Day 8: Limit adjective use.

Adjectives can be useful (such as the one I just used: “useful”), but when you string them together, they can bore, confuse, and turn off your readers. Consider this sentence:

“The big, green, hairy, smelly monster crept out from under the small, afraid, whimpering boy’s bed.”

This sentence has three problems. First, it is boring. The point is that a monster crept. All those extra words detract from the significance of this event. Second, it is complicated. Every time the reader finds a new adjective, he or she has to modify his or her mental image of what is happening. Third, it is confusing. Is the bed or the child small, afraid, and whimpering?

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Here’s our advice, in three parts:

 
  1. Find one word that means what you are trying to say, preferably an action verb or concrete noun instead of an adjective.
  2. If you want to use an adjective before a noun, use only one adjective that means exactly what you are trying to say.
  3. If you want to use adjectives after the noun, don’t use more than two.