KILL YOUR ADVERBS // Week Three

There is nothing that gets me more excited to write than reading about other people writing. It’s a tease, really. I get a whiff of creative accomplishment and it hangs heavy in my brain until scribbling vicariously isn’t enough.

Because of this I like to spend my time frequenting writing forums on websites like reddit, and reading memoirs and essays on writing. Right now I’m working my way through Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and while I was reading today I came across one line that I could only appreciate fully by using a sound that I have in the past reserved for the tastiest pieces of chocolate. The line was this:

The adverb is not your friend.

King argues that adverbs are the tools of a writer who “is afraid he/she isn't expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across”. (King, 124) I think there’s more than that. There has always been something about an adverb that rubs me wholly the wrong way. To me, an abundance of them just sounds juvenile. I’ve monitored my adverb use since I was a middle school student writing in English class, when I realized that using too many made me sound like a middle school student writing in English class. It isn't even the grammatical construct itself – it’s that stupid little –ly that’s included in most adverbs and used over and over again with invariable starchiness. A handful, as I’ve probably (there we go) used in this post is colorful and varied language, but when they pile up and get recursive it starts to sound like the worst kind of fan fiction. Many times when I use an adverb in my writing I do without the –ly altogether, and I recommend that anyone reading this consider doing the same.