Heroes Insider Weekly

Edit Yerself - Murder the Adverbs

 Moondragon says Edit Yerself

 Murder your Adverbs, by @AngelaStevens562

H: Oh hi, Moondragon what ya doin’ with that big old red pen?

M: Uh-huh (circle, scratch out, scratch out, change)

H: Is that my manuscript?

M: No it’s mine why?

H: Phew! Thank God, that is an awful lot of red pen. (picks up paper and glances through, looks puzzled.) What are you doing? Why are you crossing random words out?

M: I’m trimming the fat.

H: K?

M: Cutting the clutter, clearing out the dead wood, removing the useless, erasing the vague, amputating the flowery, separating the wheat from the chaff, ejecting the unnecessary, expelling the pretentious, ejecting the roundabout, shortening the…

H: what the fuck are you going on about Moondragon? Speak English!

M: When we write we clutter up our writing shoving every word we can think of in there. We over embellish, get carried away with the wordiness and use words that are frankly useless and don’t add to our story or make our story hard to read, difficult to wade through or boring.

H: But that is a lot of stuff you are taking out and it looks kind of random.

M: Nope, it is necessary. I’m hunting for very specific things.

H: Like what?

M: Well, lets take a look at this passage

         The boy, in the dinner line, fidgeted incessantly with his slightly greasy tray. A really lovely girl at the end of the line called over to him and shyly waved her hand. The boy was really embarrassed. Very slowly he raised his hand, really hoping no one around him noticed. The lovely girl totally misunderstood his gesture and looked really very happy that he had seen her. She had really, really liked him for seemingly ages but thought he probably hadn’t really noticed her because she was usually really quiet and the really popular girls were always catching his attention. Suddenly the boy realized his silly mistake. Oh no! It was too late. She was already moving quickly down the line towards him. This is the best day ever, thought the girl. Damn, this is the worst day ever. Thought the boy.

         He knew he was turning red. Every time he saw her he constantly blushed. It wasn’t entirely his fault. She was unbelievably nice to look at and she was tall and really thin...

H: Why have you highlighted all those words?

M: Because they are adverbs.

H: Adverbs? What do you have against adverbs?

M: Adverbs are not your friend. Adverbs make your writing meek and weak they are sadverbs!

H: Sadverbs?  Is that a real word?

M: Um, no. Did you not see what I did there- adverbs/ sad-verbs… Oh never mind. They wreck your writing and make you sound like a timid writer.