Strong Sentences; Concrete Nouns and Verbs

Some of the best writing advice is also basic: get rid of most of your adjectives and adverbs (especially the adverbs), and make sure you're using strong, concrete verbs and nouns instead. What is a concrete verb or noun? One that can be perceived through a sense organ—eyes, nose, skin, tongue. (The Writer's Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long, p. 25).

Examples: boulevard rather than wide, tree-lined street; sting rather than painful bite (n.);  bee-stung (as a verb) rather than bitten by an insect; slither through, rather than move stealthily through the crowd, etc. 

Like all rules, the adjective/adverb rule needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Of course great writers use adjectives and adverbs. Hemingway, noted for his short, direct sentences, did use modifiers, especially adjectives—plenty of them.

But most important is clarity. To paraphrase E.B. White, the closest a writer can get to Godliness is Clarity.

Then, if you want to add a few halos, you need to make sure your writing has not only clarity, but depth. The key to clarity and depth: word specificity, as indicated above in Long's definition of 'concrete' words. 

Select your words with clarity in mind, and make sure they mean exactly what you're trying to convey. This is not as easy as it sounds. To avoid superficiality or lack of nuance, you need to dig deep into your vocabulary bag and find words that are clear and specific, but not necessarily simple. There's no shame in using a thesaurus to find the right word.

An example from Pricilla Long, quoting writer Tim O'Brien on how to describe what war is like for soldiers:

• First, Long's example of abstract (cannot be perceived through the senses) descriptive language: "War is burdensome on soldiers." 'Burdensome' does little to let the reader sense what war is like for soldiers. 
• Tim O'Brien's concrete, specific language (visual, smelly, and itchy): "They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself—Viet Nam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. ....."

There are modifiers in O'Brien's descriptive language (powdery, orange-red), but note how they flow from the tongue in a powerful rhythm as if emerging from the concrete descriptors that came before them.

Writing a strong sentence with concrete, specific nouns and verbs is a great exercise for all of us to do every day until it's what comes naturally. Do you have one you'd be willing to share?