Thoughts on Adverbs

[AliceBaine]

I'm going to apologize in advance for this post. I feel like adverbs are the most overused topics of discussion in writing forums, and I know I'm the umpteenth person to bring them up, but I like you guys and want to know your thoughts.

When I first started seriously writing, everything I read and every critique I got was essentially. "Adverbs are evil. Never use an -ly word." I even talked to a friend who works as an editor for Harper Collins, and she also confirmed that adverbs are the likeliest way of getting a manuscript rejected.

Of course there's nuance to it. I'm sure every book has at least one -ly word. But what brought this to my attention was that I recently hired an editor to work on my book. She's been fantastic so far. 99% of her suggestions have been great. She has tons of experience, has edited a ton of books, has great reviews, etc. The only thing that struck me as odd was her recommendations on adverbs.

One suggestion I have for you to work on is using more adverbs (often words ending in “ly”) and straightforward verbs. Instead of “gave a sigh” write: he “sighed”; instead of “spoke in an angry tone” write: “said angrily.”
A precisely perfect adverb can do a lot of work without a big fuss.
Instead of: “he said in a flaccid, airy tone” try: “He said feebly.”

I don't want to dismiss her entirely, because she's far more experienced than me, and her other suggestions have helped my book a lot. This is the only one I had to pause on, mostly because it contradicts everything I've read or been told about -ly words. What do you guys think? Is she off the mark on adverbs?

 

[nck]

This just seems to be one of those things that a lot of writers and editors have a lot of really strong feelings about one way or the other, and the average reader doesn't care about at all.

EDIT: Actually, that's maybe too glib. It's not that writers and editors are wrong to care about it, and it's also probably not true to say that readers don't care -- but where writers and editors think in terms of "does this have too many/enough adverbs", readers think in terms of "does this read awkwardly/quickly/too descriptive/not descriptive enough".

 

[Devor]

There's nothing wrong with adverbs - despite what people will tell you - if you use them correctly. And one of the places to use them is to keep the dialogue tag short, which you might want for micro-pacing reasons. It looks like that's what your editor is trying to say.

If you having those kinds of pacing issues, though, adverbs shouldn't be your only answer. "He spoke in an angry tone" could just be "He snapped," for example. But I'm more concerned the advice is just a quick or lazy way to cover up weak spots. I would suggest trying other things before turning to adverbs. "Anger cracked in his voice," for example.

If you want to use adverbs, though, there's nothing wrong with that. Just remember to mix up your sentence structure. A bunch of -ly words near each other can start to stand out.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Ummm, this could be a long answer. And in part it depends on your target audience. MG and YA -ly adverbs make perfect sense. Pulp fiction? Meh, okay. 50 Shades of Crap Writing? Bury your readers in -ly, and they won't care, heh heh. (155 -ly adverbs per 10k words for anyone keeping score)

So first! I am going to refer you to Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve, a book that does some fascinating statistical analysis of various writers. For everyone's amusement, here are a few stats:

Steven King = 105 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words
Hemingway = 80/10k words
Rowling = 140/10k words
ME! L James Rice = ~20/10k words, and a lot of those are in dialogue... dialogue is a different animal.

It is also interesting to note that critically acclaimed novels by writers trend fewer -ly adverbs per 10k words than their other novels.

Adverbs in dialogue tags? Never outside of MG & YA, IMO.

I'm going to rip on your editor for a second, a little in jest... There is no such thing as a precisely perfect adverb because the adverb precisely is redundant. Perfect is perfect. Necessary, or even effective, -ly adverbs are few and far between.

Some of what your editor is saying is spot on, it's the solution that is flawed. "He spoke in an angry tone" is weak sauce, as is "he spoke angrily". They both need work, the two advantages to the latter is word count and simplicity of tone.

Find the tension in your description and dialogue, and you'll improve your writing overall by no longer needing either of those weak sauces.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yeah, I almost pulled out the adverbs are lazy, and so is your editor, LMAO. But then thought, nah, I won't go there.

But I'm more concerned the advice is just a quick or lazy way to cover up weak spots.

 

[pmmg]

I am not sure when was the last time we spoke about adverbs....and its not at the top of my list for which topics seem to repeat....but, my view is there is good and bad in everything, and adverbs have their place.

I am going to agree with your editor, I think.

One reason to avoid adverbs may be their alliteration aspect. If the 'ly' sound comes up a lot, it may draw more attention to it, but....I think the main reason to avoid adverbs is they are trying to state something that should be superfluous. They are usually a mark that the writer is not trusting the reader to 'get it' and trying to use the word to say what the rest of the text should be conveying.

So when you write, 'spoke in an angry' tone, you are doing just that, only you are avoiding the 'ly; part of it. Same sin, different veil. If you are going to do it anyway, may as well use the 'ly' word.

"Hey, don't kick my dog!"

"Hey, don't kick my dog," Bob yelled.

"Hey, dont kick my dog," Bob yelled in an angry tone.

"Hey, dont kick my dog," Bob yelled angrily.

Four ways to write the same thing. When is it understood Bob was angry? Did saying 'in an angry tone' make any difference that 'angrily' would not? Was either of them needed?

I would consider that their may be a narrative voice in play that tends for the longer winded method, and if that's true, your editor may be conflicting with your stories voice, but I could not know. I bet you could skip example 3 and 4.

 

[Ned Marcus]

ME! L James Rice = ~20/10k words, and a lot of those are in dialogue... dialogue is a different animal.

How do you know how many you have? Is there some way of checking (without counting them all)?

 

[Ned Marcus]

I avoid adverbs, but used sparingly, they're good.

 

[Insolent Lad]

As with most things, adverbs are best used in moderation. The voice/POV plays a part, I think. I would find myself using fewer ly-adverbs in first person (or close third, for that matter), as I would be describing my main character's personal impressions, telling how things looked or seemed to them. Adverbs can distance one a bit, becoming the author's take on a situation rather than the characters'.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Hemingway app and Prowriting Aid offer some pretty good estimated numbers, and then I extrapolate from my writing.

Counting my -ly's is easy because there are so few. Search "ly" and see if it's an adverb. In 3-4k words I often have zero.

This is not a contrived thing. I don't count adverbs except out of curiosity these days. When I stumbled onto these analytical tools, and I checked my adverb count, I was already lower than Hemingway. In fact, my general adverb use is pretty damned low as well, at least as far as I can tell from the analytics, which could be flawed.

I started out with adverb killing by using them as red flags for where the prose could be improved, and from there, adverbs just don't hit the page very often.

EDIT: Nabukov's Favorite Color is Mauve used the National Language Toolkit. I assume most of the other analytical tools use this or something similar as their base.

How do you know how many you have? Is there some way of checking (without counting them all)?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

There was a great quote from a writer sometime back when she was asked about her use of adverbs. This will be a paraphrase but hits the gist, since I can't find the quote. This pretty much describes me 4-5 years ago, while now I don't use them either way. Most of the time they don't even come to my head.

When I'm on a roll, in the groove with writing, I just don't use them. It's when I'm struggling that the adverbs come out.

So she didn't really come out and say use only a few, or they're bad, but implied the flaw in their excessive use.

Of course, using lots of adverbs does not deny one success, but I'd wager if Rowling wrote with fewer adverbs, she would've been published a lot faster, LMAO.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I get this notion, but I'd almost state it backward. I would be more forgiving of a first-person narrative using adverbs, the same as with dialogue because that's how most people speak.

For me, though, the adverb tends to be a symptom more than the disease.

As with most things, adverbs are best used in moderation. The voice/POV plays a part, I think. I would find myself using fewer ly-adverbs in first person (or close third, for that matter), as I would be describing my main character's personal impressions, telling how things looked or seemed to them. Adverbs can distance one a bit, becoming the author's take on a situation rather than the characters'.

 

[Mad Swede]

I would just point out that adverbs are both language and context specific. What is considered wrong for something written in English may be acceptable or even expected in a language like Swedish.

 

[Finchbearer]

why would it be expected in Swedish more than English? Just curious, does it sound better or make more sense grammatically?

 

[Mad Swede]

It makes more sense grammatically.

The reason some people say you should avoid using adverbs and sometimes adjectives is that they are passive and using them a lot increases the risk that you as the author will tend to tell rather than show. They can also weaken nouns and verbs in sentences, and make your text a bit flat.

That written, I was always taught that adverbs should be used appropriately, not that they should be avoided. There are situations where using an adverb adds to the quality of the text and so should be used. That quality might be clarity, it might be flow, it might be emotional impact or it might be something else. Consider, for example, the opening line of Hart Crane's poem Cape Hatteras:

"Breathe deep, mine eyes, the frosty saga of eternal suns"

Yes, that could have been written differently. But it would have lost much of it's quality and impact.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

They drop the -ly to disguise the adverb, aka a flat adverb, which is all fine and dandy. Deeply is one of the many accepted words that can have the -ly truncated, in particular when used with breathe.

"Breathe deeply" would not sound as good.

Again, none of this is about adverbs in general, it's about -ly adverbs.

While someone did write an entire novel without an adverb as an exercise, as I recall, in general, nobody is saying not to use them at all, heh heh.

 

[pmmg]

They drop the -ly to disguise the adverb, aka a flat adverb, which is all fine and dandy. Deeply is one of the many accepted words that can have the -ly truncated, in particular when used with breathe.

"Breathe deeply" would not sound as good.

Again, none of this is about adverbs in general, it's about -ly adverbs.

While someone did write an entire novel without an adverb as an exercise, as I recall, in general, nobody is saying not to use them at all, heh heh.

Exactly

 

[FifthView]

I think the main reason to avoid adverbs is they are trying to state something that should be superfluous. They are usually a mark that the writer is not trusting the reader to 'get it' and trying to use the word to say what the rest of the text should be conveying.

I think the last time I spent any effort writing about adverbs on this site, I settled on the idea that adverbs are a not-so-sneaky way of telling. Y'know, versus showing.

As with telling v. showing in general, context plays a role. There are reasons to tell and reasons to show, places where either is the better route to take. I suppose this applies to the use of adverbs as well.

For me personally, a significant subset of telling always seems to place distance between me and whatever is happening in the story. I'm being told about things, not experiencing them. There's a speaker, a narrator, stepping between me and the action. I feel this way about adverbs like angrily. But—and this may be an important consideration—sometimes a strong, present narrator is entirely the point. Heh.

Quick Edit: Sometimes, distance is entirely the point. What does creating distance between reader and subject matter do? I think examples exist of wanting the reader to have an overhead view, so that what is viewed is something foreign, or separate from the reader. (And so I wonder if the Stephen King data Demesnedenoir mentioned might relate to this.)

 

[Guy]

I've always thought the advice to never use a standard part of speech to be rather absurd. I see adverbs much the same way I see exclamation points - they shouldn't be all over the place, but there are times when that's what's called for.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Steven King = 105 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words
Hemingway = 80/10k words
Rowling = 140/10k words

I think these stats show that there is nothing wrong with adverbs as such from a reader's perspective. King and Rowling are some of the most popular writers out there. If they can have an adverb every 100 words then it's perfectly acceptible. It's all about your audience and how you use them.

The examples your editor gave are correct in my opinion when taken in isolation. "He said angrily" is better than “He spoke in an angry tone”, for 2 reasons: first, it says the exact same thing, with fewer words, which is almost always better. Second, he said is better than he spoke, since said tends to be more invisible to readers than spoke. The same with the flaccid, airy tone. Feebly is shorter, and easier for a reader to follow. Now, this doesn't mean that the sentence can't be even stronger when you drop the adverb and rewrite the sentence to show the character being angry. But that depends on the context.

Part of the dislike for adverbs indeed comes from show versus tell. An adverb tells you someone is angry or sad or whatever. That is indeed weaker than showing the same thing. Other times, there is a stronger verb than verb + adverb, which is both shorter and clearer about what's going on.

Having said that, sometimes it's perfectly fine to do so. A few reasons I can think of off the top of my head are:
- If showing would take a lot more words, and you want to keep the pace up, then go with the adverb.
- If you want to stress an emotion (or similar). Readers can be a bit oblivious (I know I certainly can be), and sometimes you want to spell it out that a character is angry or sad or whatever.
- If an emotion is not completely clear. It should be obvious, but sometimes it's hard to tell if a character is sad or angry or whatever. Yes, you could rewrite the passage to make it more clear. But that might take a lot of work, or it might not be how a character talks. In that case, the adverb can help.
- For flavor. If you always use the same sentence and paragraph structure, then your writing can start feeling monotonous and boring. Using a quick adverb instead of a longer character beat can change things up. It's like always use said when saying that a character is speaking, except for a few times in a chapter to break things up.