Qualifiers

I think if it wasn't for adjectives and adverbs, my stories would be twenty-five words long. Yea, yea, Stephen King hates adverbs in particular. Whatever, Steve. I do try to limit them, not because of him, but because sentences read (adverb coming) weirdly when there are too many. (Please tell me what an appropriate substitute for "read weirdly" might be.)

My solution to overusing adverbs is to replace them with actions that convey the same vibe. So, instead of "read weirdly", I might have the character perusing a manual and rolling her eyes or pulling the page away from her as if a different angle might help her comprehension. Bad example, but you get my drift.

Sure, I could try harder to come up with replacement words, a single word that takes the place of two, but then I would hardly write anything at all. I would spend all my time pondering or Googling (which, by the way, is useless). I would love to find a thesaurus that deals in phrases, rather than one single word. If I type "work in progress" into the search bar I am presented with many synonyms for "work" and many for "progress". Not helpful.

Adjectives, on the other hand, add color. An author doesn't need to lead the reader by the nose, but vivid description brings the scene to life. Maybe I overdo it ~ I'll type a word and insist to myself that it needs a qualifier. It's a hard habit to break. If I'm in a groove, I'll trip merrily along, until I come back to my manuscript later and discover that I've overdone my descriptions. Recognizing that and fixing it is a plus. 

I can't let myself get bogged down in word choice. That's what editing is for. A writing session needs to flow.

I've read some really awful snippets from amateur writers who don't know when too much is too much. They haven't figured out that this overwriting is frustrating to the reader. By the time I get through reading a thirty-word sentence that describes every object and action in minute detail, I've lost the thread.  Practice, my friends, is key.

Every piece of writing advice one reads is not necessarily helpful, even if it comes from someone who pens really long books. That guy could have saved himself the trouble and just gone with the old chestnut, "show, don't tell". Uh, thanks. Great advice.

I'm not going to write a book about it, but my philosophy is, read your writing like a reader would. Strip away your conceit. Don't overload your writing with qualifiers, but don't underload it, either. Once you read what you've written as if you were a complete stranger, you'll know what to do.