Adjectives

Adjectives are descriptive words. As applied to your character these describe the things they’re good at, the way they look and so on. You should try to be a bit more creative in your selection of adjectives rather than just describing a character as ‘strong’ or ‘tough’. A thesaurus is very useful for this as it can give you any number of synonyms of more mundane words. It’s said that English has more adjectives than any other language, so you shouldn’t have any trouble coming up with creative words.

Here’s some examples that all derive from the word ‘strong’ in one sense or another, just to show you how broad you can go!:

Able, able-bodied, active, acute, aggressive, athletic, big, brave, capable, clear, cogent, courageous, dedicated, deep, draconian, durable, eager, enduring, energetic, fervent, fervid, fierce, firm, firm, fixed, forceful, forcible, gutsy, hale, handful, hard as nails, hard-nosed, hardy, hearty, heavy, heavy-duty, in fine feather, independent, intelligent, intense, iron-willed, keen, mean, mighty, muscular, perceptive, plucky, potent, pushy, reinforced, resilient, resourceful, robust, rugged, sagacious, secure, self-assertive, severe, sharp, sinewy, solid, sound, stable, stalwart, stark, staunch, steadfast, steady, stout, strapping, strict, sturdy, substantial, take charge, tenacious, tough, unbending, uncompromising, unyielding, vehement, vigorous, violent, well-built, wicked or zealous.

You can make an individual adjective stronger by putting a ‘very’ in front of it. This makes it count twice(+2) whenever it applies. For example, Billy the Ogre might be ‘very strong’.

You can also make an individual adjective even stronger by putting a different adverb in front of it. If Billy works out for a couple of months, perhaps he can make himself ‘extremely strong’ which counts three(+3) times whenever it applies.

You can also take strings of similar adjectives and they’ll all count – when it’s appropriate. You might be, for example: ‘stout, strapping, extremely powerful and very enduring’.