The Art of series continues to be a helpful source of information on the writing craft. After reading Charles Baxter’s instalment, The Art of Subtext, I was not disappointed by Mark Doty’s The Art of Description. Both are important skills to learn. After reading Doty’s entire book, I thought back to the tidbits that I understood best and discovered that the sections that stick in the mind are the ABCs of description, a list of concepts to keep in the back of your mind while you write. And these are immensely helpful with the added bonus of being short, quick, and memorable, especially when it comes to advice on qualifiers.
Many of the writing craft books I’ve read have at some point mentioned the perceived evils of adverbs and adjectives and how they kill a sentence. To me, the extreme negativity surrounding qualifiers has always seemed a bit too black-and-white. (This is similar to the argument against telling and in favor of showing. The “advice” to never tell and always show can lead to an imbalance in written material. Thinking in absolutes like this can limit creativity.) For this reason—and also because of a certain impatience to get to the next interesting chapter—I tended to skim over exercises in writing craft books. This time, though, Doty’s less pessimistic approach to the handling of qualifiers piqued my interest, and I ended up taking Doty’s challenge:
From a draft in progress, remove every adjective and adverb, and see what you’ve got left. Can you strengthen any of the nouns and verbs remaining, through greater specificity or precision? (Doty 112)
Doty places focus not as much on the qualifiers themselves, but on the nouns and verbs surrounding them, the words that arguably carry more weight. Curious, I chose a small passage from my novel (one that has not gone through much revision) and tried the exercise.
She smiled, not quite fully comfortable, but he took the time to memorize her smile all the same, to dedicate it to his mind and think of it later. Her small mouth lifted slightly at the corners, making a little heart shape with her lips. But the smile was also fleeting, and it began to fade almost before it was fully formed. I’ll have to do something about that. He folded his hands together, making a shadow that looked like a woman, and he moved his hands in a jolly dance. She blinked in surprise, her face a mask of pure confusion before she smiled again—yes, there it is!—and even laughed.
Rine pushed past him, blocking the dancing girl shadow with his own. “Let us stay on course. Before we meet our end down here.”
He stepped back to study the man’s face, the little slight scars, a freckle on one cheek. What would a true, full smile look like on that face?
Through Doty’s exercise, I began to notice wordiness that had nothing to do with adjectives or adverbs (“to dedicate it to his mind and think of it later” rather than something as simple as “to lock it in his mind for later”). The exercise, which focuses mostly on nouns/verbs and qualifiers, requires a certain concentration on wording in general and will inevitably lead to a deeper knowledge of one’s own writing style: now that these unnecessary parts of the passage are brought to light, a writer can consciously work to make every word important and eliminate or change extraneous ones. The exercise is not only about qualifiers; it is about the precision of word choice.
Her lips twitched upward, but he took the time to memorize her almost-smile all the same, to seal it in his mind for later: her heart-shaped mouth lifted at the corners. The almost-smile was fleeting, fading before it formed. I’ll have to do something about that. He folded his hands together, casting a womanly shadow, and when he moved his hands, the shadow-woman danced a jig. She blinked, her face a mask of confusion before she smiled with her eyes—There it is!—and laughed.
Rine pushed past him, blocking the dancing woman with his own shadow. “Stay on course. Before we meet our end down here.”
He stepped back to study the man, the scars on his face, small but many, and a freckle on one cheek. How would he wear a smile?
This is not the end of Doty’s exercise. Now, he challenges the writer to notice, “which, if indeed any, of the qualifiers you’ve erased do you really miss, [and] which ones are absolutely necessary” (Doty 112)? In his own words, Doty doesn’t “advocate for severity.” He is kind to the necessary qualifiers and politely dismisses the unnecessary ones.
I ended up keeping a few of the qualifiers I felt the passage couldn’t live without (describing the scars on Rine’s face, for example), while others did turn out to be unnecessary (I used variations of slight/slightly a couple of times in the original passage). The trick isn’t to find and expel any and all qualifiers; the trick is to be conscious enough of the material to be able to note where they work and where they don’t.
Photo by Andreas Fickl on Unsplash
Rachel Sandell 