McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Do adverbs still exist?

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LizW65:

--- Quote from: Penny Lovestedt on December 04, 2011, 06:28:14 PM ---Actually, what I was referring to was using adjective forms rather than adverb forms. For example: He drove slow, rather than he drove slowly.

--- End quote ---
(Bolding mine)  Well, that's bad grammar, but it can be an effective vocal tic in, for example, a first-person work.  Overused, I find it annoying rather than edgy, though.

Thrythlind:
as I stated earlier, whether I use adverbs or not depends on the situation and which perspective I am currently anchoring the narration around...I do third person, but my narration still tends to be modeled off the thoughts, personality and experience of the central character of the scene

adverbs can give a rather halting sense to action that very well fits someone who only has a modest understanding of the circumstances they are facing...characters with more applicable knowledge will be more precise and fluid or evocative

Gruud:
@ Meg

The exampe you give is really more a question of converting telling to showing, and it's a good one. Your way is definately better than what you had found.

And I am trying to do a better job of showing. I am more conginzant of it, and when I review my work I do seem to be showing more than I had originally thought. And I have little doubt once I finish the first draft and make that first edit pass I will be doing a lot more "conversions".

And just to be cleasr, the rest of this post is not directed at you (although you're welcome to play along). You give quite a lot of very useful advice, and  I wouldn't want you to think I was picking a fight with you or anything, because I'm certainly not.

I just get a little dismayed when I read that writers should stop using certain parts of speech, or should write down to the level of their perspective readers, as viewed by other members of the writing profession.

And it's not necessarily a new thing. I belive it was Mark Twain who advocated, when editting, to kill any adjective you come across.

And it just makes me crazy.

As an example of a strong verb being helped by an adverb, take the prhase "smoke billowing skyward".

Now, obviously smoke (almost) always goes up .. and yet, in my mind the adverb "skyward" as used does add ... something, by lifting the reader's internal eye upward, following the smoke as it rises, possibly to be sent "wafting westward" by some upper level wind.

Sticking with the noun smoke, there can be all kinds and colors of smoke: Oily, black smoke boiling out; thick gray smoke the color of storm clouds; the hissing white smoke of a fire being doused with water.

But to hear some pundits, these things are all to be cut down, editted out, thrown away in favor of some shorter, tighter text that has more punch.

But geez, its not like they'll be paying us by the word (if they ever do  ;) ) so why this almost blanket antagonism against perfectly useful parts of speech?

That's what I don't get.  :)

LizW65:
I think much of it has to do with the popularity of a stripped-down, minimalist style of writing exemplified by authors such as Elmore Leonard and Robert Parker.  Don't waste time describing people or things, just get right to the action!  I don't like this style myself; it's way too bare-bones and uninteresting for my taste, but a lot of people with a lot of influence seem to love it, and it's somehow become the template for all writing.  However, I think it's possible to find a balance between that and over-the-top purple prose, and I do agree that a lot of adverbs just aren't necessary; (I tend to overuse them in my first drafts as a kind of shorthand, after which I go back and eliminate most of them in favor of stronger, more appropriate verbs.)

jtaylor:
And yet one of the most wildly popular Fantasy novels to come out recently is Patric Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles, and it is the opposite of the minimalist style being pushed by most of the industry. Look at the prologue to Name of the Wind:


--- Quote ---    Prologue

    A Silence of Three Parts

    It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

    The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumns leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music….but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

    Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

    The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

    The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

    The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
--- End quote ---

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