words

Chandler doesn’t waste his words. Here, making verbs out of nouns, he describes the hallway:

I… went along a wide hall carpeted in green and paneled in ivory.

The writer tackles spatial descriptions without muddling the waters. Note how he makes his prepositions work for him:

French windows in the end wall opened on a stone porch and looked across the dusk at the foothills. Near the windows a closed door in the west wall and near the entrance door another door in the same wall. This last had a plush curtain drawn across on a thin brass rod below the lintel.

Chandler shows how, when depicting an often-seen gesture, the writer can cut the abstract picture into three concrete and distinct movements, and then place them in sequence. Active verbs are ever so useful in a task like this.

…he put his hand out palm up and cupped the fingers and rolled the thumb gently against the index and middle fingers.

That piece of verbal animation right there is many times more exciting than computer animation. A true craftsman sees clearly, cuts like a knife, and gets full mileage out of every word.