Let’s cut all adverbs and adjectives

Let’s cut all adverbs and adjectives, because who needs description if you use well-chosen nouns, right?

This post is inspired by this great post Rowan linked to yesterday at Patricia Wrede’s blog, about cutting adverbs and adjectives. You see stern advice about the evils of adverbs a lot more often than advice about cutting adjectives, but you do see advice to avoid adjectives as well, as for example here, here, and here. Also here and here and seriously, there’s no end to it. This kind of advice gets tedious, especially when advice like this is promulgated in a superior tone of voice. We great writers will explain How To Write. You aspiring writers should listen to Our Great Wisdom.

Anyway, here, let’s take a look at the first few paragraphs of Invictus: Crisis, because I’ve got it sitting right here.

***

The shuttle conveying Segohda’s representative to Invictus set down in the largest shipbay before Nalyn Ila arrived, with Sevastien one zero two four, at the entrance to the bay. She received the ping from Helm and returned an acknowledgment without comment, because there was nothing at all helpful to say about this somewhat fraught and decidedly inconvenient situation.

She would have preferred to arrive in the bay first. But sorting through the available options — all bad, many terrible — had taken unavoidable minutes of debate and decision, so the shuttle settled in the bay long minutes before Ila could get there. She tabbed on the camera views of the shipbay in her link and yes indeed, there it was, a gray and blue Ubezhishche shuttle with Torgarishhe ID markers across its sides. Ubez ship and shuttle design went for sleek more than blunt force, an aesthetic that Ila rather preferred to Elysian designs, though she would hardly say so out loud.

So far, no one had stepped out of that shuttle onto her deck. She had no idea who this representative was, what he or she might be like. She didn’t know what line this person might belong to, which made planning difficult. She would prefer an A or B line Ubez to K or T or V; she would prefer any line less inclined to aggression and more inclined to diplomacy. She would have much preferred Segohda himself to arrive than some representative—any representative. There had, alas, been no chance at all that Desovashidazhsha Segohda five one two would set foot on her deck himself. He was just too important.

Dazhsha was somewhat close to rear admiral; vashidazhsha somewhere in the neighborhood of full admiral, desovashidazhsha something like fleet admiral. The parallels weren’t exact, but they were close enough. Segohda stood third from the top of the entire Ubezhishche fleet.

***

Now, the sentences that are wholly destroyed by removing adjectives could be rephrased. Let’s try just removing all the adverbs and adjectives, rephrasing just a bit when that is absolutely necessary.

***

The shuttle conveying Segohda’s representative to Invictus set down in the shipbay before Nalyn Ila arrived, with Sevastien one zero two four, at the entrance to the bay. She received the ping from Helm and returned an acknowledgment, because there was nothing to say about this situation.

She would have preferred to arrive in the bay first. But sorting through the options had taken minutes of debate and decision, so the shuttle settled in the bay before Ila could get there. She tabbed on the camera views of the shipbay in her link and yes indeed, there it was, an Ubezhishche shuttle with Torgarishhe ID markers across its sides.

So far, no one had stepped out of that shuttle onto her deck. She had no idea who this representative was, what he or she might be like. She didn’t know what line this person might belong to. She would prefer an A or B line Ubez to K or T or V. She would have preferred Segohda himself to arrive than some representative—any representative. There had, alas, been no chance that Desovashidazhsha Segohda five one two would set foot on her deck himself.

Dazhsha was like the Elysian title rear admiral; vashidazhsha like full admiral, desovashidazhsha like fleet admiral. The parallels weren’t exact, but they were close. Segohda stood third from the top of the Ubezhishche fleet.

***

Raise your hand if you think this avoidance of two important components of the English language produced superior prose. Does anybody think the effort and time required to rephrase everything to improve the sentences and get them to flow reasonably smoothly would be worthwhile?

Okay, now raise your hand if you think “kill most adjectives and almost all adverbs” is great advice for writers who are working to write their first novel. Does focusing on sentences in this specific way seem likely to help? Anybody?

Removing adverbs and or adjectives might actually be a useful and interesting exercise in very small doses, particularly when combined with a genuine effort to write tight, lean, effective prose. This might be a justified use of time and effort as a specific writing exercise for one short (very short) story. Unless this exercises causes writers to freeze up and contributes to the rather common problem of writer paralysis: an inability to write anything because of fear that the story or the sentences won’t be perfect. It seems to me that might be a real risk. In that case, it’s a horrible exercise that should be avoided at all costs.

***

Whew! This was an interesting post to write. Now back to my normal style, rife with adjectives and adverbs. I’m not going to track down the hundred most recent post across the internet that declare adjectives are evil — adjectives! For heaven’s sake! — and post comments on all of them. But if I had infinite time, I’d be tempted.

A brief moment to add: Thanks to whoever it was who told me I’d gone overboard with “very” in Invictus, because sure, that can be a risk, particularly after losing my ability to see “very” because of writing over a million words in the Tuyo series. Advice to cut specific adverbs or, I don’t know, a quarter of all adverbs or whatever, that can be good advice! It’s not that I don’t think that can be good advice!

It’s the advice that adverbs should be “as rare as solar eclipses” and adjectives should be used “sparingly and only when they can’t be avoided” that drives me up the proverbial wall. Particularly when I’ve just seen someone on Twitter agonizing about maybe they need to avoid all adverbs, and I’m like, For heaven’s sake, quit worrying about this! You’ll drive yourself nuts, possibly destroy your ability to write, and there’s no need for it! Just disregard all proscriptive advice and write the story the way you want to write it!