I read a lot of books. This doesn’t make me particularly smart or special; it just makes me someone who reads a lot of books. I read books for fun, of course, but also as a paid reviewer. The reviewing gig is great, because I get to read books I wouldn’t normally choose. Sometimes that is delightful. Sometimes it is … not. But I always get something out of it.
One problem I’ve encountered in some of the books I’ve been reading of late is a tendency to go for AWESOMENESS in the prose style. You might call it Purple, or just overdone — every description is a superlative, every action is incredible, skilled, decisive. It’s like the author dialed their writing up to 11 and then tinkered with the wiring to milk a few more watts out of the power supply IN ORDER TO MAKE IT ALL AWESOMER.
Tip: Don’t do that.
Superlatives for the Loss
It might seem counter-intuitive, but the more you tell me that your character is awesome and the best at what they do, the more adjectives and adverbs you pile into your sentences, the less convinced I am.
This is a case where ‘show don’t tell’ can actually be a very useful piece of advice. The more you have to tell me how awesome your character, story, and settings are, the less I believe you. If you want to convince me I’m reading something epic, you have to demonstrate it.
Some young writers think that they need to ‘punch up’ their writing to convey the excitement they feel when they’re making up the story, but this is the exact opposite of what you need to do. The more ‘awesome’ you drop into the story, the worse the writing gets, as a rule.
The thing about description is that the more AWESOME it gets, the less universal it is, as a rule. Because superlatives and modifiers are crutches. Readers should be excited about your story because it’s interesting, clever, and emotionally resonate. They should care about your characters because they feel real. None of this has much to do with piling 13 AWESOME words into every sentence.
In fact, a good exercise is to write a story with a limited number of modifiers — a restricted vocabulary, maybe, with just a short list of basic adjectives and adverbs, or a certain number you can use per 100 words. Restricted writing like that rarely produces great work, but it’s almost always a learning experience for the author.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to this story I’m writing about Ripper Mojo, whose fists are like steam-powered locomotives humming with violent rage and whose eyes are as deep and unblinkingly penetrative as a midnight sun.