Better Writing: Why Nouns and Verbs Are Your Friends
“The wearily handsome, nervous, stubble-chinned man slowly and carefully got out of bed when he heard the soft, mysterious sound of footsteps in his apartment.”
OR
“The ex-con bolted up, rubbed his eyes and then the stubble on his chin, and crept out of bed. Those footsteps didn’t belong in his apartment.
Look at the above sentences, and see if you can figure out why the second is an example of better writing than the first. If you still don’t know, look above that. At the risk of stating the obvious, here’s a key to better writing you should always keep in mind: nouns and verbs are the backbone of any sentence, and thus of all writing. I could have made this article’s title really long and added “… and Adjectives and Adverbs Are Your Enemies,” but that would be hypocritical, since most of my writing tips stem from the credo that better writing is concise writing.
Better writing isn’t only about eliminating adjectives and adverbs so that your writing contains fewer words that aren’t nouns and verbs. After all, if we did that to the first example, we’d be left with:
