4. Describing without Adjective

Sense words like see, feel, taste, hear, smell, touch; ‘be’ verbs like is, am, was and other verbs like appear, become, grow, look, seem, turn can take predicate adjectives. Examples: She felt sad; She was angry; She looked/appeared scared. She seems to dislike. She experienced cold behaviour. These are collectively known as Link Verbs. However for a fictional writing characterisation needs to be vivid such that the reader actually feels what is sadness, anger, frustration, hatred, dislike, insult, fear and such emotional feelings by relating to it. Aim of a good writer is to make the reader feel by making the reader walk through. Hence, in order to make the reading absorbing, writers rarely use these adjectives. Instead they describe a scene or body language, narrate a cause, or present a dialogue enabling the reader to relate to sadness, anger etc in first person. Naturally good writing involves less use of ‘link verbs’ and more of dynamic action verbs. They also avoid other cognition verbs like appreciate, enjoy, recognise, think, relish, realise, identify, know, believe, understand, wonder, suffer etc. Examples: