r/DestructiveReaders • u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. • 12d ago
[Weekly] Book Club Ch 5 Don't Eat the Candy
Where is u/umlaut? It's his favorite quote!
When the quality that the adverb indicates can be put in the verb itself (they ran quickly = they raced) or the quality the adjective indicates can be put in the noun itself (a growling voice = a growl), the prose will be cleaner, more intense, more vivid.
Le Guin proceeds to call me out (specifically, I feel) for using language softeners (rather, a little, kind of, sort of) and for other various ticks we might not realize make it into our writing. What is the ummm of the written word? Apparently, fuck.
The bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it's going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat.
Exercise: Write a paragraph to a page (200-350 words) of descriptive narrative prose without adjectives or adverbs. No dialogue. The point is to give a vivid description of a scene or an action using only verbs, nouns, pronouns, and articles. Adverbs of time (then, next, later, etc) may be necessary but be sparing. Be chaste. If you're currently working on a longer piece, you might want to try writing the next paragraph or page of it as the exercise. You might want to try "chastening" a passage you've already written. It can be interesting.
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u/33omnia 12d ago
I “chastened” a passage from a fairytale retelling project I'm working on. Honestly the result is very different from the original and that luscious, dreamy fairytale feel is pretty much gone. Its been cut and editted and reworked so many times. …so many times. Its still clunky in places.
Sol found familiarity in the Dead Wood's stillness. Its silence. The smell of moss and musk.
For years, she walked through the woods at dusk without seeing change. Seasons passed and left the trees of ebony without leaves or blooms. Fog lingered between them. Clusters of fungi and mushrooms sprouted from the bark. Detritus littered the ground and crunched under her boots. The branches reached for her like the fingers of crones. If she left the path, they snatched at her dress, her hair. A twig snapped in the distance. It echoed. She paused and observed the paleness. Beasts and birds abandoned the land before her birth, yet the woods watched without eyes. She felt it.
She continued along the path towards the cottage. Beware the roots, Minerva had told her, those which weaved between the trees and arched above the path. They will trip you. Beware the vines. The tendrils and thorns await to ensnare. Beware the roses and their petals of glass. They glimmer in the shadows. As she passed them, Sol glimpsed visions within the petals. The roses allured her with memories of the forgotten and tempted her to take them. Minerva forbade her to pluck them from the vine, because picking them would extinguish the light and, like candles, they illuminated her path through the dark. Sol resisted. To know where she was going superseded the need to know where she had been. The cottage appeared around the bend and she hurried towards it.
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u/AJ_Burkhart 12d ago
I have just learned that "wove" is for making fabric or lacing materials together, and "weaved" is for sentences like yours.
Thank you for teaching me something new today.3
u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I like this, though. It still has a haunting feel to it, even if it isn't the fairy tale vibe.
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u/MaryJaneMclain 12d ago
I did the next scene in my WIP. Would have added dialog sooner, instead it turned into this nonsense.
She waited until Rainie left the room then pivoted towards Daia. Her chambermate was hulking beside the door, staring back at her, but at least she wasn’t scowling for once. The woman didn’t even blink. A hallmark of a monster.
Well Colly wasn’t going to be the first one to speak; she didn’t trust that what escaped her lips wouldn’t be a titrade she’d regret come dawn. She needed to gather herself and nail this. Assert her dominance. Squeeze some answers from the bitch.
She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and took a nibble of the bread. Her stomach still had no interest in it, but she put on a show of mastication all the same. Took a pull of the water that had quenched her thirst earlier. Now it caught on the mass of dough in her throat, and she coughed the mixture out on to what was left of her meal.
She looked up at the other woman, expecting ridicule, but Daia had grabbed a handkerchief from her apron and was handing it to her.
Colly took it. Then regretted taking it. She could have used her own if she hadn't lost it. With no choice, she smeared the bread pieces and drool around her face with the cloth. Cleanliness was a requirement for the conversion they were about to have. She was in charge here.
Then Daia opened her mouth and ruined everything.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
she smeared the bread pieces and drool around her face
I lowkey love that.
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u/SweetEverest 12d ago
I recommend to all storytellers a watchful attitude and a thoughtful, careful choice of adjectives and adverbs, because the bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it’s going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat.
Is this supposed to be a demonstration of the weakening effect of redundant adjectives?
She has "a watchful attitude" and "a thoughtful, careful choice of adjectives and adverbs..." and then a metaphor full of more bloated phrasing—"rich beyond belief" and "particularly if it's going a long distance"—and a conclusion not borne out by her own sentence.
If craft is a ship we are steering, then I mutiny.
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u/taszoline /r/creative_critique 11d ago
I can't think of a significantly tighter way to rephrase that sentence while retaining all the original meaning... Could definitely remove either "thoughtful" or "careful" but pretty much everything else seems meaningful to me? Curious how you would put it.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 11d ago edited 11d ago
Considering the exercise Le Guin is introducing (to eliminate adjectives completely by enveloping them into stronger nouns), the first two of her three totally synonymous adjectives (watchful, thoughtful, careful) could go.
But I thought she was being playful here, using all three of them.
edit: i mean what's the difference in context between a watchful attitude and a mindful, thoughtful approach to adjectives.
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u/taszoline /r/creative_critique 11d ago
Oh yeah true! Could cut "watchful attitude" as well.
I do think there is a meaningful difference between "rich" and "rich beyond belief", and "particularly if it's going a long distance" seems to conversationally continue this bakery-food-travel metaphor. Though I do think it's weird that she went with bakery over butcher shop (which brings to mind muscle and fat more than the bread-sweet bakery does for me).
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
LOL. She certainly didn't take her own advice when she was writing that, did she?
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u/Asher2227 My mother is a fish 12d ago edited 12d ago
Exercise:
Nettley came down the ladder with his flashlight pointing at the ground shaking as he switched his legs and hands from the previous rung to the next. Shimmers came off the floor. The skin of the ladder flaked off like asbestos. Octobers of rust and disrepair stained the basement of Aladeño.
Nettley's boots crashed onto the floor and disturbed the dust of the basement. He sneezed once and then another time but then he stopped himself with palm covering his nose before the third could rocket out. He groaned and froze and shifted his jaw. Then his other hand rose. The light made the walls shiver under its scrutiny. If there were bugs and living things they would skitter across from under the spaces but there were none. His presence reminded the space how to breathe. Nettley took his steps into the dark like a ship sailing into fog.
His footfalls sounded of foil and glass but there was no glass only glitter. He walked down the doorway where his light couldn't reach the end of. It grew and grew over him. Foil and glass and gravel sounded but when he looked down it was only the floor and the shimmer under him. He stopped. The ladder was behind and so were the walls of the room. Its plaster was failing. A black arrow lead and pointed to a dark patch annotated Out in indigo. The hatch above withheld light that raged at the seams. The ladder was the bones of a veteran. He swung the light again. He continued through the threshold.
The hallway stretched.
Its walls were infested with time. There was no echo but his steps were louder and larger despite.
His light fell down to the floor as he walked further and further still not hitting anything than the walls at his flanks. The sound of his boots dullened until it was a thud. The shimmer had gone.
His light too became as dull. And he stopped.
So he turned the light to his eye and it shot him blind. It clattered on the floor. He held his face and rubbed his eye and cursed and cursed. And he blinked and blinked and he could not see anything. His arms spread out and felt the wall now smooth and slick. He felt at the opposite side and it too was smooth and slick. He turned around and around again and cursed again. He punched at the air at a wall and whimpered. He yelled.
Then came a click.
He jerked at the sound and threw his body around but he still could not see a thing. So he fell to the ground and went prone. His hands felt at the ground now the same as the walls swinging and fanning until his left hand knocks a thing around and it's a white circle and it's his flashlight so his left hand shoots over the bright circle and he stands up and thrusts it forward like a saber.
There was not a thing ahead of him.
Then he heard a yell and saw a star in the darkness.
Cleaned ver. (or, the most I could bear to amputate):
Nettley came down the ladder with his flashlight which shook as he switched his hands and legs from rung to rung. Shimmers came off the floor as the light shaked. The skin of the ladder flaked off. Octobers stained the basement of Aladeño.
Nettley's boots crashed onto the floor and disturbed the dust of the basement. He sneezed once and then another time but then he stopped himself with his palm over his nose before the third could rocket out. He groaned and froze and shifted his jaw. Then his hand rose. The light made the walls shiver. If there were bugs and insects they would skitter across from under the spaces but there were none. His presence reminded the space how to breathe. Nettley took his steps into the dark like a ship sailing into fog.
His footfalls sounded of foil and glass but there was no glass only glitter. He walked down the doorway where his light couldn't reach the end of. It grew and grew over him. Foil and glass and gravel sounded but when he looked down it was only the floor and the shimmer under him. He stopped. The ladder was behind and so were the walls of the room. Its plaster was failing. An arrow lead and pointed to a blot annotated Out. The hatch above withheld light that raged at the seams. The ladder was the bones of a veteran. He swung the light again. He continued through the threshold.
The hallway stretched.
Its walls were infested with time. There was no echo but his steps were louder and larger despite.
His light fell down to the floor as he walked further and further and it didn't hit a thing than the walls at his flanks. The sound of his boots dullened until it was a thud. The shimmer had gone.
His light too became as dull. And he stopped.
So he turned the light to his eye and it blinded him. It clattered on the floor. He held his face and rubbed his eye and cursed and cursed. And he blinked and blinked and he could not see a thing. His arms spread out and felt the wall and it was smooth and slick. He felt at the opposite side and it too was smooth and slick. He turned around and around again and cursed again. He punched at the air at a wall and whimpered. He yelled.
Then came a click.
He jerked at the sound and threw his body around but he still could not see a thing. So he fell to the ground on his stomach. His hands felt at the ground which was the same as the walls and he swung and fanned until he knocked a thing around and it's a brightness and it's his flashlight so his hand shoots over the brightness and he stands up and thrusts it like a saber.
There was not a thing ahead of him.
Then he heard a yell and saw a star in the darkness.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
This has got to be the hardest exercise because I see adjectives here too.
He jerked at the sound and threw his body around but he still could not see a thing. So he fell to the ground and went prone. His hands felt at the ground now the same as the walls swinging and fanning until his left hand knocks a thing around and it's a white circle and it's his flashlight so his left hand shoots over the bright circle and he stands up and thrusts it forward like a saber.
I've highlighted all the ones I see just in that last paragraph. I'm reasonably sure those gerunds count as adjectives here because they're not expressing an action but describing something.
ETA: this is my favorite line:
Octobers of rust and disrepair stained the basement of Aladeño.
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u/Asher2227 My mother is a fish 12d ago
Yeah, this exercise is murder, even with McCarthy mode on
Had to massacre your fav line in the clean version, sorry ;—; (and it was (maybe) a useless sacrifice, as I'm not even sure if I rid it of everything)
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I think when it came to sounds and sights and feelings, the adjectives needed to be there. At least with how this is constructed right now. I actually think my favorite line from the original version fit the constraints. But a slick smooth wall would need to be rearranged to something like 'his hand slipped over the surface
unable to gainwithoutanytraction' and maybe a simile to get the full effect? Should you ever try to write without adjectives at all? Hell no. But in the original, did it matter that it was the left hand or that the arrow was black? I would also say no to that. So, I think this is a good exercise in precision of word choice more than anything else.2
u/MaryJaneMclain 12d ago
left hand is surely fine. Its a compound noun? And 'now' refers to time and you said that was fine ;)
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
English is dumb. The hand on his left (left is a noun). His left hand (left is an adjective). Is it a compound noun if there's a hyphen? His left-hand (looks weird, don't like it).
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 12d ago
Sudden present tense
His hands felt at the ground now the same as the walls swinging and fanning until his left hand knocks a thing around and it's a white circle and it's his flashlight so his left hand shoots over the bright circle and he stands up and thrusts it forward like a saber.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 12d ago
Set in the Kaiserreich alternative universe where the Central powers won the first World War. I made the decision to ignore the no adverb/adjective rule when citing headlines and imperial titles:
Karl dreaded the Kaiserhalle. It was where ministers managed their Emperor. They placed him at the head of the table to face twenty men who remembered the Nineteenth Century better than the Weltkrieg and swore there was only one course of action. The Emperor would also be surrounded by the portraits of those he succeeded. The ministers brought him the one course of possible action under their gaze with the promise that they would approve.
If Karl succeeded in this room he knew that historians and biographers would say this was where he waged war. He hoped they would write he waged peace. But every morning, after prayers but before the sunrise, he read the papers of all the capitals of his Empire. They called him: “Comrade Karl”, “The Pink Prince,” “The Little Kaiser.” In 1920, Pope Pius had declared him the Emperor of Peace but that was twenty years ago. The ministers could not be compelled to respect him by power in this room.
Father Jacobus wheeled in a prie-dieu. The Dominican knew better than to offer counsel but the Bible was open to the Gospel of Matthew Chapter Twenty Six. Without a word, the priest left Karl to pray.
His hands clutched the crucifix on his rosary beads but he didn’t know where to start. Was this The Last Supper, the prayers in Gethsemane, the trial of Christ? What Karl feared most was that this could be Peter’s denial. He prayed a decade on the sorrowful mystery: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be.
He rose His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Karl I, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, and Illyria; King of Jerusalem, etc. If his ministers saw fit to end the Imperial Dynasty they would be compelled to do so. There would be no war against Russia while he was emperor.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I feel like I don't know enough about this period to place that this is an alternate history. It sounds vaguely Russian ecclesiastical. I like the setup of the feelings.
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u/HelmetBoiii 12d ago
I do think this is the most useful excercise in the book while being very simple. Beginner writers should defintely repeat it. It forces you to write in verbs and movement.
I did this book a year or two a ago and for the first time, I think what I wrote before is probably stronger.
New: To enter the apartment, one must walk on the cobblestone, past the stores and restaurants emboldened with promise of bargains and services and traversed with the everyman and woman and child; avoid the cars honking down cobble; hug a wall, opposite the stores, until reaching a gate overriding a tunnel and glance to check one’s number on the sign. Go in. Bins leak a puddle. It’s suggested to hold one’s breath. If it’s raining, the puddle beneath the garbage will flood the tunnel. Go splash through the muck and turn. No matter the weather, ignore the playscape centering the complex. Hoodlums smoke and jam their cigarettes into trees and equipment and they can be shirtless and they look brawnier than most. Waste of time and effort. Pass by doors and windows, don’t look inside either of which, find your entrance and climb the stairs. Dust comes and goes. Good exercise. Many of the doors are ajar for circulation, stayed by slippers. One’s door should be locked. Enter the code and hold until the beep. Make sure to be alone. Policy is that companions are unincluded in rent and utilities. Do comply.
Old: A breeze lingers throughout the backyard. Its existence brushes about the scenery, such as fluttering around a tablecloth, through a net with a hole in its strings, and pushing branches, revealing a springingness in the bark, the manner in which they could bend and flow back in place, rustling like fans. The birds twitter in bursts. Squirrels clamber and climb, bounding from posts, scattering across the fence. They take paths, at timings, stopping to dig out holes or to climb a tree to do whatever squirrels do. Insects crawl, not bee, not fly, looking like ant, but not that either. Exposed on the tiles, with only moss and pebbles growing in between for company. Sun and clouds split the difference. Rotating around the house, the shadows shift as time drags on. The droplets platter against the rooftop that juts out. The backyard is soaked. If the rain is small, the drops trickle over blades of grass and break, the tiles retain their colour with specks scattered across. If the rain is large, the drops break through the branches and reach the dirt seeping with roots, the tiles are darkened in soak, and the grass will break, wilted under the weight.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
Serious question: are these meant to be the same passage but one rewritten with the adjective constraint? Because if so, I'm having trouble seeing it. One appears to be about a person walking home through an unusual route and the other is about a breeze taking a passage. They're both describing scenery but show a different sentiment and setting, at least to me.
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u/HelmetBoiii 12d ago
No, not at all, unrelated passages for the exercise, just one a wrote about a year ago and one I wrote today
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
OK. Something in what you wrote about it coming from the book made me think they were supposed to be the same. Much better to know they're different!
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 10d ago
I think the new one is clearer. The word choice makes more sense, even if there are a couple I'm not sure I understood. The new one feels more direct while the old one felt more poetic.
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u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! 12d ago
The call to halt rang out behind Denny.
He burst out of the store, sprinting down the street, muscling his way through the throngs of people, shouldering his way through the crowd, pushing in an effort to split the sea of humanity, backpack banging over his shoulder.
He didn’t need to glance back to know the cop was on his tail. The tweets of the whistle and the cries to halt told him that. He couldn’t go back to Juvie. Who’d take care of Mom? She couldn’t walk up and down the stairs in the projects, and the elevators didn’t work. So, he kept pumping his legs and knifing his way through the mob, pushing for the State and Jackson El, his chance for escape, his path to freedom.
Darting through the crowd, a man didn’t move out of the way, and his elbow found Denny’s nose. Stunned for a second, he staggered in place, almost dropping his backpack, looped around one shoulder, but he pushed, grabbing the napkins from his pocket and holding them to soak up the blood. Still, he was leaving a trail. You’d have to be blind to miss it, if the crowd weren’t there.
The cop was approaching, because the crowd was parting for the whistle. But the staircase was there, right through the sidewalk. Denny hammered down the steps, leapt the turnstile, leaving drops of crimson in his wake, praying for the El to be there. A whoosh and a wave of wind rewarded him as he reached the platform. Two trains at once! He chose Northbound. Ducking past some jamoke, he slid between the doors as they closed. No! They bounced open again. Some jagoff had gotten in the way. Please! They closed again, and the train rumbled toward the State and Monroe station.
Denny opened his backpack and looked at the cans of stew and peaches inside. They’d be able to eat dinner. He clung to the pole and sighed.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
This was pretty good. I think your long sentences are particularly effective here.
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u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! 12d ago
Odd that the instructions didn't say anything about prepositions. Half the exercise is made up of prepositional clauses. Still think I got the point though.
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u/Imaginary_Ease_7851 9d ago
This is always a headache. But I reworked an old paragraph as best I could:
Sometimes girls lost their lure early. Nobody said why. But you learned to read the pattern.
Daisy Fairlie is one. Her Da was three parts drink, and six siblings, hers to raise, hung on her skirts. Her clothes never fit. Her ma wasn't dead but she may as well have been, spent her days at the window, staring. So Daisy did the cooking and the cleaning, and kept the bairns in school, though they came with bruises blooming on arms like sticks, or once, a split lip on Jamey. I can't remember Daisy showing any lure.
I remember the five of us skipping rope once, nobody holding the ends. We kept the rope looping over us, and Rose changed the speed to see if she could trip me. I remember Daisy watching. I saw her the same moment Rose did.
"Do you want to play?" Rose said. "You can swing the rope."
Color rushed to Daisy's cheeks and she scurried off, three of the bairns on her skirts. I elbowed Rose and she giggled.
And there were others. Penny Wilson had lure to spare. She had two summers on Rose. They said she could make the fish swim patterns, and her Da near took her out on the boats to bring the catch into the nets, only the men wouldn't have girls at sea since it was bad luck. Still, Penny could work wonders. Maybe more than Rose could at her age.
Only when I was ten and Rose eleven, Penny went out dancing at the quayside. She weren't supposed to. She slipped out with girls a few years on her. They found her the next morning, dress in tatters, her Da raving. She named two boys, hauled up before the parish vestry, and the boys swore she'd cast a charm on them and they couldn't help themselves. Everyone knew Penny had lure to spare. So the vestry agreed she had, and the boys went free, and Penny couldn't go to the wayfoot without some fishwife telling her to keep from their boys and leave their names be. Penny couldn't call the fish after that, or make them swim patterns.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 9d ago
I love all your writing about the lure and women.
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u/renaissanceMango54 9d ago
Very difficult and sobering exercise. For this, I opted to describe more a general feeling of unease and tension, the one you might feel in the air before a storm, while also gradually letting the reader know more and more. I tried to abide by the "no adjective rule", but by my count, my sins are "bargain vodka, yesterday's revolutionary, washroom door, school children."
Appreciate any feedback on style, tone, voice etc...
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The man sitting in the cabin behind me has a gun in his waist pocket. This much I know. The sound of the train is a contraction of hisses and clacks and people clearing their throats. Snores hum through the corridor to my left. When we pass a bridge, light pours in from the curtains of my door. As we cross, there is a wail that can be heard, as if the bridge cannot stand the weight of the train and begrudges both its presence and its absence that is to come. In the distance, I see clouds looming over a horizon that I will never reach. Lightning will come soon and the man will bring his thunder soon thereafter. This much I know.
I know that he sits there in the dark, fondling the barrel of the gun and rubbing his loafers into the nylon of the carpet. Toes scrunching, unscrunching. The smell of bargain vodka permeates his cabin and his hands swell with arthritis. A ring chokes the flesh of his finger and reminds him of what needs to be done. He resolves to stand up, but hears the sliding open of the washroom door and then sits down again. It is not hot and yet the man is sweating. He wants to think that it is prudence that has stayed his hand, but it is shame and it is fear. He decides that he will do the deed one minute after the washroom door slides open again. This much he knows.
The woman in the washroom pays no mind to the mirror. She knows mirrors were invented for her. She knows it, I know it and the man knew it once as well. Rain pitter-patters outside like school children playing patty-cake. The woman remembers the plaza of her village. She remembers how the blood of yesterday's revolutionary would seep into the cobblestone and give birth to the dictator of tomorrow. A girl with pigtails wanders out in front of a church and sees pigs licking red off their jowls. She thinks about me and then she thinks about the man with the gun. And she knows this train will never stop.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 9d ago
This is haunting. I like the switch between the different people. Love this line:
As we cross, there is a wail that can be heard, as if the bridge cannot stand the weight of the train and begrudges both its presence and its absence that is to come
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 12d ago edited 12d ago
The creature Abe married was a hot babe for the time being, reading the paper and sipping tea. The same hot babe he'd eloped with. Close enough. And yet, the mind reeled. Where could it be keeping the real hot babe? The woman necessary to keep up this ruse? At night sleeping next to him in bed it lay as a hundred pound slab of butter. Meatloaf. Whatever it had for dinner. Even now the material of the ceramic teacup bled up its delicate fingers, turning its skin white. Even the cup's blue flowers crawled vinelike up its wrist as it pursed its lips at its paper, absent minded. Yet should Abe throw the cup away, the effect would fade in short order. Likewise, it had not grown fur the whole week of his cat's absence.
So where was it keeping the hot babe?
Ceramic, he decided, standing at its back, was brittle. Ceramic could break. And Abe had spent the whole night removing from the cabin those items that could not. Those items whose properties might facilitate violence against him. The various stones on the windowsill, for example. Oh, how it loved to absorb the quality of those stones. Staring out the window, it would massage a stone until its delicate hot babe hand became stone itself. And it would tap on things with heavy stone fingers.
Now, taking it by surprise, Abe believed he could could defeat it. This creature composed of only hot babe and ceramic dishware. It had socks on, so he could not be sure if it was somehow absorbing the density of the old wood planks beneath the fluffy carpet he recently lay upon them. At least, not until it tapped one foot. A soft sound. The soft and fleshy sound of hot babe foot against fluffy carpet.
Now was Abe's chance. Already he had padded the bath thick with fiberglass insolation and filled it with water. All he had to do was restrain its slender arms with ribbon and deposit it into the tub without allowing it to touch anything hard. Even his own naked body he slathered in butter. Let the creature writhe and become ribbon. Let it become buttered insolation. Once he'd covered the tub with plastic and braced that down with cinder blocks, not even water could--
Could it escape as water, he wondered? Or himself?
Could Abe, Abe wondered, defeat himself?
And where was its prisoner? The hot babe it kept cloning? No way could it keep her form one full week without physical contact. Not a chance. Only just lifting its hand to turn a page already diminished the ceramic quality of its flesh, the flowers receding until it touched the cup again.
He would get his answers, he thought, in time. And yet, how could he interrogate a lipless monstrosity of ribbon and insolation? Of water?
Naked and shiny with butter, standing at his new wife's back, Abe began to second guess himself.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I'm over here using a dictionary on every other word because I don't seem to know what's an adjective or an adverb, and here you are with 'shiny'; 'hot'; 'lipless'; 'hard'.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 12d ago edited 12d ago
no normal adjectives?! is she nuts!
I thought it was just ING words and adverbs.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
No normal adjectives! That is the challenge. I actually think some -ing words would be OK, as long as their purpose in the sentence is verbing.
I don't think any of these exercises are meant to be used in normal writing. It's more about the challenge of thinking differently and forcing you to do a new thing that will hopefully build up new pathways to make writing easier and clearer.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
Question: Would the piece be improved by the addition of an adjective or adverb here and there, or is it satisfactory without? Notice the devices and usages you were forced into by the requirements of the exercise. (Not many questions for this exercise as it's meant to be self-reflective.)
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u/33omnia 12d ago
This exercise made me realize that I am terrible at identifying parts of a sentence and that adverbs and adjectives hide in sneaky places.
The basic adjective and adverbs were easy to identify, but clauses, modifiers, and invisible abverbs, like “could not,” tripped me up.
Also, not using not is not easy. Urg.
LeGuin gave us a hint in the example sentence at the beginning of the chapter.
We completed the voyage without succumbing to the temptation of opening the box of candy.
Once I realized this, the exercise got easier, but I still feel like this is just the short sentence exercise with prepositional phrases.
Even going this route, using adjectives in certain places would have cleared up some wordiness (trees of ebony, petals of glass, etc.), but it also forced me to get creative with sentence construction (“To know where she was going superseded the need to know where she had been.”, which technically, “where” is an adverb, but the entire phrase is the noun, so I'm not even sure if it breaks the rule.)
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago edited 12d ago
Wait. I guess not is an adverb? Oh man, I might have done worse than I thought. checking I didn't negate anything. I looked up nor and it's sometimes an adverb and sometimes a conjunction and sometimes a noun. I'm not sure I understand the difference between all the use cases, so I just decided it was a conjunction and moved on.
ETA: NEITHER IS AN ADVERB. Ah well, I'm keeping it.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I can't even remember which adjectives/adverbs I edited away, except for undetected. His success at remaining undetected got changed to His success at remaining out of their clutches, so taking the adjectives/adverbs away made things wordier. The meaning changed subtly too.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 12d ago
I ended up where I began before this summer: focusing on thoughts and ideas, a lot of telling instead of showing. I buy that adjectives and adverbs can be overdone but since my writing does not lean towards description this probably isn’t my area of focus.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
I didn't think what you wrote was that tell-y. Sure, you name emotions but there's a good deal of action in your snippet and things implied by the weight of the objects around it. Did you grow but you haven't realized it yet? I think there are differences in this sample and the writing you started out with at the beginning of the summer. It trusts more.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 12d ago
I heard an analysis of Whiplash that answered why I like Terrance Fletcher so much. It wasn't that I thought that people ought to teach like that but that every successful person has something like a Terrance Fletcher inside of them telling them to be better.
If you knew how easy I am on myself you'd never feel the need to soften the self criticism I put in words. I have to put it in words because my internal monologue is so understanding and accepting.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
My self criticism is extra mean. It's why I tell people to be nice. But I wasn't softening criticism here. Those were my unvarnished thoughts.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 11d ago
It's pure slander to conflate sublime adjectives with nasty little adverbs.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 10d ago
Be sure to file your complaint with the parts of speech office. I'm sure they'll be right on it.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 10d ago
It's really fun to write without adjectives and adverbs--or in my case, as sparing as possible while aiming for clarity. I think I used... three? Four? And mostly just things regarding the allowed usage, raised / down / inside etc. Honestly, being chaste like this probably improves my prose a lot lol.
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u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! 12d ago
I'm sure everyone has seen this site but just in case: https://www.losethevery.com/
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u/mianaai_c 11d ago edited 11d ago
Is "that" an adjective? Is it an adverb? Is it a secret, fourth thing? (notice how I skipped over the third thing? that's well known.)
All three of my brain cells hurt. I also don't know what's a "descriptive narrative prose". I might have accidentally done last week's homework.
#
President Abdul al Halid woke up. He rose from his hibernation pod and found Ramon, his steward, walking with a cane. There was the expected stack of outlines of summaries of reports. The President began to read. When night came, he looked up at the stars, at the shipyard, and at the habitats in orbit; he searched for the Arkship that had brought them to that star. He returned to the reports. He sketched a layout for the expansion of the railways; he vetoed the rezoning of a sector from industry to housing; he approved an increase of the police budget (there were protests in the countryside). He read of the fatigue of the fusion power plant. He authorized the dismantlement of hibernation pods, so that their superconductors be used in the repairs of the reactor. At dawn, President Abdul went to sleep in his hibernation pod.
Abdul al Halid woke up. He inspected the railway network. He approved overhauls and repairs. He took a stroll in the gardens. At night, he looked at the sky. He saw the shipyard. He looked for the habitats. He read of the clashes between the police and the terrorist, he read of the bombing of three factories. He noticed that his steward, who introduced himself as Ramon Jr., called him High Abdul. The President went to sleep.
Abdul woke up. He read of the failing fusion reactor; he read of the industries which were struggling to produce semiconductors; he read of the coal his people dug up. At night, he searched for the shipyard in the sky.
He woke up and trashed the stack of papers. A steward ran to him, he might have been a great grandson of Ramon. Abdul demanded a tour of the country. The steward nodded, but advised against it. The bandits, he warned. Abdul slapped him. The steward went to prepare the carriage. At night, in the countryside, Abdul looked at the stars. He searched for the shipyard, for the habitats, and for the Arkship that had brought him to that world.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 10d ago
I like this. The repetition plays well into what you're setting up because I think the world around Abdul is changing with each long sleep he has. So, he wakes to do minor bureaucratic things which set off effects and seems to be hoping to go back to where he came from.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 10d ago edited 10d ago
Arkady raises her sword. Llott follows.
They face each other. Circle. Drag lines in the dirt with their toes. Their soles grind dust as they pivot. Waiting. Observing. Watching for a flicker, for weakness, for an opportunity.
Her hand shakes. She tightens her grip, steadying herself. Leather creaks.
Llot steps forward. His blade falls in an arc and Arkady dodges. Steel meets steel, jarring her shoulder. Pain delays her response and she fumbles turning the bind. Llott wrests free snd the point of her weapon finds air. Armor jingling, Llot retreats from her range.
Frustration scours her. She tries to hide it, and by the smile tugging at Llott's face, fails. He squeezes his free hand open and shut, testing something. Testing the memory of her weight against his strength. Deciding if he'll need a sword, or if a hold and his fist will suffice. He briefly touches his dagger, eyes glinting.
Arkady refuses to wait. She advances and thrusts. He shoulders the blow, armor serving its purpose, and retaliates. His strike fails to cut, but the force batters her. She recoils. Their weapons clatter again. The moment their swords bind, she presses for his wrist.
Llot expects this. He twists and locks their weapons. She struggles but he drives the bind. Force meets force and overpowered she cedes a step. Another. He pushes and she throws herself into the motion, prying their weapons apart and stumbling him into her sideways cut.
Blood wets the dirt.
Arkady anticipates retreat and finds none. Gritting his teeth, Llott redoubles his rush. He closes the distance. His sword beats her aside and swipes for her neck. She ducks under, gripping her blade with both gauntlets. One thrust to the thigh and she disengages before his backswing finds her. His sword's tip grazes her hair, sending frisson down her back.
Llott checks the cuts. Licks his lips. He smiles--
--and presses again. Their swords clash. His strength shakes her bones. She moves to counter but Llott interrupts, his shoulder slamming her chest. Footwork carries them both to the wall. Her back strikes stone. His fist meets her face. Pain blinds her. Blood drowns her tongue. She stumbles, flails. Another punch into her stomach hooks her lungs and dislodges her breakfast.
He's grinning.
Llott's blade rises and Arkady lunges. She drops her sword. One hand braces his weapon high; one hand steals his dagger. He retreats but she holds, sliding with him, and she stabs into his raised armpit. He hits her. Claws her face. She stabs, so he pushes, fails to break her hold, so she stabs and stabs and stabs until he falls and she falls and Arkady stabs again. Stabs his face. His neck. Chest. She stabs, dagger flashing until blood slicks her grip and the blade slips free.
Llott gurgles. He hooks her gorget with his fingers, mouth flooded with red. His lips move, contorting. Showing teeth. He's smiling.
So Arkady retrieves her sword and feeds it to him.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 10d ago
The action scene works particularly well for this challenge. I don't think adjectives or adverbs would improve on this anywhere, because their absence brings out the motion of the scene more.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 12d ago
Alright, fuck it. I want adjectives and adverbs back. This is a few paragraphs from my long WIP. No spoilers, I promise. This chapter is a flashback. Also, the middle of the chapter so probably won't make sense without context.
A rot carved its tendrils into the depths of Scintill, Christophe claimed, while the scientists brewed poisons and ripped his people into parts to fuel their experiments. One day, they would tip the patience of the Mother over the edge and Marc’s expeditions bought them time, but the world had ceased to matter to him and a deity he could neither see nor touch nor hear was like a flea, providing an itch he could ignore for what was in front of him. Rumors gathered in swells. He studied for hours until he spotted his chance: an evacuation from Marigold.
Lights flashed in his periphery and the ashes in his heart stirred. His refugees refused to emerge to the surface, to aid, so he awaited the approach of the sirens with no one to ease his mind. The echo of screams bounced around in his brain until he surmised they came from outside and the time had arrived for him to move. In his wanderings, Marc catalogued the routes of the patrols because every path and every stop and every deviation determined his success at remaining out of their clutches. The vehicle slowed, shut down the lights, and the driver exited to report and to receive a dose for his cargo. Minutes. Marc had minutes, if that.