Murder Your Modifiers

Mark Twain said, "If you catch an adjective, kill it." Stephen King said, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs."

So why do these guys detest modifiers?

Because they flag places where wordiness reigns. New writers usually have to cut their stories by ten to fifty percent before editors take them seriously. A surefire symptom of overwriting is using an abundance of modifiers. Along those lines, I read this today in a dust-covered issue of The Writer (my favorite writing mag):

"If the copy reads: 'When the "yellow, round orb of the sun stealthily and smoothly creeps into the azure blue early morning sky," one may wonder why the sun didn't simply rise; it would have saved a good deal of trouble for all concerned,' says Max Keele, editor of Fiction Inferno. If you feel the need to modify every verb with an adverb (or two), or every noun with an adjective, chances are you're not picking the right words to begin with. Look for stronger nouns and verbs that can stand alone."

For example... She dragged her feet = she trudged. He stepped loudly = he stomped. Instead of saying someone owned a really huge dog, a writer can say he owned a dog the size of Secretariat. Readers will get the idea. Surely. Totally. Completely.