Every student of writing has been told to use adjectives when writing descriptions. Choosing the best adjectives will bring clarity to writing and will make imagery spring from the page. Choosing subjective adjectives creates an ambiguous picture in the reader’s mind.
What is a Subjective Adjective?
Subjective adjectives are based on personal opinions or thoughts of another, rather than based on fact. An example of a subjective adjective is the word pretty. Consider the sentence, “Maria is a pretty woman.” Pretty is the adjective that describes Maria. Pretty is also subjective because it may mean different things to different readers.
For one person, pretty may indicate someone with dark, long hair and dark eyes, and a tall, slender build. For another person, pretty could mean golden blonde hair and green eyes, with a petite and curvy figure. Pretty doesn’t accurately describe how a person looks. In writing, it’s better to use specific descriptive adjectives. Consider these sentences, “Maria had waist-length curly hair, carroty in the sunlight, contrasting her pearly white, smooth skin and lime green eyes. She was six feet tall, thin as a reed, and moved with the grace of a ballerina.” Now every reader should have a similar mental picture of Maria.
Using Precise Adjectives for Powerful Writing
The most powerful writing evokes an emotional, physical, or mental response in the reader. An author does this by creating mood, atmosphere, and tension using descriptive words. There’s a fine balance needed so that the writing doesn’t become weighted down in adjectives. That’s why choosing the best word is so important.
Learning to Write With Descriptive Adjectives
Learning writing skills such as description, like anything else, takes practice. You can begin with a simple exercise right now. Start with this sentence:
- She was charming.
Now ask a few questions. What does charming really mean? How does this character show charm? What personality quirks or habits could be used to show this? What more specific words will nail that description? Try writing the description without using the word charming, which is subjective.
Today’s readers don’t want to slog through long pages of prose that describe a character or a setting. Therefore, the descriptions need powerful adjectives that can be sprinkled in throughout the scene. Readers should never feel the story is getting bogged down in description; it should come naturally through the context of the action.
To describe the charming woman, a scene could show her doing things, sitting or standing a certain way, greeting a person in a certain manner, or any number of actions. After writing a description of this charming woman have readers critique it. Ask for their impressions of the woman. Continue practicing until you’ve mastered the ability to convey a clear description.
The four pictures provided with this article make another writing exercise. Try to describe each one as precisely as possible, using descriptive adjectives, not subjective ones. Have readers critique the description. Then show them the pictures and see if their impressions matched the actual photograph.
Another option is to leave the writing descriptions in the comments section of this article and allow other writers to gently critique them.
Making a List of Descriptive Words
This technique may help a writer avoid using some of the more common subjective adjectives. Write down a list of ambiguous words that have varied meanings for different people. For each word, try to find more accurate descriptors and write them down. Some common subjective adjectives are:
- Beautiful
- Charming
- Comfortable
- Funny
- Good
- Handsome
- Kind
- Modern
- Naughty
- Nice
- Old-fashioned
- Outstanding
- Poor
- Pretty
- Rude
- Wealthy
- Scary
This is only a small list. There are hundreds of subjective adjectives. Finding words that are more precise and pinpoint the quality being described will result in powerful writing.
Suzanne Pitner - Suzanne Pitner is a teacher and published writer. A member of RWA and YARWA, she writes fiction as Suzanne Lilly.
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