For the Glory of the Story

Nasty Little Adverbs

Nasty Little Adverbs

One of the quickest ways to brighten up your story is to go hunting for adverbs. It’s easy, it’s pretty straightforward, and though it may sting a little, removing these nasty little boogers will do for your story what a shower and shave could do for a homeless guy.

Adverbs are convenient, they end in “-ly” and, (to me anyway), are for wimps. Adverbs can especially stink up your prose if they’re used in dialogue attribution.

“I’m leaving you Rhonda, and I’m not coming back.” Jim said, as he grabbed his coat from the closet.

This sentence will always sound better than:

“I’m leaving you Rhonda, and I’m not coming back.” Jim said seethingly as he reached for his coat.

(Microsoft Word doesn’t even recognize ‘seethingly’ as a word, yet I’m certain that I’ve seen it used in similar circumstances!) It irks me to read dialogue like this because we already have a pretty good idea what Jim’s character is feeling.

Another example:

Jim rounded on Rhonda and pulled out his knife. “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to the dishwasher.”

Well, we don’t really need any help in imagining the tone of Jim’s voice, do we? We can maybe even imagine the look on the guy’s face. We don’t need it to read:

Jim rounded on Rhonda and pulled out his knife. “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to the dishwasher.” He said menacingly.

We already get the picture! The adverb ‘menacingly’ is redundant.

I suppose that’s my biggest gripe about adverbs: They’re redundant.
They state the obvious… what’s already been explained.
Redundantly.

And I also suppose that there are circumstances which would warrant the use of an adverb (even in dialogue attribution), but I believe that they should be used sparingly… only when they are needed to clarify an action to the reader.

I believe that all extraneous words (and adverbs are the quickest to crop up), should be weeded out… that the finished product should be sleek, smooth, and have a subconscious rhythm to it. I find redundancy in my work all the time, and spend most of my editing ink crossing through statements or words that are just simply not needed.

I highly recommend Stephen King’s book, ON WRITING. It is companion to my dictionary and thesaurus, and sits next to my monitor within arm’s reach. Here’s what Mr. King, master of the macabre has to say about adverbs:

“Adverbs… seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is the voice of little boys wearing shoepolish mustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. 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.”


J.K. Rowling gets away with it, though. Big time. (And who am I to criticize the richest lady in Great Britain, right?) Every time I read a new Harry Potter story, I see all those redundant little adverbs redundantly at work, redundantly re-stating the obvious… and I laugh because Stephen King, (who I once saw on a list of the richest entertainer’s in America) is so fanatically against them. I know that he’s right, though, because… well, it just makes sense to me. I’ve read all of the Harry Potter stories – can’t put them down, in fact – but when I come across another adverb, I still say to myself, “You could have edited that one out, Miss Rowling!” and continue to read FEVERISHLY.

There’s something to be said for this phenomenon that I call, “When Bad Writer’s Happen to Good Readers”.

(Check out my next blog entry entitled, "When Bad Writers Happen to Good Readers".)