What to Do With Banished Adjectives

Most articles on ways to improve writing will give a very simple rule: cut adjectives and adverbs. Instead, use strong nouns and verbs.

And they’re right. Adjectives are like sprinkles. Used in the right way, they can add just the right dash of color, but they really don’t have much substance and can easily be overdone. (Or maybe I’m just biased against sprinkles because I threw up a bunch of them when I got food poisoning a few years ago…long story.)

The time when the no-adjective rule is most likely to apply is when it comes to characters. There are so many more ways to show what people are like that we shouldn’t need to slap on one-word descriptions. Unlike, say, a rock, which can’t do much to demonstrate that it’s rough or igneous or whatever, a person’s words and actions can substitute for adjectives.

Don’t tell us he’s quirky. Show him playing “Little Mermaid” songs an accordion just because it sounded like fun. Don’t tell us she’s a bad loser. Have her slam her cards down on the Candy Land board and accuse her seven-year-old cousin of cheating. Suddenly, adjectives aren’t necessary.

Demonically Motivated Self-Censorship

I read Frank Peretti’s classic thriller This Present Darkness and C.S. Lewis’s delightfully British The Screwtape Letters in seventh grade. Both excellent books, but my overactive imagination might not have needed a double-dose of supernatural fiction. Because from that point on, I decided that I wanted to outsmart Satan.

One thing that was very comforting to me was that demons, unlike God, can’t know the future and can’t read minds. For the first time, I was thinking about spiritual warfare, which is good, I guess, but I thought about it in a very immature way.

One of the most bizarre ways I put this new awareness into action was by trying to keep secrets from Satan.

The Face is the Window to the Soul

This is kind of a more specific follow up to the post I wrote about writers and creepers several months ago. It’s a very simple writing tip: watch people’s faces.

The key is being observant, noticing the little things and then knowing how to describe them later to bring a mental picture to the minds of the readers. See what people do when they’re happy, when they’re about to cry, when they’re lying (make a truce/treaty in a strategy board game if you want to see this one), when they’re about to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, when they’re so mad they’re about to punch you in the face (okay, it would be better if they’re mad at someone else and about to punch him in the face).

What do they look like? How would you describe their facial expression, or the way their eyes look? How do you, as an outside observer, know instinctively what emotions they’re feeling? Is their voice affected too?

Then write those things.

Pretending to be Myers-Briggs, Part 1

A while ago on Facebook, a few friends of mine posted a helpful informational picture-thingie (there is probably a trendy name for this that I’m too uncool to know). Its title was “How to Care For Introverts,” and despite the fact that it made introverts sound like houseplants, I found it very interesting.

Some of the tips were “Never embarrass them in public,” “Don’t interrupt them,” and “Enable them to find one best friend who has similar interests and abilities.” (Although heaven knows how you enable that…set them up with an online best-friend-finding service that tests their compatibility?) The last one, of course, was “Don’t try to remake them into extroverts.”

Fact of life: extroverts often don’t understand introverts…and, possibly to a lesser degree, introverts often don’t understand extroverts. Being only 10% extroverted on the official Myers Briggs scale, I am going to pretend that I am in some strange middle group that is either super conflicted or mysteriously above petty personality preference distinctions. Therefore, I will dispense wise advice from my position of authority on this subject.

Sabbath Reflections: First Impressions and Board Games

Please read this whole post. Because if you don’t, you’ll never want to play board games with me again. And then I would just be sitting in my dorm room alone, playing against myself and losing every time. Which would just be pathetic.

I’m going to define what I’m talking about right away, kind of like those stupid warning labels on irons that say, “Do not iron clothes while on body,” just so that no one misunderstands me.

Whenever I talk about forming first impressions, I mean: To remember interesting or unique characteristics and personality traits of others, both positive and negative, while allowing those impressions to change over time. Not stereotyping. Not judging.

See? That isn’t so bad.