Adjectives and Adverbs...a controversial topic!

I must admit that I have been doing some research about this general writing rule of sparing readers from those devil adjectives and adverbs.  In every writing class they tell you to pare your adjectives and adverbs to a minimum. 

But why?

And do all theorists on writing agree with this premise?  In fact they do not.  Everyone can't write like Hemingway, who was very pointed and direct with his style, barely using any modifiers at all.  Some say it is simply a choice of style and others say that contemporary writing has been masculinized to the point of bare bones. 

Compare this introduction to the novel, Paul Clifford, written in 1830 by Victorian writer, George Bulwer-Lytton who is infamous for his phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night..." to something Hemingway might have written:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

It has been suggested that had Hemingway  written the same sentence above, the hypothetical passage might have looked something like this:

After dark a storm came and sometimes in the wind there was a noise on the rooftops. You could see the streetlamps struggling to stay lit.

Which is better writing?  That depends much upon the reader and the style one finds more pleasurable. 

It does seem that the majority of writers who write about writing agree that the misuse of adjectives and adverbs is the quickest way to detect an amateur writer.  One of the most concise and helpful books out there on writing, in my opinon, is The First Five Pages:  A Writer's Guide to Staying out of the Rejection Pile, by Noah Lukeman.  Lukeman describes how easy it is for editors to reject material based on simple mistakes every writer has been known to do at one time or another.  And one of these is the over use of modifiers.  Lukeman warns:

"After its presentation, the quickest and easiest way to reject a manuscript is to look for the overuse, or misuse, of adjectives and adverbs.  Most people who come to writing for the first time think they bring their nouns and verbs to life by piling on adjectives and adverbs, that by describing a day as being "hot, dry, bright, and dusty" they make it more vivid.  Almost always the opposite is true."

In rebuttal...one internet author, Geoffrey K. Pullum, has this to say in defense of adjectives:

"What do these writing experts think they are doing trying to take something as subtle as how to write well and boil it down to maxims as simple as the avoidance of one particular grammatical category? Are they... Well, I'm really going to need an adjective to say this... Are they insane?

Look, you don't get good at writing by deleting adjectives. Writing is difficult and demanding; you can learn to get moderately good at it through decades of practice writing millions of words and critiquing what you've written or having others critique it. About 6% of those words will be adjectives, whether you write novels or news stories, whether they're good or bad."

So what is a poor writer to do?

In my lowly opinion as one who doesn't yet know squat about writing yet loves to write anyway...I say trust your gut.  Go with what sounds, feels, reads right. 

1.  Look for redundancy.  Do you really need all those modifiers?  Will one do instead?  Do you really have to say "tiny kitten" when everyone knows a kitten is tiny?

2.  Replace any cliched adjective noun and verb adverb combos.  Replace them with something more unusual or idiosyncratic. 

3.  Play with your nouns and verbs.  Make them strong so you don't need all those adjectives and adverbs.  As Lukeman suggests, "When rewriting, pretend somone will give you $100 for every word you are able to cut."  Use concrete imagery to make up for those modifiers.

4.  Use analogies, similies, and metaphors instead of adjectives and adverbs.  For example...Sylvia Plath talks about cutting her thumb and uses metaphors to describe this event:

"What a thrill--my thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone except for a sort of hinge of skin....A celebration this is. Out of a gap a million soldiers run, redcoats every one."

More to come!