Part 12 (2/2)

You would be better off with the elimination of either adjective. However, if you take out ”colorful” and keep ”lovely,” you would not be making the best choice because ”lovely” is vague and ”colorful” is specific and therefore gives the reader a more concrete image to visualize.

Examining your adjectives provides an opportunity to see if you could possibly invoke the reader's curiosity with an adjective that is better than either one you now have. What adjective could you use instead of both ”lovely” and ”colorful”? There are several curiosity-provoking adjectives you might have chosen: What a curious garden! What a strange garden! What an eerie garden! What a remarkable garden! What a bizarre garden!

”Lovely” and ”colorful” don't draw us in because we expect a garden to be lovely or colorful. If we hear that a garden is curious, strange, eerie, remarkable, or bizarre, we want to know why. An adjective that piques the reader's curiosity helps move a story along.

Of course it needn't be an adjective that provokes the reader's interest. For instance, consider: She'd never seen a garden quite like this one.

Any word or group of words that makes the reader ask ”Why?” or ”How?” also serves as an inducement for the reader to go on.

Like any good rule, using one adjective in place of two has exceptions. Sometimes two adjectives or an adverb modifying the adjective are necessary to create a specific image: Meryl Streep stood the way a heavily pregnant woman will, in two motions, out of the chair and then up.

”Pregnant” alone wouldn't give you the same image. There are several rules for determining which adjectives to keep: * An adjective that is a necessity. Example: ”His right eye kept blinking.” If you didn't keep ”right,” it might sound as if you were talking about a one-eyed man.

* An adjective that stimulates the reader's curiosity and thereby helps move a story along. Example: ”He had a pursued look” wouldn't work without the adjective. Moreover, the adjective raises curiosity about why he had that pursued look.

* An adjective that helps the reader visualize the precise image you want to project. ”The spoon left a line of froth on his sad mustache.” Without ”sad,” the line is merely descriptive. With ”sad” it characterizes both the person described and, by inference, the speaker.

An adjective, of course, modifies a noun. An adverb modifies a verb. Most adverbs require the same tough surgery as adjectives: Leona wished he would call soon.

The meaning of ”soon” is implied. The adverb is unnecessary. The sentence is stronger without it.

A frequent error is the use of two adverbs. Which of the two adverbs in the following sentence would you eliminate?

She really, truly cared for him.

Would you eliminate ”really” or ”truly”? You could take out either. ”She really cared for him” is okay. ”She truly cared for him” is okay too. But best of all is ”She cared for him.” It is direct, and picks up the pace. Small as these changes seem, c.u.mulatively they have a powerful effect on prose. Using more than one adverb is a common fault. Here's an example from a current bestselling author: John got up quickly and walked restlessly to the window. He turned suddenly, smiling confidently. Then he sat down slowly, heavily.

That makes six adverbs in two sentences! Watch what happens when you eliminate five of them: John got up and walked to the window. He turned suddenly, smiling. Then he sat down.

The pace is improved not only by eliminating five adverbs, but also by shortening the sentences.

Before you begin eliminating all adverbs by rote, keep in mind that sometimes adverbs can be helpful. There are two adverbs in the following short sentence. Each conveys something different: He ate heartily, happily.

”Heartily” connotes eating a lot, ”happily” connotes taking pleasure. If it is the author's intention to convey both meanings, the adverbs should be retained. ”He ate” without either adverb tells us little.

I hurriedly scribbled the number down on the pad.

Why get rid of ”hurriedly”? Because scribbling connotes hurry.

If not all adverbs should be cut, what is the purpose of this exercise? It's to get you to pay close attention to whether each word is helping or hurting your intention. Most of the time two adverbs slow down the pace and weaken the sentence they're in. But changes should not be made mechanically. I have two rules for testing adverbs to see if they are worth keeping: * Keep an adverb that supplies necessary information. Example: ”He tried running faster and fell.” If he's already running, you must keep ”faster.” If you remove the adverb the sentence means that he fell as soon as he started running. * Keep an adverb that helps the reader visualize the precise image you want to project. Example: ”She drove crazily, frightening the oncoming traffic.”

Don't let these exceptions make you lose sight of the fact that most adverbs can be eliminated.

Verbs can also get in the way of pace. Here's one example: He was huffing and puffing as he climbed the steep street.

The one adjective in the sentence, ”steep,” shouldn't be removed because if the street isn't steep, why the huffing and puffing? It's the ”huffing and puffing” that spoils the sentence because that phrase is a cliche, a tired, overused, familiar conjunction of words. It would be perfectly acceptable to say: He was puffing as he climbed the steep street.

Can you detect the flab in the following sentence? Two of the six words are unnecessary: This idea is an interesting one.

Do you find the following sentence stronger?

This idea is interesting.

The flab words are ”an” and ”one.”

Removing flab may seem a simple procedure, and in fact it is once a writer gets the habit of looking for the waste words as if he were an editor. Which words would you remove from the following sentence?

There is nothing I would like better than to meet an interesting person who could become a new friend.

Here's a clue. To quicken the pace, delete ten of the nineteen words. Don't go on until you've found all ten words. Be as tough on yourself in eliminating unnecessary words as you think I might be if I were editing your ma.n.u.script. The best writers of the hundreds I've dealt with over the years were also the toughest on themselves. If you don't find all ten dispensable words, try again until you do. I've bracketed the words that could be deleted: [There is nothing] I would like [better than] to meet an interesting [person who could become a] new friend.

More than half the words have been eliminated!

Certain words frequently const.i.tute flab and can be eliminated: ”however,” ”almost,” ”entire,” ”successive,” ”respective,” ”perhaps,” ”always,” ”there is.” Each writer can compile a list of his own, words he uses from time to time that contribute nothing but flab to a text. Your own made-to-order list will serve as the best guide.

You've undoubtedly heard it said that the best writers make every word count. Not always. They, like us, sometimes slip up. Here's an example from Pete Dexter's excellent novel Paris Trout, which won the 1988 National Book Award for fiction: In the moment of illumination, though, he saw him. Buster Devonne was counting his money.

Check those two sentences. Can you detect three bits of flab? Try to find those words before you go on. Perhaps you found the same words I did. They are in bold face: In the moment of illumination, though, he saw him. Buster Devonne was counting his money.

This leaves us with a shorter version that seems stronger than the original: In the moment of illumination, he saw Buster Devonne counting his money.

Note how much faster that sentence seems to read than the two-sentence version that contained the flab. And that's from a prize-winning book, the author making a slip that you will not make when you've mastered the advice in this chapter.

Let's take a look at some sentences from which we want to eliminate flab. The protagonist in this story is proud of his house, where he has had meetings with important people. He is also a do-it-yourselfer. Here's the first draft of his thoughts as he comes home one day: The best scenes of my private and public life have been enacted here. Over the last fifteen years every room has been improved by my labor.

What excess words would you remove? Try to find them before going on.

The best scenes of my [private and public] life have been enacted here. [Over the last fifteen years] Every room has been improved by my labor.

Note how much the pace increased after the author took out the bracketed words: The best scenes of my life have been enacted here. Every room has been improved by my labor.

The word ”life” encompa.s.ses private and public. ”Over the last fifteen years” provided unnecessary information that weakened the sentence.

The next sentences come from the same novel. A successful loan shark is intent on hiring a lawyer named Bert Rivers: I went there to kind of smell out what he was like. That was the last time I was in Bert Rivers' office. From then on Bert Rivers came to my office.

What I did in revising was quite simple. I cut the entire middle sentence, which didn't add anything. The deletion strengthened what was left and stepped up the pace: I went there to kind of smell out what he was like. From then on Bert Rivers came to my office.

At chapter endings, cutting can be especially important. The following is from the point of view of a mother who has learned that her sixteen-year-old son has been killed in a fight. Here's the original: I looked up at the ceiling, knowing above the ceiling was the roof, and above the roof was the sky, and somewhere in the sky there was a power who knew your secrets, a power who emptied out the days and gave your kid to the maggots. What does a mother do with her love? It wasn't fair. Why did G.o.d do nothing?

In revising, I thought the sentence ”What does a mother do with her love?” excessively sentimental. And ”Why did G.o.d do nothing?” was too abstract to leave the reader with a suitable emotion at the end of the chapter. I cut both sentences. Here's how the chapter now ends: I looked up at the ceiling, knowing above the ceiling was the roof, and above the roof was the sky, and somewhere in the sky there was a power who knew your secrets, a power who emptied out the days and gave your kid to the maggots. It wasn't fair.

The author I have spent more time editing than any other is Elia Kazan, winner of two Academy Awards and director of five Pulitzer Prize plays who turned to fiction and became a number-one bestselling novelist. In his autobiography Kazan said, ”I was now in a new profession. My publisher Sol Stein was my producer, and my editor Sol Stein was my director. ... He saw quickly ... that I delighted in saying the same thing over and over, thereby minimizing its impact (”One plus one equals a half,” Sol would say).”

Eliminating the redundance was an important factor in his novel The Arrangement remaining number one on the bestseller charts for thirty-seven consecutive weeks.

I've been teaching my strange formula ”One plus one equals a half' for a long time. It has been of value even to the most talented and successful of writers. The formula gives beginners insight into one of the factors that hurts chances for publication.

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