Writing Knowledge: Basics to Advance

Language: Part two, Adverbs

I’m shortly going to discuss the importance of adverbs and adjectives, since they often plague our writing… here goes, lets hope the info will get stuck in both your mind and mine and better our writing for better!!!!!  

Adverbs

An adverb can be added to a verb to modify its meaning. Usually, an adverb tells you when, where, how, in what manner or to what extent an action is performed.

Many adverbs end in ...ly — particularly those that are used to express how an action is performed. Although many adverbs end ly, lots do, e.g., fast, never, well, very, most, least, more, less, now, far, and there.

Here is what MR. Stephen King himself has to say on the topic of adverbs:

The Adverb Is Not Your Friend: Stephen King on Simplicity of Style

THE ADVERB IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.

[Adverbs … are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. … With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.

Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It’s by no means a terrible sentence (at least it’s got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you’ll get no argument from me … but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?

Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s — GASP!! — too late.

I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution. I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions . . . and not even then, if you can avoid it. Just to make sure we all know what we’re talking about, examine these three sentences:

‘Put it down!’ she shouted.

‘Give it back,’ he pleaded, ‘it’s mine.’

 ‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said.

In these sentences, shouted, pleaded, and said are verbs of dialogue attribution. Now look at these dubious revisions:

‘Put it down! she shouted menacingly.

‘Give it back,’ he pleaded abjectly, ‘it’s mine.’

 ‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said contemptuously.

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately.]

Another article I found eye opening was an article someone send to me to read: here what it had to say:

(I’ve taken the liberty to highlight the important parts)

[The people I signal out for over-use of adverbs often have two, three, even six or seven of them in a 300 word exercise. I've even seen two or three in one paragraph. You won't see the pros doing that. Even bad editors don't let that pass in most cases.

At this point you might be thinking I have an axe to grind concerning this issue. Perhaps, but maybe not. I read an excellent article in Writer's Digest back in '96 on the overuse of "ly" adverbs and adjectives. I don't have the article anymore, but it stood me on end. I checked over my own work and saw it was sprinkled with the little devils. I made up my mind not to allow them in my work anymore.

The article suggested that upon completion of a first draft, one should use the "Edit - Find" feature of your word processors. Then type in "ly," hit "find," and rewrite any sentence that contains an "ly" ending word in it. I found this to be excellent advice. It made my writing stronger, tighter, more powerful, and easier to read.]

Go on, minimize what your reading now and head over to your writing, try it, you’ll be shocked by just how badly we rely on those ‘ly’ words to carry us through our writing. . . sort of how I used ‘badly’ just a second ago, instead of using my brain to come up with a more creative way of putting the sentence!

Now for a brief list of very, very useless adverbs: the ones often used carelessly as intensifiers. You really should cut these out: “extremely,” “definitely,” “truly,” “very,” and “really.” You can totally use them in dialogue though, especially if your characters are surfers. Otherwise, avoid them.

Simple? Yes, I often highlight my adverbs and then determine whether I should cut them or use my brain to and think of something better; it works, believe me and if you don’t, try it and see what the results are :)