Maybe not all adverbs are bad guys

In a post long ago and far away, when writing about writing for effect, I talked about  "throwing out the adverbage." My view, and that of many editors and writers, is that adverbs are frequently the bane of creating writing that shows instead of tells.

I wrote back then that adverbs that modify action verbs are merely a form of telling. They are abstractions of action, pallid substitutes for the real thing, mere stand-ins. As a result, they rarely give the reader much of an experience.

Well, I was recently reviewing an older manuscript of mine and I spotted, gasp, an adverb. Here's the sentence:

She saw Murphy, like a big, round boulder parting a stream of girly secretaries cramming in a buzz of noontime shopping, staring blatantly at their bobbing chests.

"Staring blatantly?" Damn. Another case of making an adverb try to do the work of real description. In this case the answer lay, as usual, in the verb. After a moment's thought, I swapped out "leering" for "staring blatantly." Much better, give a clear picture with fewer words.

Having fixed that, I moved along, alert for more inept adverbial description. Then I came upon a pair of adverbs that worked…

He found Emmaline annoyingly cheerful but pleasingly proficient.

But wait, I thought, how come these seem right to me when I've preached loud and long to avoid the use of adverbs. Then I noticed that these were modifying adjectives rather than verbs.

Good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

There was a time when we believed that all cholesterol was bad. Then we learned that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

Well, maybe I need to change my position that all adverbs are suspect, if not bad. Maybe there are "good" adverbs, the ones that add just the right flavor to an adjective, enhancing it with a more complete shade of meaning.

Consider the sentence about Emmaline above. Could I have achieved what I wanted, which was to give insight into one character's feeling and attitudes toward another, in a better, equally economical way? I don't think so. Without the adverbs we have:

He found Emmaline to be cheerful but proficient.

We've lost how the viewpoint character feels about Emmaline's personality. I went on a search for other adverbs (using Word's Find tool to locate "ly" in words).

I found this:

Her fair cheeks fetchingly reddened by the cold, she looked no older than a teenager.

Yep, for me this works as well. The pattern seems to be that adverbs are a positive addition when adding the nuance provided by a point-of-view character to what would otherwise be simple description. It would have been okay to write. . .

Her fair cheeks reddened by the cold, she looked no older than a teenager.

. . .and you would have gotten a picture. But with the addition of the adverb, you also get the character's experience, i.e. his emotional reaction to the appearance he sees -- fetching, attractive.

The pattern I was discovering seemed to be that adverbs are a positive addition when adding the nuance provided by a point-of-view character to what would otherwise be simple description. Another instance:

He loved the Staffordshire blue-and-white rose pattern, beautifully detailed and botanically accurate right down to the thorns on the stems.

Take "beautifully" and "botanically" out of that sentence and I think it loses both meaning and flavor.

Once more:

She changed her disguise to the queenly dignity of a white-haired society matron she'd met in Brussels.

Now, to "show" without the adverb would have required something like this:

She changed her disguise to that of a dignified, white-haired society matron with the manner of a queen whom she'd met in Brussels.

Not as effective, is it?

Here are a good adverb and bad adverb in the same sentence from a client's manuscript:

A young waiter with carefully streaked hair smiled suggestively at her.

For me, the first adverb expands the picture of the waiter's hair by giving a hint of precision in the arrangement of the streaks, which tells me something about him as well. But I'd like to see the second adverb usage replaced with something more truly pictorial.

So what do you think? Are we onto something here? I'd really appreciate your joining in.

Bottom line, now I'm thinking that when you go hunting for adverbs, as you should, it's action where you should consider looking for a better verb to do the job, and description where you may find adverbs to be good cholesterol.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Public floggings available. If I can post it here,

1. send 1st chapter or prologue as an attachment (cutting and pasting and reformatting from an email is a time-consuming pain) and I'll critique the first couple of pages.
2. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
3. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.

 

ARCHIVES .

© 2007 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Kathleen Bolton]

All points valid, Ray. Esp. in the Emmaline example, the adverbs add a musicality to the word rhythm that is important.

Where I can't stand adverbs is when the writer throws them all over the place. I reeeeally hate it when there are three adverbs modifying one noun, like the writer can't decide what they want to convey, so they slap a stew of likely modifyers down. Hate. That.

So adverbs have their place. But like Scotch Bonnet peppers, they should be used judiciously and sparingly, imo, so when they are used, the reader isn't inured to them.

[Suzie]

Nice to see an article about adverbs that says something other than "Bad! Evil! Bad!". And I agree, they do have their place. As ever, the rules can be broken by a good writer.

[Scott Marlowe]

Good points. I don't adverbs are a problem... as long as they're used sparingly, as in no more than a few instances in a book. Too many and I'm liable to stop reading.

[Kathy]

Then there's the young-reader writer who can't use the better verbs because the readers wouldn't understand them.

So this writer may be forced to use more adverbs than those writing for more sophisticated audiences.

Is a puzzlement!

[Ing]

I think this is one of those "rules" that has been repeated so often, and drilled so relentlessly into aspiring writers' heads without sufficient explanation, that it has actually become a handicap. When it comes to using adverbs, it's not so much a matter of breaking or obeying a rule, but of realizing what adverbs can do for (or to) your writing.

You're right, not all adverbs are bad guys. This is a great demonstration of what writers should actually do with adverbs; very helpful.

[XN]

For the Emmaline one, you don't need the "pleasingly" before proficient. That's obvious.

[Ray Rhamey]

I differ, XN. Her behavior may seem pleasing to you, but Drago finds it pleasing despite himself, and the adverb gives you his emotional take on her. Without it, you don't get how he feels about it.

[John K]

you know what they say about rules.

Perhaps the two greatest opens of all time are all tell, no show...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, etc.....'

'All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'

list of famous openings...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Opening_lines

[Frankie]

THANK YOU!

I have recently become very interested in the "bane of adverbs" that appear to destroy fiction writing, and all of the articles I have read continually point out that they should be eliminated. Since I first read those words, I felt that it was wrong. After reading and re-reading my own work, I cannot seem to get rid of all the adverbs without my story turning into an essay I would write for an english class. It's very nice to read a different, yet truthful, outlook on adverbs, one that manages to put my gut feelings into words.