Today, I’m going to tear apart the word “suddenly”, because I’m a word killer like that.
This article is broken down into two parts. One, how it’s overused in general, and then specific ways it’s overused.
“What, Rainy?”
Just hang in there. It’ll be clear with. . .
Examples!
Let’s go.
"Melissa sat at her diningroom table, laptop in front of her. She had been staring at the word processing program for at least an hour. Her writing peers on Twitter and Facebook would probably assume it was blank. It was not, unfortunately.
She had resurrected an old manuscript from the proverbial dresser drawer. Or, in this case, an old backup CD. She had been certain it was a masterpiece, a work of art Shakespere himself was nodding with an approval from his cloud.
Shakespeare did make it to. . .right?
She shook her head. This had all been before she learned about point-of-views, character arcs, and other “minor” aspects of building a story. To say it was a mess would be an understatement, not to mention boring.
Wasn’t she supposed to innately describe everything with prose and metaphors?
An explosion suddenly erupted from the other room."
Ahem.
Of course it was suddenly. Read that scene again, but without “suddenly”:
"Melissa sat at her diningroom table, laptop in front of her. She had been staring at the word processing program for at least an hour. Her writing peers on Twitter and Facebook would probably assume it was blank. It was not, unfortunately.
She had resurrected an old manuscript from the proverbial dresser drawer. Or, in this case, an old backup CD. She had been certain it was a masterpiece, a work of art Shakespere himself was nodding with an approval from his cloud.
Shakespeare did make it to. . .right?
She shook her head. This had all been before she learned about point-of-views, character arcs, and other “minor” aspects of building a story. To say it was a mess would be an understatement, not to mention boring.
Wasn’t she supposed to innately describe everything with prose and metaphors?
An explosion erupted from the other room."
The story shows the “suddenly”. In this case, she’s musing about Shakespeare and the afterlife and her lack of writerly skills, then boom! Literally.
The reader “feels” the suddenness of it, if you will.
There are three main ways to achieve this effect, all of which you can use at once.
First, the interrupt. She isn’t thinking about bomber jets flying overhead. She’s thinking about her mess of a manuscript. The boom interjects her thoughts. This means it interjects the reader’s thoughts too. Therefore, it is sudden.
Second, the paragraph break. The shift to another paragraph is a shift in thought.
Third, the quick sentence. In this case, it’s only seven words long. Short. Impact.
Sudden.
So now that you understand why “suddenly” isn’t such a necessary word, I’m going to show how it’s often times even further abused.
Ready?
Suddenly, an explosion erupted from the other room.
First, of course it’s not needed because of the reasons we just discussed. Second, starting a sentence with an adverb is a “trick” that should be used sparingly.
Very. Sparingly.
I’ll be honest. If I’m reading through a sample chapter and the author has overused the word “suddenly” in this manner, I probably won’t finish it. I’d be more likely to continue if they had used it where it properly belongs in the sentence, next to the word it’s modifying.
“But readers aren’t worried about grammar so much, Rainy!”
That’s not entirely true, for starters. But more importantly, readers are tuned into the flow and feel of a story, and this is jarring. In fact, that’s the entire point of beginning a sentence with an adverb–to add emphasis. So you’re basically emphasizing the word over and over and over and over. . .
It’s almost as bad as overused italics.
