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Suddenly...

So, the word "suddenly" is generally frowned upon by the writing community. We've talked about it on Mythic Scribes, I've talked about it in creative writing classes, I've read articles about it, I've received critiques about it.

Yet I can't stop using it.

I've started combing out a bunch of instances of it--granted, there are many that are completely extraneous and I just wrote out of sheer habit (it's pretty common in speech, so it's easy to slip into in writing). Sometimes, though....nothing else seems to fit. "Abruptly" is just about the same thing, though. It's when a total change of events takes place. That "suddenly" just really feel right.

For example,

I sat in the living room, crunching on graham crackers as I wrote a post on Mythic Scribes. Suddenly, my cat started attacking the recliner for no apparent reason.
[It's a true story!]

vs.

I sat in the living room, crunching on graham crackers as I wrote a post on Mythic Scribes. My cat started attacking the recliner for no apparent reason.

The second one seems flat. How would you transition between sentence A and sentence B without using "suddenly," "unexpectedly," "out of nowhere" or something similar? Any ideas?
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Use it.

That's my two cents. An overused adverb is still a meaningful part of the English language... and it's overused for a reason.
 
An overused adverb is still a meaningful part of the English language... and it's overused for a reason.

While I agree with you, I am curious about the fact that a lot of writings suggest that the use of "suddenly" is a lazy route to take. I'm not sure whether I agree that using "suddenly" is lazy, but would there be a better way to imply the "out of the blue" sentiment? Perhaps,

I was eating graham crackers when my cat decided that the time was ripe to spring a full frontal assault on the recliner, which as far as I could tell, had done nothing to provoke such aggressive behavior.

Besides being a little funnier, does the "suddenness" of the cat's behavior come through as strongly when using the word "suddenly?"
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
I understand the reasoning behind not using it, but I think there are instances when nothing else fits. So... yeah, I'm undecided. It IS a hard word not to use, when something happens...uh..SUDDENLY, but still, I get the reason it looks weak.
 
I say use it, not too much, but that's like anything. I think it should be avoided when there's a better option, but if you want to use it, bang it in.

However, and this is going to make you hate me, but I think the second sentence, without suddenly in, is better. I knew what was coming, but it just seemed so deadpan and hilarious, It made me chuckle, whereas the first one did seem a bit flat. But maybe that's because I was expecting it too.....hmm..... *Eyes narrowed suspiciously.*
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
I would imagine the use of the word "suddenly" strongly implies a narrator's voice and to that end, I try to cut it out. If it were in deep POV, I would imagine it would go something like this:

Typing on Mythic Scribes at the end of a hectic day might have been just the thing to ease my weary mind. A still room, the scent of dinner's garlic meatballs still in the air, and a vicious "Meow" pulling me from my solace. As if a mad beast, rabid and voracious, Snowball set upon my recliner with abandon, biting and clawing. What had gotten into him? I pulled my laptop and undefended flesh free of the ill-fated chair and fled the room, not looking back.

I mean, there are ways to avoid "sudden;y" was my point, but you have to pick and choose your moments, I'm guessing. If we were working on another type of scene, maybe a chase, maybe it would work differently?:

The lead horse reared, whinnying as its rider turned sharp. His sudden direction change, coupled with my clumsier steed, and I rode right by his escape onto an overgrown forest path.

Could be:

The lead horse reared, whinnying as its rider turned sharp. I couldn't adjust in time and rode right by on my clumsier steed. I wheeled about, not daring to let him escape me, down the narrow, overgrown forest path.

I don't know. I don't think the word "sudden" or "suddenly" is a strict no-no, but it should be used correctly. Things happen suddenly. Unexpected things. To simply say, "He suddenly turned his mount left" may imply I thought he was going to go straight, but it's also "expected" that he's fleeing and bound to make sudden moves. It might take a few more words to show it was sudden, but I think the reason it's frowned on, is that it's simply a weaker way to say what happened and it takes a reader out of the action as much as any narrated sentence does. Yeah, use sparingly is my understanding. The word itself sort of skips past the tension of something happening unexpectedly, and therefore, it appears as a sort of negative on the tension-meter.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I think it has more to do with the cadence of a sentence. If you want the sentence itself to convey suddenness, then use of the word "suddenly" slows the sentence down. It is more "sudden" to eliminate that word and get on to the rest of the sentence. However, you aren't always going to that kind of sudden, sharp sentence, and in fact it doesn't always make sense to. If you're not, then use of the word "suddenly" isn't harming you, and it can serve to clarify.

The question isn't whether or not to avoid it all the time. It's a matter of whether the specific use you are putting it to is working for you or against you.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I have a bad tendency to rely on using "suddenly" as well. I don't think that the word itself is necessarily a bad one to use. But I don't like overusing any word. It makes me wonder why I rely on it so much. What's missing from my vocabulary?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I agree with Caged Maiden here. I would rewrite the two sentences, adding more narrative to the cat. By doing so, the reader sees what the cat is up to while the human sits oblivious.

That said, I agree with others who say sometimes it's the right word to use. Use it. See if it holds up during editing and re-reads. Then see if it holds up through beta reads. Then again, the same can be said for all the words you use!
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
I think it has more to do with the cadence of a sentence. If you want the sentence itself to convey suddenness, then use of the word "suddenly" slows the sentence down. It is more "sudden" to eliminate that word and get on to the rest of the sentence. However, you aren't always going to that kind of sudden, sharp sentence, and in fact it doesn't always make sense to. If you're not, then use of the word "suddenly" isn't harming you, and it can serve to clarify.

The question isn't whether or not to avoid it all the time. It's a matter of whether the specific use you are putting it to is working for you or against you.

Yes. Exactly.

A way to tell if it's working for or against is to ask yourself where the "suddenness" of the moment is placed. Is the emphasis on the sudden action itself, or is the emphasis on the precursor, in this case the word "suddenly"?

In my opinion, when the emphasis falls on the word "suddenly" (or similar word like "abruptly") you're leaching away the urgency of the action. You're shifting the emphasis, and that makes it read less sudden.

There are always going to be reasons for the use of words like this. Caged Maiden illustrated a few above, and as Steerpike said, it could also be used to establish a certain cadence. More often than not though, I'd recommend avoiding the sentence structure that leads with these words.
 
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T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
I agree with Caged Maiden here. I would rewrite the two sentences, adding more narrative to the cat. By doing so, the reader sees what the cat is up to while the human sits oblivious.
Of course, if you were in a deep POV, this wouldn't work. In that case, you could start with the pain of claws ripping through socks and the POVs reaction to an unexpected play session.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
What's missing from my vocabulary?

It may not even be vocabulary. It could also be related to how you approach pacing (though I guess it could be argued this is part of a writer's vocabulary). One way of giving the impression of suddenity is to abruptly change from long, slow, sentences to short, fast, ones. The danger with that would be that the reader may get confused about what's going on. If the shift is too big they may think there's a sentence or two missing.
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
I agree with it not being vocabulary. I've read manuscripts for people who use almost the same sentence structure for a whole book. "She did this to the adverby thing in her hand and looked north toward the adjectivey place."

I think adverbs fit better in certain sentence structures, same as words like "was" and "had". I was talking with a friend about this yesterday. He said he wanted to avoid the word "was' in a description but wasn't sure how to get around it. I advised him to change sentence structure from:

"The house was a dingy building with rickety shutters and a slouching roof."

To:

"Nestled between two shops, the old inn appeared to lean on them for stability. It's roof sagged like an old nag's back and shutters clung to the front despite loose hinges."

Or:

"One more storm and the ramshackle inn might crumble to the ground. Perhaps it might have already, if the neighboring buildings hadn't held it up."


My point is, that it isn't vocabulary that's lacking in most cases, it's sentence structure. New writers tend to write only a couple variations on sentences, while more experienced writers have more structures in their arsenal. It isn't a deficiency, it's how you train your brain to form interesting, poignant sentences.

The worst offenders for me as a reader are things like:

"Suddenly aware of how cold my hands were..."

OR

"Suddenly aware how quiet the room got..." Oh man, I need to trim that one out of at least every first draft. Yeah...

You become aware of things as you become aware of things. there's no "suddenly" about it. Otherwise, I could say, "I suddenly became aware my kids were hungry, when they demanded lunch." I mean... it IS sudden when my baby birds start tweeting and I realize it's noon, but really, the word wouldn't belong there. I would just show myself doing something (writing, probably) and the kids making demands that interrupt what I'm doing.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I think it has more to do with the cadence of a sentence. If you want the sentence itself to convey suddenness, then use of the word "suddenly" slows the sentence down. It is more "sudden" to eliminate that word and get on to the rest of the sentence. However, you aren't always going to that kind of sudden, sharp sentence, and in fact it doesn't always make sense to. If you're not, then use of the word "suddenly" isn't harming you, and it can serve to clarify.

The question isn't whether or not to avoid it all the time. It's a matter of whether the specific use you are putting it to is working for you or against you.
That's^ a far more eloquent way of putting the thoughts I didn't type.

My gut instinct was don't automatically eliminate a word from the language because people hate adverbs. But yeah, I felt you were better off with the word than without in the specific case (a first-person past tense recounting of an event), and taht substituting with another adverb would be even more awkward than no adverb.

Also, suddenly is not a word I would use multiple times in one piece, unless of course it's a children's book (like one called "Suddenly" which I loved when reading to children was my job in Hong Kong).
 
To be honest, I can't think of a situation where "suddenly" would be the best word to use. I can think of situations where "suddenly" would be an okay word to use, but not ones where it would be the best.

For instance, if you want to focus on reader surprise, use either a paragraph split, or a paragraph split followed by a "then." In this case, the latter works better:

I sat in the living room, crunching on graham crackers as I wrote a post on Mythic Scribes.

Then my cat started attacking the recliner for no apparent reason.

Or if you want to create a more whimsical feel, use something whimsical, like "quite unexpectedly" or "to my surprise." But it seems like the most appropriate approach would be to just let the information run its course without trying to force a response from the reader:

I was sitting in the living room, crunching on graham crackers as I wrote a post on Mythic Scribes, when my cat started attacking the recliner for no apparent reason.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
"The house was a dingy building with rickety shutters and a slouching roof."

To:

"Nestled between two shops, the old inn appeared to lean on them for stability. It's roof sagged like an old nag's back and shutters clung to the front despite loose hinges."

Or:

"One more storm and the ramshackle inn might crumble to the ground. Perhaps it might have already, if the neighboring buildings hadn't held it up."

This may be why I use "suddenly". It's a word that conveys a clear meaning very quickly and efficiently. As a reader, and I guess as a writer, I tend to prefer clear, to-the-point description. Of the three sentences above, the first one is the one I prefer. The others feel unnecessarily long and rambling to me.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
"Suddenly, it wasn't so fun anymore."

Six word story containing the word suddenly (and a variation of was). I'd say there are ways to use the word to great effect, just usually not when it comes to presenting some kind of sudden action or surprising/startling the reader - which is a bit ironic.
 
"Suddenly, it wasn't so fun anymore."

Six word story containing the word suddenly (and a variation of was). I'd say there are ways to use the word to great effect, just usually not when it comes to presenting some kind of sudden action or surprising/startling the reader - which is a bit ironic.

But in context, that might work better as "This wasn't fun anymore." Or "This had stopped being fun." Or "I couldn't keep treating this like a game." Like I said, there's almost always something that improves on "suddenly."

Come to think of it, here's a bit from Roger Ebert's review of Night of the Living Dead:

"The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying."
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
But in context, that might work better as "This wasn't fun anymore." Or "This had stopped being fun." Or "I couldn't keep treating this like a game." Like I said, there's almost always something that improves on "suddenly."

It may have to do with our attitude to the words, or how we'r reading them or something like that, but I think that the usage of the word "suddenly" in my version implies that the change from fun to unfun was something unexpected. Also, and again because I may be charging the word differently I feel that the change from fun to unfun was fairly quick to the narrator - the change may have happened gradually but the narrator doesn't realize until it's gone too far.

I'm pretty sure I could go on arguing about it, but in the bigger scheme of things it's not that important. The important thing is that in the scenario I envisioned, "suddenly" was an excellent word for what I had in mind. Trying to fit it all into a six-word story may not have been the best idea (but I'm somewhat obsessed with those at the moment).
Perhaps a better version would be: "Suddenly, the 'game' wasn't fun anymore."

Then again, we may just have different relationships to the word.
 
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