She Said Adverblessly

If there is any one thing that writing fiction has trained me to do, it would be to hunt and mercilessly destroy all unnecessary adverbs in a piece of writing. Like mercilessly, for instance. And after being trained to it, it's easy to catch those wily adverbs when they come up in writing, or even speaking.

What's an adverb? Generally, a word ending in -ly is an adverb. Generally would be an example. (*Wily, above, is not, because the -ly is an adjective ending and comes from the word WILE. If that doesn't make the different clear to you, think of a synonym for wily--sneaky, right? Not an adverb since it doesn't end in -ly. A synonym for generally? Basically. Both -ly words!) The reason editors and professional writers advise against the use of adverbs is because they so often function as fillers and qualifiers in sentences that could just as well do with better verb choices instead. Obviously, adverbs have specific uses in English; the theory behind avoiding their use is that a writer can more effectively express themselves by just finding better verbs that don't need to be qualified with adverbs. Quite often, adverbs are considered a crutch for lazy writers--they easily come to the mind, while picking perfect verbs takes practice and a certain knack. And considerable editing.

So when you come across an adverb like this (in your own writing or someone else's):


The castle rose ominously over the village.

Can you find a way to phrase that with just a verb? One word that embodies the meaning of rose ominously? How about this:

The castle loomed over the village.


Besides being more to the point conceptually, this is also just so much quicker and easier to read! Since overblown prose isn't a preferred style for informed readers (i.e., editors and professional writers) these days, a certain economy of words is required. If you can get your point across with greater force and fewer words, why wouldn't you? Being able to do so is a sign of a writer who cares about not just story, but prose and presentation.

Now we've established why verb choice is an important skill to have! So how would you improve these sentences?


He laughed evilly.
Cackled, maybe?

She walked slowly.
So many options, all dependent upon what you're really trying to say. Do you mean strolled, ambled, wandered, minced? Walked slowly is actually a pretty nonspecific action and doesn't say much about the individual doing the walking.

Said quietly.
Or whispered, mumbled, murmured.

The big bad wolf followed stealthily.
The big bad wolf prowled or stalked.

The sword cut his arm deeply.
The sword gashed/gouged/plunged into his arm.

The spacebeast was intimidatingly large.
The spacebeast was massive/gigantic/enormous/huge.


Some of these examples are generalized and could appear in any piece of narrative writing you pick up; others are more specific and therefore require more specific verb choices. And some of these adverbs are worse than others in the way they fail to roll off the tongue. Evilly? Or how about intimidatingly, an adverb born from a gerund? Not only is it unwieldy to say, but takes a bit of mental unraveling, too.

If the wording stays simple, direct, and specific, your reader has more opportunity to focus on the story you're telling, rather than tripping over intimidatingly inconvenient words. Of course there are times when you might have to use adverbs to articulate a point--no one's saying that won't happen. But judicious use is key to keeping your prose orderly, neat, and clear.

This is just one of the many working "rules" of writing that I have heard in my pursuit of creating saleable fiction. If you can master the use of adverbs, you're one step closer to excellent writing!

*All adverbs in this section are in bold to give you an idea of how necessary they are/aren't, and how they function in writing. I'm sure you could eliminate a few more if you wanted!



And now for something I haven't had the chance to do for a while--the return of the What I'm Reading section! Yay! And what's the answer?


Lots of books about the artist James Ensor (I will be writing a paper about him this term). A handful of books and other materials about the Spanish Baroque period (again, for research). And I've reordered The Weird, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer since I only managed to read about 500 of its 1111 pages last time I nabbed it from the library (yep, I'm one of those people). Now I'm back into it, reading through weird fiction of the 1920s, and definitely finding a certain formula at work in this era. Is it bad? In some of them. Tedious or repetitive might be a better term. But getting familiar with this formula has also made me realize how contemporary fiction is very often just as formulaic--we've just adjusted our expectations or rules of what the formula must entail. Every fiction genre and style has its own formulae and expectations. Of course some stories following such a formula are better than others, but what really grabs me is those stories that break free of the formula while still typifying the genre. Although, currently, I'm still waiting to be grabbed ...

Sorting the Books from the Chaff

I just had to return a book to the library when I was only halfway finished with it.

Well, it was over 1000 pages (1111, to be exact). Double-columned pages, with small print, which I suspect means more like 1500 real pages. Or so I felt while reading. It was a great book, but cumbersome for reading on mass transit--or anywhere, really.

I will plug that book because I see no reason not to: The Weird, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. If you like weird fiction you will find a lot of things to like there--I did! Stories by authors as varied as H P Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, M R James (no relation), Fritz Leiber (my favorite!), Leonora Carrington (a Surrealist painter!), Stephen King, Kelly Link, China Mieville, and just about any other author you can think of when the phrase "the Weird" is mentioned. Roughly, the book includes one story per year since 1900.

I got halfway through the book ... by skipping a bit. Yes, I will admit to skipping through some of the best known authors in the history of speculative fiction--I just won't say which ones.

I used to read everything I picked up from one cover to the other. That included acknowledgements and copyright pages (even though they were so boring! Yuck!). I had a sense of obligation to the task of reading--if it was to be undertaken, it must be completed as well. Don't you do a disservice to a book by not reading it all the way through? Even if it bores you to death? Just like a person, you have to give a book the benefit of the doubt and finish before declaring it a huge stinky waste of time and paper!

And then I realized there is way too much stuff in the world to read. Just because a book is a classic, or popular, or awesome, I don't have to finish it if it doesn't strike me. Maybe the first book I ever refused to read all the way was Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables when I was 14. Because I hated it, and his writing. I tried to read him again a few years ago and, no, I knew what I was doing the first time I put him down in disgust. Still don't like him.

Reading, I have come to decide, should be a matter of taste and not a duty or obligation. I wish I could read every classic back to The Aeneid and feel enriched by all of them--but there are just too many and I probably won't like 90% of them! This is why I consciously refused to be an English Major! Because, when enforced, reading is arduous! Majoring in it would probably ruin my enjoyment of reading.

As a writer, you are taught certain techniques for catching the attention of readers. Which means I am on the lookout for a catchy first sentence, a quick plunge into action, an obvious and interesting protagonist, when I start reading. If I don't find what I'm looking for, I skip. Well, I give it a couple pages first. Maybe 30 or so, if it's a novel.

So I should know better than to let others entice me to read something I don't care about and yet ... and yet in The Weird, I did. The editors promised a certain story to be groundbreaking, fascinating, and a complete renewal of the weird tale. Or something like that. So I read the whole 40-some pages (more like 50 real pages!!) even though I didn't understand or like it from page 1. Needless to say, I was irritated and frustrated by the ending. What can I say, that story just wasn't made for me, so I shouldn't have read it. It's not a matter of not giving someone a chance, but of simply being incompatible. That story and me were not a good fit.

And so I've come full circle, from reading it all no matter how drivelly, to reading for proper mechanics like an editor. Which isn't so bad, I suppose. Since there's so much out there to read, you really do have to sift and sort to find what you like. And there's no reason to read what you don't want to!

(Unless you're an English Major.)