How to Use Strengthening Words

Strengthening words are nice. They can make an otherwise uninteresting word into a powerful one. They can grant someone with a limited vocabulary the ability to paint magnificent verbal landscapes.

These words can enhance your writing. The danger is in their overuse.

This also makes it very easy for strengthening words to be abused. This can take two forms: 1) the incorrect usage of a strengthening word; 2) the overuse of strengthening words. (For now, I am going to assume that most of my readers know how to correctly use strengthening words and will therefore deal with the overuse of them.)

Definition

So, what is a strengthening word? Typically, these are adjectives and adverbs. They are added to nouns or verbs in order to intensify the root meaning.

For an adjective, think of how to describe a day. You might think of the temperature and describe it as a cool day. Or perhaps you'll think of the mood and describe it as a creepy day. The italicized words are the adjectives that modify the noun, "day."

Similarly, adverbs work on verbs. You can run somewhere, or you can quickly run. You can shake your fist, or you can vigorously shake your fist. Adverbs are typically easier to locate than adjectives are since most adverbs end in -ly.

The Problem

These words are good at enhancing your writing, but that also means they are easily abused. For one thing, nearly every verb that is strengthened by one of these words can be replaced by a stronger verb that already exists in the English language. Take "quickly run" for example, which can be replaced with "sprint" or "race" or "hurried." In fact, it is possible to replace almost every single adverb you'd ever use in a sentence with a word that is already stronger. For example, count the number of adverbs in my short story, Thinking in Code.

It is more difficult to remove every strengthening word from nouns, since there are rarely nouns that function as stronger forms of other nouns. One or two adjectives isn't bad, of course; but a trap many new writers fall into is thinking that adjectives are poetic, and therefore overload sentences with adjectives. If you want to use adjectives, use a single adjective per noun. Occasionally, you can get away with two. But try to avoid any more than that.

Strengthening words may strengthen an individual word, but their absence will strengthen the overall work.

Now I realize that you might be thinking, "But I want to describe a day that is sunny, calm, relaxing, and yet slightly creepy. I need all those adjectives!" But the short answer is: no you do not. You should pick the adjective that is most useful to describe the day, and then spend the rest of your text showing the other attributes. If it is of most importance that the day is sunny, then "sunny" is the adjective you should keep. If you must describe the creepiness, keep "creepy." Again, most new writers think the more adjectives that are used, the more poetic the writing is. But the reality is that the fewer you use, the more you are required to actually excel at your craft to write passages worth reading.

In the end, the less you rely on strengthening words, the stronger your writing will be. In other words, strengthening words may strengthen an individual word, but their absence will result in a stronger overall work.