Fitting way to close the article.

A very fair point. When I was a secondary (US: high) school teacher I had endless problems with kids who came from primary (US: elementary) schools where they’d been taught they should never begin a sentence with “and” or “but”.

When I told them that they could – as long as they didn’t overuse the effect to the point where it became annoying – they’d just tell me that ‘Mrs Smith said we should never…’

Students shouldn’t be told NOT to use ‘-ly’ adverbs or NOT to begin a sentence with a conjunction (or end one with a preposition), but the point needs to be made to them that these words and effects can cause problems if used carelessly.

The key thing to teach anyone about writing is that it’s vital to THINK about what they put down on paper. Writing is a process of making choices – and they shouldn’t be made blindly.

“Why Adverbs Suck” has the same problem as “beware adverbs”, though it requires less explanation.

If even the people who recognize that adverbs have their uses in moderation are phrasing their advice in this way… well, like I said. Each successive iteration just takes it further and in the end we’ve got people going to a ridiculous extreme trying to avoid “bad writing” because they had a rule beaten into them instead of learning how to apply good judgment.

But, just because I like pointing it out, when I’m writing I’m thinking like a film director. There are a million ways to act in this scene, but the way you act determines how your character is viewed. If you write:

“Kill her,” he said tenderly – you get a killer who perhaps thinks it’s for her own good, or perhaps (depending on the details) the act of killing is like love-making in his mind – he’s twisted.

“Kill her,” he said coldly – removes all emotion from his voice, he’s killing a thing and not a person.

“Kill her,” he snarled, and he’s animalistic, brutal.

etc. etc.

You can show all those things in behaviour as well (a caress, a flat expression, a furious flurry of activity involving a claw hammer…) but if you, as the director of the scene, want the character’s tone of voice to be heard, you accomplished that with “tenderly, coldly.”

If you don’t want to convey tone, you just leave it out. It’s that simple, what nuances do you think you need? Sometimes, I really like tones of voice because it’s part of the movie I see in my head when I’m writing.

@Lexy: Eli is right: although theatre is a visual medium, characterisation works in the same way as it does in a novel. We judge characters primarily by what they say and do. I’m not an anti-adverb extremist, but if I found myself writing “‘kill her,’ he said, coldly’” I’d ask myself why I needed the ‘coldly’, and why I can’t trust the reader to paint their own picture in their own imagination.

“‘Kill him,’ he said, tenderly” is different. The adverb could work there because it’s telling us something we don’t expect. On the other hand, if mishandled it could look like an affectation.

You’re right that readers don’t complain about an excess of adverbiage. They complain about dullness and lack of readability, though – which are often the result of sloppy writing in which unnecessary adverbs are overused.

By the way, in the interests of precision, we need to remember that we’re talking about ‘-ly’ adverbs here, not adverbs in general.

Gavin wrote: “I think Bill, Alexandra and I have just said kind of the same thing — that there are appropriate times and places to use any word, and the key rule is to find the best way to say something, without unnecessary words.”

100% dead right.

I also agree with Lexy that new writers shouldn’t be taught to avoid ‘-ly’ adverbs. But it’s legitimate to teach them that when writing is clumsy or verbose ‘-ly’ adverbs are often among the major culprits. therefore, whenever they feel the need to use one they should think carefully about it.

I can’t believe what a geek I am, you know.

Or forget the slush pile and give them Steinbeck and Nora Roberts

Oh, Erin, I can just imagine that! =)

@Gavin: I’ve to agree with you readers are quite forgiving in the presence of an engrossing story. My sister, who has NOT penned a story other than the necessary high school essays, wrings her hands and says “It’s okay” or “It sucked” after reading a book.

And that’s all she says.

I kinda like that simplicity. Imagine reviews like that, written by the average joe.

But I’m a reader. And I can tell you precisely when adverbs are being over-used, and when they’re useful. I can tell the difference between good writing and slush. I loved books so much that I was an English major and then I tried to write my own book.

(as a sidenote, I can’t analyze my own text as a reader, because to me it conveys the picture I have in my head — I haven’t yet developed the ability to discern if other readers will see the same picture, so I’m sure that I have unnecessary words in some places, and lack words in other places. That’s why I say I’m still a reader, and not a writer)

I think you’re not giving readers enough credit there, and I also think that readers are forgiving, if the story and characters are worth it. That’s why Grisham has a large audience, and why Danielle Steele has best-sellers (I think she tells far more than she shows, and yet she still gets published).

Grisham and Steele will never (I think) win Pulitzers or Nobel prizes in literature. But they can convey to their readers a story that appeals. And there are readers that know full well that they’re making mistakes, and enjoy it anyway. I don’t have any fondness for Ms. Steele, but sometimes I like Grisham. However, I can also read Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Goulding, Salinger and Tolkien, and describe the differences in their styles and the effectiveness of each.

And that’s from being a lifelong reader, not a writer.

Or forget the slush pile and give them Steinbeck and Nora Roberts, and they’re likely to say that Roberts is better… and not be able to explain why the writers, editors, and critics fell dead of apoplexy. They’ll be able to tell you plenty of reasons why the book they picked was better.

They’ll just be “wrong” about it.

Sure, I have an appreciation for literature (though I’d be quick to point out that much of what we now think of as literature was the pulp fiction of its day… Shakespeare, Dickens, and Dumas all wrote for the masses), but I find the whole “the readers don’t know better” idea to be distasteful on its face and venomous at its core.

This is exactly why new writers shouldn’t be taught to beware adverbs: because the lesson they learn is “avoid adverbs”, and they end up going on to advise other writers to add whole sentences to their text in the paradoxical interest of avoiding “unnecessary words.”

Consider: in real life, you can hear tenderness in somebody’s voice. It comes through even over a telephone. It is therefore not jarring or intrusive or disrputive for an actual person (as in, not another writer) to see “he said tenderly” in a text… it does not take them out of the scene, and it does not weaken the moment. They are accustomed to being able to tell if a speaker is speaking tenderly, angrily, etc.

Lacking a precise lexicon for conveying auditory elements in the way that wine afficianados describe each and every note of a wine’s taste, “he said tenderly” is the best way to bring across the fact that the speaker’s voice sounds tender. The BEST, no modifier necessary. You want to cut unnecessary words? Any other word you use is by definition unnecessary, when you’ve got one single word that does the job.

Now, if the scene happens to call for the speaker to be tracing the other character’s face, or gazing wistfully, or whatever, then it may become unnecessary to the point of redundancy to quantify the voice at all… but if you’re adding business to the scene for no other reason than to bring that across, that’s the very definition of “unnecessary words.”

Yes, it can be a fun challenge to convey something like that… but you shouldn’t be writing every scene as a “challenge.” That’s the mark of a writer writing to impress other writers.

I don’t expect to really sway anybody’s opinion here, so I’m going to endeavor to leave this as my say on the subject.

That there is a place for adverbs in prose is a given. It’s the overuse of them that concerns me. You’ve given good examples of places where we can’t do without adverbs, and you’re right. We can’t.

Everywhere else, on the other hand …

Lexy’s point about only writers/critics/editor complain about adverbs is partially correct. The reader can’t complain about the adverb because he doesn’t know about it! Give him Steinbeck and a slush pile work and he’ll know which is better, but he can’t say why, exactly!

On the other hand, perfect prose is by no means a replacement for story. Grisham gets by on less than stellar writing (because his story rocks!) and Kiran Desai, while lyrical, is horrible for me to read.

If you can write a scene that conveys a tender tone of voice that is as immediate and accessible as using the adverb, I’ll believe you. Because anything else is wasting sentences when you could have used a word, and paragraphs when you could have used a sentence. That’s why Tolkien spends a page on a tree, and three paragraphs on entire battles.

In a movie, the battle takes twenty minutes and the tree was three seconds — I think good writers use the words they need to convey what’s important. If all you want is the tender tone, and not Purple Prose, “tenderly” works.

If it can be done better, everyone reading this will have learned something. I’d also like to see the “Kill him,” he said coldly.

Adverbs by nature are hanger-ons – they modify adjectives and verbs (and sometimes even other adverbs).

And hanger-ons have a higher risk of falling into the ‘unnecessary word’ category. That’s how they differ from any other part of speech. By forcing us to be wary of them we’re less likely to overpepper our prose with them, in places where their absence won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

It certainly doesn’t mean we’ll start writing purple prose. That requires an overuse of imagery and pompous flair, one that I don’t have quite yet. (And the stories I write don’t really require sex) ;P

PS: on the note of the tender voice … wouldn’t it be a nice challenge to convey the tender note of voice without telling the reader? By creating layered feelings and veiled motivations we are reflecting real life, and by showing the reader these emotions, without telling them, we win.

But, as an author trying to create a solid scene, if you want to convey the tone of voice being used, you can’t do that without saying “her voice was tender,” or its adverb parallel, “she said tenderly.” There is no action taking place to show, you have to tell the reader how it was said.

Because “Kill him,” he said coldly
and “Kill him,” he said tenderly
and “Kill him,” he said
and “Kill him,” he whispered
and “Kill him,” he shouted, all create a different scene and a different character.

I think Alexandra hits on a key thing — only writers complain about adverbs. I think that they can be overused, and then they become a shortcut and bad writing, but I also think anything can be overused, and anything can become bad writing.

The key is to gather all the tools you can and use them carefully to convey the imagery, mood, action and characterization that you want in your writing. But part of having the right tools is being flexible and finding uses for words. There are always exceptions to rules.

“He said coldly,” and “his voice was cold” are synonymous, the only differences are three words versus four, and the first example has an adverb. Readers aren’t going to throw up their hands at the use of an adverb and declare the text unreadable.

And sometimes the shorter, cleaner sentence conveys meaning with immediacy. Showing every nuance can sometimes slow down the pace of a story. Look at Tolkien — if you take out extensive paragraphs describing houses and trees and weather, and compressed the novel to just the action, the Lord of the Rings wouldn’t be three books. Tolkien showed everything, but took years to get anywhere.

I agree that it can be overdone, but I also believe there’s a time and a place where they can be used appropriately.

If it’s completely at odds with the context and the reader has no idea why the tenderness is there in that line, then yes, it’s like taking a blunt instrument to the audience’s head.

On the other hand, if you set up the scene as being tender, then it may still necessary to say that piece of dialogue in particular is tender because of the dissonance between the audience expectation for how “Kill him,” should sound and what you’re trying to convey.

It’s all about context, to the point where the only rule that really works is any rule which presents itself as covering all bases is worthless. “Showing” all the time is Purple Prose territory… for the sake of avoiding one “Writerism”, you’re rushing headlong into another… just like how at the lower strata of the writing circuit, some people are being told not to overuse “said” to the point that every speech is tagged with growled, cooed, barked, whispered, etc… and then when you hit the pro levels, some people have been given such a horror of those words that they attempt to excise them completely, leaving only “said” and the occasional volume-specific form.

Neither approach is as sensible as “using what’s most appropriate.” Either approach is simpler and easier to teach, though, and therein lies the rub.

Here’s another key point: ‘”Kill him,” he said, looking with wistfullness into the victim’s eyes and blah blah blah whatever else you want to put there’ doesn’t say his voice sounds tender. It conveys a lot of other stuff going on which may or may not imply a tender tone of voice, but if you want to show the readers that his voice is full of tenderness, you do it the same way you “show” the readers any detail: you tell them that it is so.

Seriously, if adverbs are an unnecessary shortcut that leads to lazy writing what’s your take on adjectives, then?

Or on using a more precise word in the first place?

Why should we get rid of adverbs but keep a word as precisely shaded as “stab?” Instead, should we not say that Hamlet “attacks” Polonius, then spend upwards of half a sentence describing in what way Hamlet attacks him, thereby showing the audience that the old fool was stabbed instead of simply bluntly telling them? I mean, how does precise word differ from using a general word plus a modifier? How is “stab” not as lazy a shortcut as using any adverb?

The bottom line is that I have yet to see any list of tips that actually shows how adverbs differ from any other part of speech, except for the extent to which they’re reviled by writers’ circles which would rather work with rules to memorize instead of nuance and context.

“Kill him,” he said tenderly has all the makings of a brick in the reader’s windscreen – it’s blunt, it’s hard and … shouldn’t the prose before and after already reveal his tenderness towards the said victim? It’s taking a shortcut, it is.

It’s a writer’s rule, ingrained in the subculture of writers and editors.

It may be so, but it’s for a good reason. Adverbs too often allow us to make lousy shortcuts in our writing, and getting rid of them forces us to let our characters express themselves in different ways. Showing, as Bill says, trumps telling.

All in all, I think adverbs have been given a bad rap through the vicious cycle of “mentor/workshop” type writing. Somebody who genuinely overuses them has the habit beaten out of him or her, but learns the wrong lesson (or oversimplifies it) and then transmits the habit to the next generation, and so on…

I mean, to be serious: has anybody ever heard anyone who wasn’t a (possibly only “aspiring”) writer, editor, or literary critic level this complaint against a text? It’s a writer’s rule, ingrained in the subculture of writers and editors. It’s not something that readers by and large care about, unless it gets to Tom Swift levels of ridiculousness.

I look at it as finding the best tool for the job. If it’s for some reason important to convey the mood (either because you’re subverting the obvious one–”Kill him,” he said tenderly… or because it’s important and you want to draw a double set of lines underneath it), you can either use a more specific verb (“cooed”, “growled”, etc…. another thing that some writers have had beaten out of them past the point of reason) or you can use a generic word with a modifier.

Describing the actions in more detail does also work, but on the whole it should be treated as another level of emphasis above this. You pull the “his eyes, cold and distant” stunt too often and you’ve drifted into a whole other territory: Purple Prose.

The ‘coldly’ version is better. Better still would be:

“Kill her,” he said.

Why do we need to be told he’s using a cold voice at all? What does the adverb add to the narrative and our view of the character? If the character is rounded and believable, readers will fill in the information for themselves. If the adverb is there to tell us something about the character, that information would be better conveyed through his or her words or actions.

It’s a bit like stage directions: pace George Bernard Shaw, when we read a great play we don’t need to be told many details about the characters, because we can pick information up from what they say and do. Shakespeare doesn’t tell us that Hamlet stabs Polonius ‘impulsively’. Actors, readers and audiences already know that Hamlet is capable of impulsive behaviour.

“I love you,” she said tenderly.
“I love you,” she said with a tender voice.
“I love you,” she said, her voice full of tenderness.
“I love you,” her voice was tender as she spoke.

The same thing applies when he spoke coldly. If you’re not talking about his “cold and distant eyes,” but about a harsh tone of voice, for instance.

“Kill her,” he said coldly
“Kill her,” he said, his voice cold

What’s the difference, really? Either way I know what it means, and the first sentence is shorter.