It's Writing Crutches Week!

Being a new writer is a lot like trying to build a spaceship before you’ve ever taken a single course in rocket science. Even if you’ve never studied, you expect yourself to achieve at the level of writers who have decades of training.

That’s not how this works, so you will exhibit some weaknesses. You will use the wrong tools. You will use the right tools incorrectly. You will use crutches. You will become overly reliant on blunt mechanics. It’s only natural. You are new, and even old-timers have weaknesses.

New writers tend to use the same crutches in the beginning, so this week we’re going to discuss a few of them. We start today with a disease called “adjectivitis.” The young writer believes that if they choose vibrant or unusual adjectives (describing words), the reader will see that image in technicolor.

The trouble is that adjectives often produce the opposite effect. They’re the abstract words readers skip over to get to the important bits—the dialogue or action. Let’s say you introduce a character to your novel. Let’s say you describe her as intelligent and beautiful.

Will your reader see that beauty? Not really.
Will your reader be impressed by her intellect? Probably not, so these are things you should be showing, not telling.

This is not to say that you should ban adjectives from your work entirely. It only means you need a strict diet if you’re going to avoid adjectivitis. You should only use adjectives if you don’t have a stronger alternative, and if you do, they should not be the main attraction. Adjectives, like sugar, are delicious in small quantities, but they will give you diabetes eventually. You can only consume X number of calories a day, so make sure you choose a cupcake rather than a spoonful of sugar. Everyone will be happier that way.

Here are some effective character sketches that use adjectives without making them the main attraction:

“His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.” – Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

See how Bronte doesn’t say, “He was a sensitive man” and leave it at that? See how the lightness in the wind isn’t the emphasis of the sentence? See how the author has included imagery?

“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“His face is like a blade, and a knife, and a flicker of light: it is delicate and fierce, and scowls beautifully forever, and when he fastens his hard white fingers and his scowling eyes upon a thing he wants to fix, he sniffs with sharp and private concentration through his long, pointed nose…his hair shines like that of a young boy—it is crinkled and crisp as lettuce.” – Thomas Wolfe

Today’s exercise:

Write a character sketch like the ones you just read using adjectives without giving them the main role. If possible, omit them from your piece entirely.