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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Missing A's
These exercises were written
by IWW members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009
Reposted on: Sunday, October 31, 2010
Reposted on: Sunday, October 16, 2011
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Exercise: Write a scene of 400 words or less in which you use no (or almost no) adjectives or adverbs.
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Can you describe a landscape, a person, an interior, a storm, a day in summer, an emotion without using adjectives? Can you write life in action without adverbs?
Imagine "It was a dark and stormy night" without the adjectives "dark" and "stormy." Maybe, for example: ''That night clouds veiled the moon and we couldn't see the mountain." No adjectives. No adverbs.
Does it take more words, more writing, to transmit visual and emotional images to the reader without adjectives and adverbs?
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Exercise: Write a scene of 400 words or less in which you use no (or almost no) adjectives or adverbs.
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In your critique tell the author whether or not the work fits the exercise and why--let the author know what worked or didn't, and why.
As you read the piece, did you hunger for adjectives and adverbs in the scene, or did you forget about them? We might consider adjectives and adverbs as both friends and foes of the writer and reader. How might they enhance or mar one's writing?
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Greg Gunther.
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