The Wonders of Words: This Blog is Really Good
Welcome, fellow writers, editors, and language enthusiasts! I hope you remember the resources I suggested in my Author’s Toolbox blog a few weeks ago because they’ll be super helpful in solving any problems that this blog brings to the surface.
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to fall back on common, generic words like ‘very’ or ‘good’ when you’re writing?
While these words may seem harmless at first glance, they can weaken your writing and make it come across as bland or lacklustre. It leaves far too much to the imagination—how do you even begin to fill in the blanks?
Let's find out how to solve that.
GENERIC ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS
I promise this section is ‘very good.’
Generic adjectives and adverbs can often sneak into our writing without us realizing it, but they can significantly weaken the impact of our words.
Phrases like ‘very nice’ or ‘really good’ are just a couple of examples of weak adjectives and adverbs that fail to paint a vivid picture for the reader.
If you replace these vague descriptors with more precise and powerful ones, you can elevate your writing massively and engage your readers more effectively.
Nothing beats well-described settings, characters, and plots.
Below are some examples of very common generic adjectives and adverbs alongside some appropriate alternatives:
very happy
ecstatic, overjoyed, jubilant, thrilled, delighted
really sad
devastated, heartbroken, despairing
very good
exceptional, great, terrific, marvellous
really bad
awful, dire, horrendous, terrible, harrowing
These stronger adjectives and adverbs not only add depth and colour to our writing but also help convey emotions and imagery more vividly to your readers, ultimately enhancing the overall impact that the text will have on your audience.
WEAK VERBS AND NOUNS
A dog barking vs. A pitbull snarling.
Before we get started, I want there to be no confusion—I do not believe that pitbulls are aggressive dogs, they’re little sweethearts; aggressive behaviour usually comes from mistreatment, training, or lack thereof, from the owners, which unfortunately is quite common as some sick, sick people love to train them as fighting dogs. Because of this common occurrence, a great many people find them to be scary and dangerous animals, which is why they are used as an example in this blog post.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about weak nouns and verbs!
Much like in the previous section, the use of these can weaken the impact of your writing, making it less engaging for readers.
For example, if you write the sentence ‘a dog barking,’ it doesn’t really offer the reader much in terms of visuals or how your readers are supposed to be feeling about the action.
However, if you replace the noun with the specific breed, and use a more descriptive verb, you’ll find that the scene is much clearer and your reader will understand the meaning and intent of the description much more clearly.
This could look like:
‘A pitbull snarling’
Stereotypically, people view this breed of dog as aggressive, so already just changing the noun makes the reader fear for the character in that situation. Changing the verb to ‘snarling’ further encourages this feeling of danger to the reader.
Alternatively, if you wrote:
‘A terrier yipping’
You place the image of a tiny dog—known widely for being very gentle and friendly—just making a whole lot of noise for the sake of it.
This type of specification pushes a much less tense setting to the reader than the previous example.
These are two completely different iterations of specific noun and verb usage, both of which stem from the same generic notion of ‘a dog barking’, so you can see why it would be important to communicate specifics effectively in your writing.
By choosing more vivid and precise language, you can enhance the imagery and tone of your writing, making it more compelling and engaging for your audience. Whether you are writing fiction, non-fiction, or academically, more specific word choices can put more vivid images into the minds of readers and thus elicit deeper emotional responses.
I’ll see you next week where we’ll discuss dialogue tags and investigate the issues surrounding the dreaded ‘said.’ Until then:
Keep practising, keep learning, and most importantly, keep writing!
