It's always an interesting thing to do. The contestants each submitted 3,000 words to be judged. What struck me, to the point that I started keeping a scoresheet, was the number of adverbs and adjectives some writers used and that they were either not aware of them or hadn't polished their work well enough.
One piece of writing had 29 adverbs in 3,000 words - an average of one per hundred! It doesn't seem a lot but can be distracting if everything is 'beautifully', 'wonderfully', 'awfully' etc.
How to stop yourself making the same mistake [or at least recognising if you do it]:
- Choose five of your favourite authors and five different books.
- Select five pages from each of those books and count how many adverbs and adjectives are in those five pages.
- Keep a list or scoresheet.
- Choose five pages of your own writing and see how your score compares!
How to fix this if it's a problem for you:
Look at the verb or noun the adverb or adjective is describing
- Make that verb or noun stonger, clearer
- Play with calling a sound a taste or a sight a sound!
And write - just keep writing. All of the above can be fixed in the editing.
Jennifer
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