Quote Originally Posted by kwatts59
Quote Originally Posted by challenger
First of all, you need a comma in there (and it would be two if "young lady" weren't like a noun of its own). And besides the stylistic aspect of having so many adjectives, it doesn't work. This "rickety" old man ran around the kitchen screaming for thirty minutes??
What about

"An ornery old man was standing ..."
or maybe
"A cantankerous old man was standing ..."
Better than "rickety," but I think it's too simplistic. You don't want to "give away" your characters in the first sentence. And the old man might not even be ornery or cantankerous-we've only read a paragraph so far