- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 15,209
- Reaction score
- 5,341
Adjectives. Adverbs.
Love them or hate them, they have a place in writing. Just not as often as some think. The advice in Chapter Two is sound, but we’ve all seen this advice ignored, and watched those books become bestsellers.
It’s a tough call, especially since I write MG/YA. It’s true I don’t want to write down to my potential reader, but the vocabulary of a typical 8-12 year old isn’t as well rounded as, say, a twenty year old. This is the fact at hand and I feel I need to use adverbs and adjectives in this genre. That doesn’t mean I’m going down the string-a-list-of-modifiers route either. I have other WIPs outside MG where I can put strong verb/noun usage to work and if I find a particular instance that does the job that makes my MG work better, I’ll use it.
Otherwise, I'll use whatever tools I need to paint a picture my reader can grasp.
Love them or hate them, they have a place in writing. Just not as often as some think. The advice in Chapter Two is sound, but we’ve all seen this advice ignored, and watched those books become bestsellers.
It’s a tough call, especially since I write MG/YA. It’s true I don’t want to write down to my potential reader, but the vocabulary of a typical 8-12 year old isn’t as well rounded as, say, a twenty year old. This is the fact at hand and I feel I need to use adverbs and adjectives in this genre. That doesn’t mean I’m going down the string-a-list-of-modifiers route either. I have other WIPs outside MG where I can put strong verb/noun usage to work and if I find a particular instance that does the job that makes my MG work better, I’ll use it.
Otherwise, I'll use whatever tools I need to paint a picture my reader can grasp.
Last edited: