Style Blog #1: Adverbs · 1:51am Feb 16th, 2014
Hey everyone. I'm going to start doing blogs on style issues as it suits my fancy. A few disclaimers before we start.
1. I am not infallible. My own style is far from perfect.
2. There are no hard rules about style. What works in one context might not work in another.
3. This is informal as hell. Expect pony stuff, although I'll bring up classier examples as needed.
I’m going to assume that we all know what an adverb is. If you don’t, get yourself over here and find out. But in a nutshell, an adverb is a word that describes a verb (or occasionally an adjective).
“Rainbow Dash flew quickly.”
“Pinkie Pie seemed slightly frantic.”
All pretty basic stuff. But adverbs are also the subject of some pretty heated controversy, believe it or not. To hear some people talk, adverbs are toxic to good writing. This can be justified with cherry-picked quotes like this one from Stephen King:
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.
This doesn’t actually represent King’s position with any particular accuracy. If you’d like to take a look at the relevant excerpt of On Writing for context, you can find it (with some additional commentary) here.
Anyways, the good news is that adverbs can certainly be used well. Here’s a quote from The Great Gatsby, with the adverbs bolded and underlined, because I am not a subtle man.
Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.
"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."
If you’d like to take a look at The Great Gatsby in its entirety, which you can do here, you might notice that F. Scott Fitzgerald uses adverbs more often than Pinkie Pie uses cocaine, which is a lot. The difference is that he uses them well, and to effect. So let’s take a look at what he does with the adverbs in that quote.
This quote is part of the characterization of Tom Buchanan, and for that matter, so are the adverbs.
We might assume that for Tom to turn Nick around is a rather rude invasion of personal space without any further detail. Hence, he has to be specified to do it “politely”. It’s not disrespect or rudeness. Tom’s not intending to be particularly unpleasant to the narrator. We could probably never have guessed that particular detail without the adverb. It’s difficult and unwieldy to put what I just stated into narration.
But I’m forgetting the second adverb, aren’t I?
“Abruptly” serves just as much a purpose as “politely” does. Tom might be turning Nick around politely, but the abruptness of it suggests that Tom’s not really taking his feelings into consideration. Tom knows damn well where he ought to be going, better than Nick himself does. There’s a sort of cheerful, callous contempt that’s suggested there.
Consider that it’s taken me two paragraphs to explain what the adverbs are actually doing. In this case, the adverbs are supporting much more detail than they explicitly convey. It’s a brilliant use.
So what can we take from that example? I propose a couple questions to ask yourself when you’re going to use an adverb.
1. Am I repeating myself?
If the nature of the verb or adjective you’re describing has already been more or less established, you don’t need to add an adverb. We get it already. Adding another word is telling the reader the same thing twice, and not in an interesting way.
Don’t do something like this:
Fluttershy was sad, and she wept sadly.
I don’t have to explain this, do I?
2. Could the reader have guessed this for themselves?
Sometimes, what you want to establish is abundantly clear from context. Your readers like to figure out these things for themselves. Don’t explicitly state something when you can implicitly suggest it. On the other hand, a well-placed adverb can clear up the intent behind a verb, preventing it from being taken the wrong way.
Don’t do something like this:
She punched me angrily.
Unless you are describing a boxing match or another example I’m going to be using momentarily, punches are understood to be thrown in anger. All else being equal, people will not punch you if they are not angry at you. We get it.
Consider something like this:
”You can be a real idiot sometimes.” She punched me playfully.
I don’t convey quite as much as Fitzgerald managed to, but this adverb still plays a crucial role in this sentence. It very quickly and clearly establishes what’s going on. Look at the difference between that sentence and this one:
”You can be a real idiot sometimes.” She punched me.
What? Was she serious about saying that? Why’d she punch me? While that could maybe be determined from context, it isn’t always clear. If there was an off-color joke just made, she could be amused—or offended. The difference is clear if you use the adverb.
3. Does this look silly?
I will object to any time when you use multiple adverbs in a row. This looks especially sketchy when they all end in “ly”.
”I can be really shy,” Fluttershy said nervously quietly.
If you are using multiple adverbs (with the exception of intensifiers like “very”), there is something terribly wrong. Either you have failed to state the information conveyed in one or both of them somewhere it would actually belong, or you are repeating yourself to no end. At the very worst, you are multiplying detail to no conceivable end whatsoever and with very, very bad consequences to your prose.
Discuss how wrong I am below.
Alternately, propose additional topics for me to blog about. Or both. It’s a free country.
Nice! I love these style blogs, it's always great to disseminate knowledge to the masses. If you could fave blogs, I would be doing that a lot nowadays.
Lel, do as I say, not as I do. (the ultimate editing commandment)
Also,
#inb4Comrade
EDIT: WHY IS EVERYTHING BOLD?
1839406
Formatting error. Glad you liked it, though.
Meant to comment here earlier, but excellent work. I love the Gatsby example... Adverbs so often get the 'no! never use these ever!' treatment, which I understand can be helpful to a new writer whose natural instinct is to slather them around everywhere, but is a disservice in the long run.
Looking forward to more in the future!
1843047
Thanks!
Really digging the blog, man. I especially like the statement of fallibility coupled with the links to sources. I'm following you for your blogs, and finding this in my notifications pleased me greatly! Looking forward to the next one!
1839406
._.
o_o
O__O
I take a few days break from fimfic, and I come back to hashtags. Don't make me explode, guys.
1843047
I concur. It reminds me of learning Starcraft a few years ago. The learning process for zerg somewhat mirrors the path of the writer. First you built hardly any drones because you wanted to get as many military units (adverbs) as you could possibly. This player would quickly lose to anybody who managed to hold off their early aggression—they just didn't have the economy to keep it going. After being soundly defeated (rejected) enough times, they pick up a tip! They figure that they should take advantage of zerg's ability to build multiple workers simultaneously to get a stronger economy (removing adverbs whenever possible leads to stronger writing), but these players get too greedy and end up losing routinely before they can get going (their writing is very dry). If this player (writer) goes down the path long enough, they learn to balance it all and build just the right amount of drones (adverbs), and can better gauge how many they should be building (writing) in a given situation.
Yeah, odds are that spiel made no sense to anyone, but I spent too much time on it to delete it. In any case, thanks again for the blog, Spacie. Looking forward to the next one!
1844044
You are talking--and making--sense here. I approve and will be looking forward to more.
Some things I wouldn't mind seeing in future posts:
--Over or under use of "said" tags
--Thoughts on showing versus telling
--Thoughts on Lavender Unicorn Syndrome
...I think those relate to style, right?
1852739
They all relate to style, yes. I've touched on the mechanics of said tags here, but I could do a post on how and when to use them.
I'm bad myself at showing, so I'll save that for later. Lavender Unicorn syndrome, though... that could work.
1852986
I shall patiently and happily await your extremely thought-provoking blog; I will readily assume that your next one will be as excessively helpful as this one.
Did good, right?
1853056
Meh, informal writing like this is a lot different from narrative writing. Adverbs are so dangerous because they can pack a great deal of meaning into a short space. They're often useful in nonfiction writing to an extent they wouldn't be in fiction,
1854056
My silliness has been shut down....
1854078
Sorry. I'm not a very silly guy.
1854100
Nothing to apologize about.
I tried. I failed.
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