Wednesday Writing Tip: Eschew Adverbs

A member of the American Christian Fiction Writers online critique group offered my first writing tip. She recommended I do a search for all the words in my chapter that ended in “ly.” I took her advice and discovered I’d used 36 adverbs in my 2,000-word chapter. Good night! That’s a lot of adverbs.

But what’s wrong with an adverb? It helps minimize word count and describe action in one simple word. Right? How could this be bad?

First, understand that adverbs are modifiers. While adjectives modify nouns, adverbs can modify verbs, other adverbs, adjectives, phrases and clauses. That’s a lot of modifying that leads to overuse and redundancy. Check out this list of 3,732 adverbs and use them only when you can’t use anything else.

“I make my adverbs earn their places on my pages. If I use one, there’s not an alternative.”
— Lynn Blackburn, author of In Too Deep

Second, the publishing industry considers the overuse of adverbs lazy writing. Mark Twain even said, “Adverbs are the tool of a lazy writer.” Adverbs tend to tell, not show the action. Take the time to consult a thesaurus for stronger adjectives and verbs. For instance, one of my early sentences read:

Although he wanted to slam the door, he shut it quietly.

Not bad, but it could have been better. Here’s how I replaced it:

Instead, he closed the door with a gentle turn of the knob.

Now, the reader can envision the door. It has a knob. It isn’t a sliding pocket door or a French door with fake knobs. Also, it allowed me to set this scene. I dedicated the sentence before it to his feelings. Then, this sentence provided the action. As an aside, “wanted” is a word that tells, not shows. Avoid it.

“Writers should use no more than one adverb per 300 words.”
— ProWriting Aid’s Grammar Guide

Third, a reduced number of adverbs helps your characters convey the emotions of their dialogue. Instead of writing:

“You have no idea how I feel,” he said angrily.

How about:

His face darkened, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “You have no idea how I feel.”

The reader can now “see” his anger.

“No problem with adverbs in dialogue because that’s how we speak. But still don’t overuse them.”
— Iola Goulton, Christian fiction editor

Train your eye to catch adverbs as you write, and do your best to rework the sentence without it. Be aware that it may take several words to replace an adverb, but your sentence should become more descriptive. Also, take care not to be redundant. Don’t say run quickly when sprint is more concise and as descriptive.

Here’s my challenge to you. Take a page of your writing and see if you can replace all its adverbs with more descriptive verbs and adjectives. How did you do? Any tips you’d like to share with other writers about adverbs?