs.
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