Stupid adjectives anyway.

[mrissa]

For the record, I have participated in exactly one of the window adjective thingamawhatsits, and that was pegkerr's, with the positive set of adjectives, and I used a name she will recognize as me (I believe it was something subtle like Mris). Some of my friendslist people have specifically requested anonymous participation, some the opposite. I'm not playing either way.

I have a problem with adjectives. One of my best former teachers, Marylyn, gave me a journal that she insisted was just for writing character sketches in. It now contains the sort of information about the characters in Fortress of Thorns and The Grey Road that you keep compiled for the sake of consistency: that Minor Character X has blue eyes and Spear Carrier Y is short, that Main Character Z has a December 8 birthday. Because character sketches of the type Marylyn means are not how I work; they're not how I think of people.

I feel sure that some fiction writers get a great deal of benefit out of telling about people that way, but it is frankly contrary to my storytelling impulse. If I could just sit down and tell you that Charlotte is a very stubborn person, intelligent, and fixated on figuring things out, I wouldn't have to write a four-book series with Charlotte in it. Adjectives don't cover it. Action covers it, dialog covers it, sometimes introspection covers it. But adjectives? No.

I am suspicious, is the problem. If a book tells me that Jane is generous, I say, "Really? What does she do that's so generous? Is she generous with stuff that matters to her, or does material stuff matter to her less than it does to many people? How does she behave that makes you think she has such a giving spirit? What could make her not be so generous?" This kind of adjective use makes me read with my arms folded and my mouth twisted: who says? And why should I trust you?

If someone asks me what kind of a person my friend S is (S is a psuper-psecret psubtle pseudonym for an actual friend), I won't say, "she's very conscientious" or "caring" or "generous," even though S is all of those things. I will say, "She spent her morning off taking T to the emergency room, and she worked nine hours overtime in one day to make sure everything was all right for the people she was helping." Or if they say, "What is markgritter's family like?", I might tell the story of my father-in-law and the borunjungens, or I might say how my biggest ongoing argument with my mother-in-law is about whether quantum mechanics is correct or not, and that seagrit is heartily tired of that argument even though it doesn't come up more than once a year.

I will tell stories 'til the cows come home. I just don't like adjectives.

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

"the story of my father-in-law and the borunjungens"

Oh, please do!

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Is that 'boerenjongens', i.e. raisins in brandy?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. My spelling of Dutch is execrable.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, that's what Dutch friends are for!

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Unsupported adjectives are assertion without evidence. Illustrative anecdotes are far more telling, especially because they usually have implications that go far beyond the claim that someone is "noble" or "pure of heart". (What does 'nobility' mean in concrete terms, anyway? The phrase having meaning seems seriously culturally dependent.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Definitely culturally dependent. Especially since one person's "noble" is another person's "stupid" fairly often. I am not eager to be sent on a fantasy novel style quest any time soon, but if I am, I hope no one on the quest with me is noble. They always cause more trouble than they're worth.

[pameladean]

My reaction to those memes is like the old restaurant joke: "The food is terrible. And such small portions!" I am suspicious of adjectives, AND if one were going to put such suspicion aside, the adjectives available are woefully inadequate.

I think I'm just as glad that one can't really construct a meme with stories standing in for adjectives, because stories are too individual.

Which is really your point, of course.

P.

P.S. Only it isn't, because "individual" is an adjective! Help!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, maybe some adjectives are permitted.

There are the "tell a memory about me" and "make up a memory about me" memes. I'm a little spooked about those, too, but for different reasons.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

There are the "tell a memory about me" and "make up a memory about me" memes. I'm a little spooked about those, too, but for different reasons.

Yeah, those are a little squicky, too. I don't like those.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I think there's plenty of use for adjectives, just not ones describing personality in the kind of thing you write. If I'm reading journalism instead of fiction, for ex, adjectives will do fine instead of illustrative stories (but only if they happen to be pertinent to the story).

I think even in novels, adjectives describing things or describing people physically might be all right, though they do need to be kept in check. I don't know. I keep thinking of Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery loved adjectives if anyone ever did (her stuff is full of purple gloamings and pearly harbors under flaming sunsets) but we find out how Anne looked through her despairing comments about her red hair and freckles, and the consolation she took in her nice nose.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not asking for a total ban on adjectives. But I'm pretty skeptical of them in journalism, too. Whenever they describe someone as "upbeat" or "shy" or anything else, I scowl and think, "Sez you!"

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Physical description is the one that gives me hives as a writer. I've now gotten editing letters for two successive novels telling me my editor has no idea what anybody looks like. I can write a scene where Hyoka hands someone a sheet of paper filled with metaphysical babbling on a topic she wasn't told to research, and tell you that she's bouncing on the balls of her feet while they read it -- but as for what her face looks like, I haven't the foggiest.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm with you here. Physical description is very easy to get wrongety wrong wrong. It makes total sense that if asked what Hyoka looks like, you could say, "She's bouncing on the balls of her feet," rather than, "She has a nose that's sort of...nose-ish, and...umm...definitely two eyes, I'm very clear on that...."

This may be because I'm not a very visual person, and I'm not used to people being able to parse scent-descriptions. I'm not sure that's all of it, though.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I can do visuals of other things. Movement in fights is probably one of my strongest points. Clothing, occasionally. Architecture, if I'm given a reason to focus on it. Personal appearance and landscape -- I'm utter crap. (Unless it's Meltharkatla, who showed up and demanded an entire paragraph of very vivid description.)

But I am working on those things.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"If I'm given a reason to focus on it" seems like a very key phrase for me. Movement has its own reason for focus: if someone is smacking you with a stick, it's generally important. Clothing-occasionally also comes with its own reason for focus, in my view: someone wearing a tunic and hose expects a very different day than someone wearing a full formal ballgown, and is showing a very different set of skills. (One person may have both, but that doesn't mean they're showing at the time.)

I have to keep reminding myself that some significant number of readers have to have static visual hooks to hang onto, like landscape and personal features, and that those are good reasons to include bits and pieces of those things.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Here via YHLee.

If I could just sit down and tell you that Charlotte is a very stubborn person, intelligent, and fixated on figuring things out, I wouldn't have to write a four-book series with Charlotte in it.

I always found it hilarious that the Icelandic sagas start off by introducing a character and giving you three adjectives about him. Like he is applying for college, you know? "Skapti Furry-Toes was bold, far-seeing, and an excellent chooser of wine." And then you read 100 pages that show why these three attributes matter, among all the attributes the saga-writer could have chosen. Sometimes the word-choice is very specific: gradations of cleverness, the balance of bravery vs. pointless braggadocio -- it's like foreshadowing for the whole story in one sentence.

And not very novelistic, you're right.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

From one of my books:
"You know how they always give someone the same name, over and over again, in the sagas?" said Orvokki.
Edward smiled sheepishly. "I'm actually not intimately familiar with the sagas."
"Ah. Well, that's all right. It's just that often in oral literature, they'll come up with some tag -- 'wily Odysseus,' or 'fair Thorund,' that sort of thing."
"All right," he said cautiously.
"I know just what I'd be. I'd be 'loyal Orvokki.' Every single time."
But yes, novelistically, she isn't just "loyal Orvokki." It's true but not all of the truth. The sagas inform this novel (as they do most of my novels!), but it is a novel, not a saga.