Monday, October 3, 2011

Verbs over Adjectives and Adverbs

It is obvious to me that, at least in fiction writing, verbs matter more than adjectives and adverbs.  Instead of saying:

"He quickly walked out of the house, the cold air a tonic to his miserly fatigue."

"He slithered out of the house, the cold air a tonic . . ."

It evokes a different image without adding to the density or complexity of the sentence--it essentially builds character through action, rather than separating out the two. 

1 comment:

  1. Interesting observation. It can probably tell us something profound about the way our brains do semantic evaluation.

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