Adverbs As Public Enemy #1
There is a general feeling in the romance writing world that adverbs, adjectives and dialog tags are evil nasty critters that must be removed from our writing under penalty of being forever unpublished. The inclusion of one adverb too many is held up as a sure sign of mediocre writing. Honestly, who out there hasn’t been guilty of this type of overreaching analysis?
Alex Keegan, British crime novelist, points out in this article that we may be going a bit overboard in our rush to eliminate these items from our writing repertoire. My favorite section is this:
Why would an author want to write a story without an adjective, and without an adverb? Next there will be exercises where writers write sentences without letters. Sentences without "a", for example. Verbless sentences. And there’ll be sentences beginning improperly, or sentences ending in propositions, constructions we can think of.
Is this a call for a return to purple prose? I sure as hell hope not. It looks more like a suggestion that we all strike a reasonable balance. You decide.
July 9th, 2005 at 10:19 am
I actually know of an author who never uses any form of “was” or “to be” in her books. I’m thinking, yeah, let’s write so stiffly that it sounds nothing like we talk!
July 9th, 2005 at 10:32 am
Of all the “rules” this adverb one is the one that kills me most. Especially where it concerns speech tags since my people are always saying things in one “-ly” form or another.
I do take the time to do an adverb check and replace many with stronger verbs when I can, but the idea of eliminating them all sounds like something cynister cooked up by the writing-Natzis!
Everything in moderation. That’s my motto.
July 9th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
I have a few words I know I overuse and those I specifically run a check on when I’m proofing and editing. Other than that, I agree that we need to strike a balance; besides, it’s adjectives and adverbs that give the words their distinctive flavor.
December 23rd, 2005 at 10:04 pm
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