Adjectives are tricky acrobats, aren't they?
(almost like bad, alliteration-heavy metaphors)Lately I've been doing some original writing and realizing how adjective-heavy I tend to write things. I sort of just assume people can follow my crazy paths of description and it's not always the case, probably. My writing style can err on the side of excessive I suppose - I just like adjectives and like to use them! But I'm realizing more and more than nothing can bog down a paragraph quicker than too many descriptive words.
I think it depends on the genre, too - fantasy writing tends to be sort of... not flowery, but oftentimes it involves a lot of description, since you're describing things people would never SEE in real life. With something like hardboiled detective diction, you just go for the straight-forward approach.
I guess I'm trying to be more aware of the fine line between too much description and too little. I don't want my writing to be devoid of personality, but I don't want it to be dense and hard to read either.
Also, I really, really like to write long sentences. I sort of write the way I think, and that's not the easiest form of narrative to follow, so I'm trying to reign that in too and realize that periods DON'T slow things down most of the time. It's structure! Structure is good!
Anyway, tl;dr, I'm re-reading the first chapter of my story (still can't believe I've actually finished the first chapter, sans re-writing) and facepalming because I thought I was done with it but now I'm thinking of doing some adjective-trimming.
For example, here's the first paragraph of my story:
( beneath the cut )AUGH WRITING. Why must you be so cruel? /goes works on it moar.