“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Stephen King<\/em><\/p>\n I love adverbs when they add emphasis to a phrase I can’t get another way. For example:<\/p>\n She was alone. Absolutely and\u00a0completely\u00a0alone.<\/em><\/p>\n The word\u00a0alone<\/em> sounds so sad and final at the end of those adverbs, like a death sentence.<\/p>\n I hate adverbs because writers shouldn’t use them. Once in a while, a fun adverb spices up your writing, but more than a handful in your novel and your writing slides into high school English class territory. For example:<\/p>\n Trey quickly ran his fingers through his jet black hair before stomping furiously<\/em><\/p>\n through the yellow swinging door into the sparsely furnished living room.<\/em><\/p>\n Of course we want to set the scene for our readers, but sometimes we forget how rich our readers’ imaginations are. They don’t need a ton of set-up to create vibrant and fantastic worlds populated by our characters. So, how about:<\/p>\n Trey stomped into the living room, grumbling a string of curse words.<\/em><\/p>\n I cut out the unnecessary description, quickened the pace, and I can still see the character perfectly in my mind’s eye, including the furious expression on his face. And, if I want to imagine him finger-combing his hair, it’s up to me.<\/p>\n I love adverbs for their ability to add unique rhythms and emphasis to certain words and phrases. But I hate adverbs because they slow down my writing and encourage readers to skip to “the good parts.” I get rid of them by searching for “ly” and highlighting each adverb in neon blue. (This is time consuming. If you have a simpler method, let me know in the comments.) I read the sentence containing the adverb and decide on a case by case basis if I need it there, or not. For example, I left this one in:<\/p>\n Becca was thinking clearly again. She just couldn’t believe what she was seeing.<\/em><\/p>\n Because I like it. And, every once in a while, an adverb is okay.<\/p>\n <3 Anna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or, There is Such a Thing as Being Too Descriptive “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Stephen King I love adverbs when they add emphasis to a phrase I can’t get another way. For example: She was alone. Absolutely and\u00a0completely\u00a0alone. The word\u00a0alone sounds so sad and final at the end of those adverbs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[11,12,5],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","tag-adverbs","tag-craft-2","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Wkl2-W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}