Do you ever feel intimidated by writing advice, and pushed in a direction you don’t really want to go? Time to rebel.
The subject of today’s literary disobedience is the Adverb. I’d like to reclaim this despised part of speech, on behalf of sane writers everywhere.
The internet is awash with Adverb Hate. And the worst part of it is the way it confuses some writers, who end up thinking they are never allowed to use an adverb anywhere ever again.
It even affected me. As an editor, I’m comfortable with my own opinions. But as a writer, especially with my first novel, I found myself descending into dithering paranoia all too often…
One day I noticed that I was hunting for ways to express an adverb as a phrase, simply so I could avoid the telltale -ly appearing anywhere on my pages, and drawing unwanted attention from the Adverb Police!
And that’s the day I knew it had to stop.
So, is there ever a time that an adverb is a GOOD thing??
What is an adverb?
My computer dictionary defines “adverb” as “a word or phrase that modifies the meaning of an adjective, verb or other adverb, expressing manner, time, place or degree.”
They often end in -ly. But not all adverbs end in -ly. And not all words that end in -ly are adverbs.
I find the easiest way to remember it is to think of something you add to a verb to describe it. Obviously, that doesn’t cover all the uses. But it’s a good place to start.
The troublemaker
He’s hardly the only one to say negative things about adverbs, but horror writer Stephen King’s quote is the one that is most often repeated.
“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the roof tops.” ~ Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
For more on what he actually said, check out this article at Brain Pickings that places it in context, The Adverb Is Not Your Friend: Stephen King on Simplicity of Style. There are definitely some good tips there.
But do we have to throw out the adverb with the bathwater?
Thoughts from around the web
Quick and Dirty Tips has an article called How to Eliminate Adverbs. The title probably shows that writer’s viewpoint. 😉
Janice Hardy, writing on KM Weiland’s blog, advises us to see adverbs as “helpful red flags during revisions, pointing out great opportunities to flesh out what our character is doing and identify places we might want to develop further.” She seems to allow that there might be a case where an adverb can remain, but it’s an isolated case.
I like this little Ted-Ed video by Nadia Kalman on how to write dialogue. She suggests we ask ourselves the question: Do I really need that adverb? but also provides examples of where an adverb can be handy to describe dialogue when the words don’t match the actions.
Lily Rothman writes a light-hearted but provocative article in The Atlantic entitled Why I Am Proudly, Strongly, and Happily in Favor of Adverbs.
“Without ‘merrily,’ we would row, row, row a boat down a stream and think it a nightmare,” she says. “Adverbs don’t just make a sentence memorable, they change its meaning. Sure, there are many times when a more precise verb can narrow the gap in understanding—but some verbs can’t be fine-tuned any further. A sigh is just a sigh, but anyone who has ever been in love knows how important it is to distinguish between when she sighs happily and when she sighs otherwise.”
In a guest post on the aptly-titled Writers’ Digest blog, There Are No Rules (hear, hear), Jim Adam writes in defence of the much-maligned adverb. He says, “Sure, adverbs can be overused. But if one extreme is bad, the opposite extreme is just as bad. Balance in all things. Extremism comes in many forms, and it flows just as easily from a word processor as from an Uzi submachine gun.” Ooh, them’s fighting words.
Novelist Anne R. Allen treads a much calmer path, but in an excellent blog post about Why You Should Ignore Most of the Advice from your Critique Group…but They Can Help You Anyway warns us about “Enforcers”. “These people never met a writing rule they didn’t love. They want to enforce each one with a ‘zero tolerance’ policy … They tell you the word ‘was’ is taboo … They insist on no prologues, EVER. They tell you a book can’t (or must) be written in the first person or present tense. They have a search-and-destroy policy concerning adverbs.”
So, do bestselling novelists use adverbs?
One day, feeling cranky about yet another blog post I’d read that declared in a very superior tone that adverbs had gone the way of the dinosaurs, I picked up Place of Hiding by crime queen Elizabeth George, which happened to be on the table. I opened it at random and counted 4 adverbs on one page.
This pleasing result gave me the enthusiasm to grab a bunch of other books off my shelf, and open them at random. Here’s what I found.
- Lauren Oliver, Delirium, young adult dystopian – 1 adverb/one page.
- PD James, Private Patient, crime – 2 adverbs/one page.
- Maeve Binchy, This Year It Will be Different, women’s fiction – 3 adverbs/one page
- Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer, contemporary – 4 adverbs/one page.
- Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, thriller – 2 adverbs/one page.
- Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, historical fiction – 2 adverbs/one page.
- Garrison Keillor, Pontoon, humour – 1 adverb/one page.
- Ruth Rendell, A New Lease of Death, crime – 2 adverbs/one page.
Since I opened each book at random, maybe I found the only adverbs in each whole book, and there are none anywhere else.
But I doubt it.
It’s definitely true that I was a biased researcher looking for results that confirmed what I wanted to believe. Nevertheless, the writers who wrote these books, and the publishers who edited them, and the readers who bought and read them by the truckload, all must have missed the No Adverbs memo.
Successful and relaxed writers seem to use adverbs wherever they help the process of telling the story, without descending into existential angst over it.
And if you say to me, “Well you’re not in the league of PD James et al,” I’ll say, “Yes, and I never WILL be if I allow a bunch of arbitrary rules to suck all the heart and soul out of my writer’s voice, and end up overworking sentences in an attempt to get rid of every -ly ending on the page.”
The way forward
It’s my considered opinion that the “eliminate all adverbs absolutely everywhere” rule should be resisted.
And in fact, I quite like some adverbs.
I’m even cheeky enough to create a meme about it. But all mischief aside, let’s look past the fanaticism and ask ourselves: Why did someone make up this rule in the first place? There must have been a problem they were trying to solve, albeit by using a hammer to squash a gnat.
Surely the answer is that we’re prone to using too many adverbs. We cram them in there hoping to enhance and enrich the meaning, and end up obscuring and weakening it instead. There’s no doubt that having an adverb (or two or three) in every sentence gets clumsy and amateurish.
I know I use too many adverbs (although hopefully not in every sentence!), and in fact use too many words altogether. I know this because my lovely beta readers bring it to my attention. (If you’re not sure what a beta reader is, check out What is a beta reader and why do I need one? It’s got links to all my beta reader articles.)
And so the Rule alerts us to something NOT to despise and annihilate, but something to watch for.
- I can hunt out the ones that are simply unnecessary. I never need to write, “She shouted loudly.” What’s the opposite? “She shouted quietly”??? The adverb is redundant, because a shout is loud. (However, “She shouted quietly” could be interesting, depending on the writer’s voice being used.)
- I can look for the ones that reveal something important about the action taking place, but maybe could be said in a stronger way.
- And I can look for the ones that, really, are fine just the way they are. And leave them alone and get on with the rest of the book.
What do you think? Are you an adverb hater? A closet adverb admirer? Simply confused?
Oh I leapt on this article when I saw it. Thank you so much for writing this. Im afraid I’m a real adverb fan, not only because they change the meaning, but also because dialogue without them would be totally unnatural. We use them all the time when we speak, so let’s please keep using them in writing. I agree that a strong verb doesn’t need an adverb, and we should use the right verbs as much as possible, but your example of row, row, row without merrily is just so true. I have never stopped using them and will continue to do so. I’m just glad there are others in our camp…and yes, I’ve read Stephen King’s On Writing book. I loved the book but disagreed with quite a lot of what he said….actually 🙂
So glad to have encouraged you, Val. Please join us in the Resistance! So much great insight from Stephen King, always worth listening to and considering, but in the end he is *A* king, not *THE* king. 😄
Hooray for this defence of adverbs! They have their place, used judiciously. I too began ignoring the ‘Rule’ when I found myself constructing convoluted sentences to avoid using an adverb that would have done the job much more elegantly.
What the ‘Rule’ has done for me is made me more aware of when I’m using adverbs and questioning myself as to whether I could use a better word or phrasing instead of a lazy adverb.
Cheers,
Lesley
Thanks Lesley. I agree, that’s a great use for the “rule” – replacing lazy adverbs.
Yay! I roared quietly, (I was reading in bed next to my sleeping husband) What a marvellously splendid post freeing us from the tyranny of overbearingly harsh rules.
Yay! Glad to have you as a member of the Resistance, Donita. 😀
That was a great post! Thank you
You’re welcome. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Shared this on my Facebook page! “Moderation is key,” says the English professor.
Thanks Marian. My sentiments exactly. 🙂
Finally a support group I can join. Made me laugh. Thanks Belinda.
Always important not to take ourselves too seriously, Elldee. 😉
The word I use in my speaking over and over is “so” and I tend to use it in writing, but I go back and cut, cut, cut. My pet peeve with adverbs is when used to tag verbs in dialogue. I know a wonderful writer, performer who adds an adverb to every “he said.” I don’t know if it bothers others who hear him read, but it bangs me on the head so hard I can’t ignore it. “I thought quietly, I said snidely, he screamed loudly, she quietly nodded.”
When I teach classes I make a point of discussing adverbs and limiting them because beginning writers overuse that part of speech. I hope my message to limit the adverb will help some of them as they grow in their writing.
We all have verbal tics, Glenda. One of mine is “a bit”. I often find it’s easiest just to write it the way it comes out of my head, then go on a search-and-destroy mission in the edit. 😉
I agree about the overuse of adverbs. It weakens the imagery, and can get annoying too. But I keep running into beginning writers online who think adverbs are forbidden, because they read it in a blog post or a book somewhere. Like all parts of speech, adverbs have their place, and need to be used wisely.
Adverbs are part of the English language. people do actually use them in everyday speech. If they fit then they fit; if they work then they work. Use them, and why not. People do run quickly; they do turn slowly; they do stop suddenly. So where’s the problem. If people don’t like my novels because they hate adverbs then I’m sorry for them. I’m not going to change though.
John, I think there’ll be some readers who don’t like it, and some who do. Each author needs to find their own readership. 🙂
It depends on where the adverb is. An adverb as part of a dialogue tag? No, because as you have said, they are often describing actions (she laughed uproariously), or redundant (she shouted loudly). And when every dialogue tag is she-anywordexceptsaid-adverb, it gets repetitive.
I’m a lot more relaxed about adverbs in dialogue. I personally use a lot of adverbs when speaking, so it seems a natural part of dialogue.
Thanks Iola… and I can see a rare occasion where an adverb might be justified in a dialogue tag, but as you say, mostly they sound a bit awful. 😉 In the dialogue, they can be natural. Like most things, it’s all in the way you use them. A blanket ban doesn’t make sense.
I used to think that adverbs were the enemy….now I think they’re just like fashion – in one day and out the next.
Store them in a bag in the top cupboard, and bring them out next season. 😉
Everything in moderation, I gleefully say. How’s that for living dangerously – a cliche, an adverb and a split infinitive all in one sentence!
Great post. I really enjoyed it. 🙂
Ooh, you naughty thing, Cally. I was going to use the Star Trek “to boldly go where no man has gone before” as one of my examples, but I didn’t want to get sidetracked into split infinitives and let’s not even get started on the man/human thing. 😉
Adverbs are a legitimate part of speech. As an editor and a writer, I use them, albeit with discretion. Typically (yes, that’s an adverb), I have found the problem stems from a writer’s excessive usage in place of stronger verbs. Often, a powerful verb eliminates the need for an adverb.
Very true, Linda. And the adverb makes a good flag for prompting us to think about whether we can strengthen that sentence/paragraph.
As I new writer … well I think I qualify as new … since June 2010 and a million draft words later I have copied pages from best selling authors and checked all the advice about writing I have received they break and guess what the key to the best selling authors is story, story, story … That is what makes your book readable so have as many adverbs, adjectives and even a few of those pesky grammar and spelling mistakes … my most recent in a contribution to my book Ywnwab! of short stories … past instead passed … how do you as an editor pick that up? … yes only my eagle eyed 83 year old English teacher bless her! I recall my teacher at school said swearing demonstrated a shortage of vocabulary …
Thanks Barbara for another interesting post.
Thanks Alexander, and you are so right. It’s the STORY that matters in the end.
Great post! To be honest, I’ve never counted my adverbs. If they feel right, they stay. Shared on Twitter, Pinterest and FB. Thanks!
Good for you, Maria! One day when I’m in Greece, we’ll meet for coffee and adverbs. 🙂
Oh, for Heaven’s sake! It’s a part of speech. Use it where appropriate.
That’s all that writing professionally is: learning to use language to convey meaning.
It is necessary, sometimes, to use every tool in the box. I like AutoCrit because it merely points the adverbs out, counts them, and gives you a feeling for whether you are approximately at the adverb count for fiction.
The problem is that excessive use of adverbs often reflects untidy thinking and writing. We all develop conversational nuances that are unnecessary in the written world. My first drafts have lots of auxiliary verbs and verb constructs that, in the attempt to achieve a precision of expression, take too many words. Once the thought is out of my head, and where I can see it, these constructs can often be simplified. The editor in my head clamps down on them and makes them flow better.
I loved Anne R. Allen’s example: realizing how many times she had used ‘just.’ I do that – then remove the excess.
Adverbs are part of my style – I would never dream of eliminating them. But, like all other parts of speech, they get the 2nd degree before being allowed to remain in finished work.
Good post – it was the morning laugh.
Thanks Alicia, glad it gave you a laugh. 😉
One of my verbal tics is “a bit”, as in “a bit of a silly thing to do” etc. It was actually an evaluator at my public speaking club who pointed it out to me, and I went home that night and checked for “a bit” in my MS… guess what, my characters said it all the time. ALL the characters! haha 😉 If it had been just one, it might have been a distinctive of their speech pattern…
I like your comment: “like all other parts of speech, [adverbs] get the 2nd degree before being allowed to remain in finished work.” Well said. 😉