I've just finished an exercise from The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman.
Wow! Is my face very red! I didn't think I had a problem overusing
adjectives and adverbs. But I do. Maybe you knew?
The exercise was to take the first page of a manuscript and
highlight all the adjectives and adverbs. I found four adverbs and 28
adjectives. Whew!
Three of the adverbs and 13 of the adjectives proved
indispensable. The rest I ruthlessly cut--a word savings of 5%! I also exchanged a
commonplace noun in the first paragraph with a snazzier one.
Have you examined your modifiers?
I feel like I'm very aware of adjectives and adverbs and I think I use them sparingly. But now that you've put it like this, I'm going to have to pull something up and break out the highlighters to be sure.
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