13 August 2007

Judgment Words

Since we had some good comments on the last post, I thought I'd elaborate a little more on what I called 'judgment words'. Judgment words are words that contain within them value judgments, e.g. pretty, handsome. They can work effectively for first-person pov, or very close third-person pov. In such cases, they primarily give us information about the character uttering the judgment, not about the item/person being described. For example, if your character says 'Auschwitz-Birkenau was beautiful.' that says something entirely different from 'Austria was beautiful.'

Feel free to send Electric Spec stories with judgment words.

1 comment:

Bernita said...

An excellent distinction.
Such words, used deliberately in pov, are not just bland adjectives.