I was having lunch with my mother’s long-time best friend one day some years ago and we got to talking about writing. I’m not sure if I was writing this blog at that point, but seeing as I’m something like thirteen-hundred posts in at this point, there’s a good chance I was already dabbling in writing here. She told me something I have thought about many times since then. I think I’ve thought about it enough times that this may well be the second post I’ve written about this very topic. She said, “writing is all about the adjectives.”
I’m not sure that’s exactly what she said, but that’s the essence of her point. She told me about a professor she had in college from which she was taking a creative writing course. He had mentioned the thing about adjectives and she had endeavored to put some descriptive, evocative and creative ones in her writing. She had done a good job apparently, because he told her about how colorful and vivid her writing was, by virtue of those very-important adjectives.
That may not be how the story actually went, but there was a course and a teacher and a discussion about adjectives and my friend’s ability to select with precision just the right ones to use to make her story something the reader could connect with in a way “good” adjectives wouldn’t have done.
I write a lot and I think about adjectives and I use some here and there that I’m proud of, but for the most part I get down to my computer at the end of the night and bang out a blog post so I can go get in a hot tub before bed. That’s not fair really, I suppose. Some days I make an effort to make this post illuminating and inspiring to read (or at least entertaining and mildly funny.) But for the most part, I’m not writing a book and I’m not critiquing the little ditties I write here to a particular standard of literary quality.
Let me get back to the adjectives thing though because it’s on my mind a lot when I listen to audio books. I listen to books and I think, “those are some spectacular adjectives he’s using, no wonder this book is so popular.” Because the way it seems to me is most stories that have been expanded into enough words to become an entire book have a whole lot of adjectives. If you take out the adjectives and tell the story in a sort of monotone collection of words, most stories can be distilled down into something rather short. That’s what the Cliff Notes people did. They could take a good story and make it into a fast and boring read. But a fast and boring read in which you got the plot and could pass the quiz the next morning.
The other thing I think I want to add to my, “must haves to write well” list is the ability to come up with creative metaphors. Sure, anyone can say, “it’s raining cats and dogs” but to come up with a metaphor that gives the reader an exact understanding of what you mean while at the same time causing the reader to think, “I would have never thought to compare it like that, but now that you mention it, that’s an exceptionally mentally vivid way to describe it.
My ability to come up with metaphors is one in which I have a dreadful time. Even now, faced with the goal of coming up with one, single interesting metaphor, or just one mediocre metaphor and my mind is as blank as, well, dammit, I can’t come up with something clever at all to compare it to. You see my problem?
The good news is I’m not setting off to write a book at this point. This little blog has me occupied enough, thank you very much. But were I to decide to write a book—and this would necessitate having a story to tell in the first place—I am going to have to learn how to wrangle up some metaphors and nail down some usefully creative adjectives.
The Big Boy Update: My son told my husband, “I can jump from North America to China. But I don’t want to do it.” My husband asked, “why not?” To which my son said, "because I will break my bones. I did it once when I was a baby.” My husband asked him what happened and he replied, “I broke my leg.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were waiting for lunch to arrive yesterday. Apparently it was taking longer than my daughter expected because she told me, “I’m still getting hungry.”
Fitness Update: I biked eight miles today. It was hot and I wasn’t very motivated so I came home.
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