THE TRICK IS TO MAKE SOMEONE WANT TO READ THE . . .
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SERIES CLINIC

If you hit your readers with a series of adjectives or adverbs to help sharpen a point, it’s best to pick modifiers that come at the modified term from different angles. Otherwise it’s like sharpening a pencil with three strokes of the knife all on the same slat of the hexagonal casing – useless.  

If you just pull three synonyms together and dump them in front of a noun or a verb like, “It was a beastly hot, scorching, suffocating, day,” you’re not telling me much beyond indicating your personal exuberance over how hot the day was.  Now if you said: “The day was hot, cruel, and still,” I’d be mildly intrigued. Good writers rarely waste a series of adjectives or adverbs by stacking up a pile of synonyms.

Take a stab at sharpening up these purposely-blunted series. (You’re the boss on this one, so imagine any case that might bring three unlikely modifiers together):

1) The creature that met me at the door of the spaceship was unfamiliar, creepy, and unsettling.

2) The argument raged on wildly, emotionally, and heatedly.

3) A grey, murky, unclear dawn awaited the travellers. 

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