My Pet Peeve: Adverbs

My pet writing peeve is my own dangerous propensity to rely on adverbs, which I consider the linguistic equivalent of junk food.



It happens, from time to time, that I find myself tempted to stick cheap adverbs into my fiction. And when that temptation arises, I remind myself of Stephen King's admonition to avoid them. Here is the relevant quote from ON WRITING, a marvelous hybrid of memoir and how-to book, and one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time:


“I believe the road to hell is paved...