Missing Modifiers: Day 11

Trying new things (11,352 / 1,000,000)

Tin crept down the hall, keeping carefully to the shadows. 45, 46 ,47, he counted in his head. He passed sconces, doorways, and hallways as he slunk along. 78, 79, 80. He stopped, pressed his back to the wall and listened intently for a few heartbeats, before dropping to one knee in front of the door beside him. An eye squeezed shut, the other peered intently into the door’s lock through the semidarkness of the hall. Another few heartbeats passed before he bobbed his head in a nod and reached underneath the strip of cloth which wrapped his forearm. He extracted a set of tools and set to work. A few jabs here, a few twists there, and the lock uttered a click. He allowed himself a smile as he replaced his tools beneath his wrappings.

Tin cracked the door, peering into the darkness. Sensing no occupants in the room, he darted inside. In a wall behind the portrait of a woman, his thoughts continued. Eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room, they eventually pinpointed the target. As he approached, he took a moment to appreciate the accuracy of the intel he received prior to this operation. He lifted the portrait off its hook, and rested it on the carpet beside him. Embedded in the wall behind the painting, sat a safe. It wasn’t the size nor the sturdiness of the safe which caught his attention, rather the openness of it. Shit, Tin thought to himself. “Looking for something?”, a voice floated over to him from a corner of the room. Tin whipped around, hand darting down to his boot, eyes searching. He made out the form of a woman, partially obscured by darkness in a corner of the room. “Shit,” he repeated, this time aloud.

She lounged against the wall, her clothing obscuring her form in the blackness of the shadows. Based on her posture, she was seemingly unconcerned about Tin and the dagger he now wielded in front of him. “I asked you,” she continued after a few moments, “if you’re looking for something”. She stepped forwards, the shadows from the corner of the room dropped away from her. Tin could now see a sack slung over her shoulder, bulging from its contents. “Damn it Leah, you told me I had this one!” Tin complained, slamming his knife back into its sheath in his boot. She smirked, “Come on Tiny, don’t be mad. I even gave you a head start.” She approached him, continuing, “but seriously, it took you long enough to get in here. Is there anything you can do, that I can’t do better?”. She finished her sentence by poking her finger into his chest. Before he could muster a retort, a voice, not one of theirs, rang through the hallway, “Check every room, someone is in here!”.

Their eyes met, realization dawning on both of them. Tin’s surprise faded before Leah’s, and he grabbed her hand, pulling her towards the wall with a window. “Improvise,” he whispered with a grin, finally answering her question. Stealth no longer an option, he snatched the sack from her grasp and hurled it through the window. He climbed into the frame after it and looked back at her, smirk still on his lips. “Try to keep up,” he teased, and leapt after the treasure.

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The above passage was my attempt at writing a short story without utilizing any adjectives - did you notice? Welcome back to those of you who scrolled up to corroborate, I respect that. I specify that it was an attempt, because I probably unintentionally snuck a few in there without noticing. Also, I’m not sure if something like the “cloth” part of “strip of cloth” is considered an adjective, but I think not (correct me if I’m wrong). Either way, we can at least say with certainty that it is a story mostly devoid of adjectives, if not entirely. I wanted to try this exercise to see what it would do to the length of my writing. As I’ve mentioned before, conciseness is not one of my weaknesses, but long-windedness is.

One of the common pitfalls that new writers tend to fall into is writing “flabby” stories. That is, writing something in a thousand words, that could’ve been written in five hundred. Oftentimes, it’s not simply a case of longer vs. shorter. Usually, the longer version is full of unnecessary descriptors, or lengthy and irrelevant tangents. Such writing can not only add to the length of the story, making it more of a drag to get through, but it can also widen the gap between critical story elements; making the story seem jilted and disconnected. In the words of a great philosopher of our time: “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”.

It was an interesting challenge! I’m definitely going to keep doing stuff like this, interspersed between my random blog-style posts. If any of you, my readers, think of an interesting writing challenge, please let me know, and I’ll give it a try. How does the saying go, “The brain is a muscle”? I’m interested in challenging my brain in different ways, to see how it shapes the way I think and write! Oh, and if you found any adjectives in my story, feel free to call me out in the comments, I can only self-correct with so much accuracy.

Hmm, it appears that I’ve found myself in another quandary. I’m about a hundred words short of a thousand. On one hand, my posts have been consistently over a thousand words, so I feel that I’ve built up a little buffer. On the other hand, it would be a shame to write below a thousand words for the first time. Of course, I’m fooling no one in my attempt at eking out a few more words by simply commenting on the fact that I need to eke out a few more words. Anyways, thank you for reading, have a great weekend, and as always….

Totally nailed it,
Michael