Huh? What’s wrong with adjectives? Aren’t they the way we tell the reader exactly what we’re trying to tell them? Aren’t adjectives part of “show, don’t tell?”  Well–maybe yes and maybe no. It depends on the quality of the adjective. Unfortunately, most of us tend to use what I call “wimpy adjectives.”  Here are some examples adapted from a recent writing workshop:

1. She drove down the street past  sparkling, elegant  houses.

2. We could not see behind the brightly-colored walls: they ran from one house to the next down the cobbled road.

3. Her house was  beautiful, cozy, comfortable, and welcoming.

So what’s wrong with those sentences, you ask? Is Professional Writing Coach getting entirely too fussy? The adjectives involved are: elegant, sparkling, beautiful, brightly-colored, cobbled, cozy, comfortable, welcoming. Of all of those, “cobbled” is the closest to being a good, descriptive adjective.

But what about the others? We know what “splendid” means, don’t we? We know what “sparklingl”  is. Or do we? Consider that what you might be thinking of when you write “splendid,” may not be the way your reader defines splendid. I may think a restored California Craftsman style house on a shady older neighborhood street is splendid. You may prefer a Mac Mansion in a newer suburban neighborhood. The same goes for “sparkling.” What does that mean? It was after dark, and the lights were on? It was in Arizona and the sun was bright?

In reality wimpy adjectives tell us nothing. They don’t contribute toward the accomplishment of every writer’s task: to take what is in the mind of the writer, transfer it, through the medium of the page, to the mind of the reader–as directly and accurately as possible.

Now look at the other adjectives in the list. Do they paint the picture we are trying to paint? Or do they leave it to the reader to fill in the colors–perhaps not the colors you had in mind, at all.

Consider this selection from Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, the first book in his Alexandria Quartet:

Long sequences of tempera. Light  filtered through the essence of lemons. An air full of brick-dust–sweet-smelling brick-dust and the odour of hot pavements slaked with water. Light damp clouds, earth bond, yet seldom bringing rain. Upon this squirt dust-red, dust-green, chalk-mauve and watered crimson-lake. In summer the sea-damp lightly varnished the air.

Durrell hardly uses any adjectives in that passage. But when he does, they are vibrant and exactly descriptive. Do we get the image he wants us to? Absolutely!

And here’s another exquisite passage, this time from Michael Andaatje’s The English Patient.

The next day he heard snatches of the glassy sound as he lay once more covered in cloth. A noise out of the darkness. At twilight the felt was unwrapped and he saw a man’s head on a table moving towards him, then realized the man wore a giant yoke from which hung hundreds of small bottles on different lengths of string and wire. Moving as if part of a glass curtain, his body enveloped within that sphere…With the uncorking of each tiny bottle the perfumes fell out. There was an odour of the sea. The smell of rust. Indigo. Ink. River-mud arrow-wood formaldehyde parafin ether. The tide of airs chaotic. There were screams of camels in the distance as they picked up the scents. He began to rub green-black paste onto the rib cage. It was ground peacock bone, bartered for in a medina to the west or the south–the most potent healer of skin.

My goodness, wasn’t that “beautiful.”

Now it’s your turn. Taking the following three words, write a sentence for each one, that will paint the exact image you have in your mind. And, of course, don’t use the actual words I list  in your sentences.

beautiful

exciting

cozy

I’d love to see what you come up with! Send them in.