My writing group told me I use way too many adjectives and it hurt at first but they were right

Last month someone in my critique group circled every single adjective in a 3-page short story I wrote. There were like 40 of them. They said try cutting 80 percent and see what happens. So I did and the story read way tighter, the verbs actually had to do the work. Has anyone else had to unlearn a bad habit after some honest feedback?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel5521mo ago

Hang on, I gotta call something out. You said you cut 80 percent of the adjectives and the story got tighter, but that's not quite how it works. If you cut 80 percent of 40, that's only 8 adjectives left, which is actually a pretty good number for three pages. The real trick isn't just slashing them all, it's swapping out the lazy ones like "big" or "pretty" for exact, punchy verbs and nouns. Sounds like you already figured that out though since your verbs started doing the work. Good on you for sticking with the rewrite, that kind of feedback stings but it pays off.

ryang651mo ago

Yeah, math was never my strong suit. But hey, at least the story got better even if my counting didn't.