Your Adjectives Are Working Too Hard (And Somehow Doing Nothing)

A friendly intervention for the writer who just described their hero's eyes as "deep, soulful, piercing, and impossibly blue."

Let's talk about adjectives. Specifically, the way romance writers tend to use them the way a nervous host sets out snacks: just a few more, just in case, just to be safe.

The result? Description that works harder than it should and somehow does less than it could. Before you add one more smoldering, chiseled, or quietly devastating to your manuscript, let's have a little chat.

The Stacking Problem (Or: Why Three Adjectives Are Worse Than One)

Here is a completely real sentence that exists in the wild: "He had dark, intense, brooding, magnetic eyes."

Congratulations. You have described every hero on every cover of every romance novel published since 1987. Readers didn't picture anyone. They pictured a vague, handsome blur.

Here's the thing about stacked adjectives: they cancel each other out. When you give readers four descriptors at once, none of them land. The brain processes them as a category (dark and brooding guy) rather than a specific image. The more you pile on, the less the reader actually sees.

The fix is brutal in the best possible way: pick one. The most specific one. The one that does the most work. "He had calculating eyes" tells us more about this man than "dark, intense, brooding, and magnetic" ever could.

One precise adjective > four vague ones. Every time.

Sensory vs. Evaluative: The Adjective That Earns Its Place

Not all adjectives are created equal. There are two main types, and only one of them actually pulls its weight.

• Sensory adjectives describe something observable — what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. "The coffee was scalding." "His grip was iron-tight." These earn their place because they give the reader something concrete.

• Evaluative adjectives tell the reader how to feel about something instead of letting them feel it. "The coffee was wonderful." "His smile was beautiful." These are doing the reader's job for them, and readers, frankly, don't love that.

The test is simple: can I experience this through my senses, or am I being told what to think? If it's the latter, see if you can either cut it or replace it with something the reader can actually feel.

"The ballroom was beautiful" tells us nothing. "The ballroom smelled like hothouse flowers and old money" puts us there.

The Romance-Specific Trap: Hero Description Soup

Romance writers, I say this with love: we have a hero problem.

The moment a hero walks onto the page, many writers feel compelled to hand the reader a full inventory. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark-haired. Square jaw. Defined forearms (always the forearms…actually keep the forearms). The effect is less "swoon" and more "IKEA assembly instructions."

Here's the counterintuitive truth: the more physical detail you provide upfront, the less readers can project themselves into the story. A few well-chosen, unexpected details do more for attraction than a full physical catalog ever will.

Instead of listing every feature, ask, "What does this character's appearance tell us about who they are?" The scar. The way his suit doesn't quite fit like it used to. The laugh lines he'd never admit to. One detail with subtext beats six details with none.

So… How Are Your Adjectives Actually Doing?

If you're reading this and quietly rethinking a few manuscript choices: that's the point. Adjective awareness is one of those craft skills that changes how you write, how you revise, and how you read.

And if you'd like a professional set of eyes on how yours are holding up:

• A manuscript review will tell you if adjective overload (or other craft patterns) are showing up consistently in your work — think of it as a diagnostic before the deep work begins.

• Developmental editing and line editing are where we actually fix it — at the big-picture level (dev edit) and sentence by sentence (line edit). If adjective stacking is a pattern in your prose, these are the services that untangle it.

• Proofreading comes in at the final stage once the prose has been polished — because even a beautifully revised manuscript deserves a clean, error-free finish.

Not sure which one is right for you? Browse the blog for more craft tips, or head to the services page and let's figure it out together.

Your manuscript deserves description that earns its place. Let's make sure it does.