My beta reader told me to cut every adjective from my first page

I had 14 adjectives in paragraph one alone - after removing them, my opening scene actually MOVES now and readers said it felt way more urgent. Has anyone else tried a zero-adjective pass on their work and seen big results?

3 comments

3 Comments

lopez.jana11d ago

Ugh that's such a painful but eye opening exercise right? The first time I tried it I felt like I was breaking some rule I'd been trained on for years. But yeah everything felt faster and cleaner after. It's wild how much those extra words can slow a scene down even when they seem important.

cameronn6210d agoMost Upvoted

Did cutting the adjectives change your pacing too or just the word count?

veraj5310d ago

Yeah @lopez.jana is totally right that it feels like breaking a rule at first. I used to think adjectives were what made writing beautiful and cutting them would make it boring. Then I tried it on a scene I was really proud of and man, I was wrong. My character walking into a room just said "the door opened" instead of "the heavy oak door creaked slowly open" and suddenly the reader was right there with her instead of counting the fancy words. It actually made the few adjectives I kept hit way harder, like "sharp" when describing a voice. Now I do a pass on every draft just for this.