Why Do Some Writers Hate Adverbs?
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“The hatred of adverbs amongst writers, and specifically teachers of creative writing, has become so commonplace, so unquestioned, and so unthinking, that it ranks only with ‘show, don’t tell’ as the most ubiquitous cliché in writing advice.” Colin Dickey
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The thing about clichés is that many of them are accurate. It’s how they become clichés. “Show, don’t tell” is essential writing advice. It is how “He went here, he went there, he did this, he did that” becomes “The crowded train to the edge of the city was oppressive but the only alternative was to take the bus since what he was heading to was the mechanic’s workshop holding his car hostage until he paid the enormous repair bill. And the only thing he hated more than mechanics was buses.”
But the ongoing campaign against the use of all adverbs isn’t helpful at all. So whenever anyone says that writers shouldn’t use them, I want to scream, “Stop telling me what to do!” No adverbs in that sentence so they shouldn’t be too offended unless the screaming puts them off. But oops! One has snuck in. (Don’t see it? It’s the “too”.) Does that little modifier render everything I’ve written here unreadable? I don’t think so. Apparently some do. Uh oh, there’s another! (“Apparently.”)
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” said Stephen King in his book On Writing. “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’. To use an adverb this way (or almost [The Elements of Style, well known as the writers’ bible, felt the same way. It’s a lofty group of writers. But does their loftiness make them unable to be disagreed with?
Of course not. Because all parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, clauses, phrases, gerunds, objects, subjects, etc) have their place in language. If they didn’t, they would never have been invented in the first place and so widely used ever since. Much like a healthy diet that remains interesting to the eater, the key is to use everything in moderation. The fact that the above hyperbolic advice fails to recognise is that there’s a difference between the use of adverbs and the abuse of adverbs.
There is so much iconic writing we’d never have had without adverbs. A great example (and a piece of writing that breaks more than one “rule”) is “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. (Oh my goodness, it uses an adverb and splits an infinitive!) And Shakespeare was a fan of the adverb; he invented the word “ceremoniously” (and about two thousand others). I think if we put him on one side of a set of scales and put Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and the authors of The Elements of Style on the other, it would balance up fairly evenly. So there’s no consensus.
However, one area that most agree really benefits from avoiding the adverb is dialogue attribution. Why write “he said loudly” when you could write “he shouted”? Why write “she said quietly” when you could write “she murmured” or “she whispered”, depending on how quiet the volume of her speech was? Why write “they said unclearly” when you could write “they mumbled”? Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do” and dialogue attribution is the perfect case in point. But using an adverb can also prove this point. “Will you be there?” she asked. Is it better to answer “It is possible” or “Possibly”? Depends how big the stick up one’s ass is. Or if it’s the queen speaking. Or if your fiction is set in historical times.
There are always reasons to break the rules and since not using adverbs isn’t even a rule but a preference for some but certainly not all writers, you shouldn’t feel too bad about ignoring this advice. If removing adverbs makes your writing better, then do it. If leaving adverbs in your writing makes it stronger, then do that. The one real benefit of having this discussion is that it raises awareness. It provides writers with another way to assess their writing and possibly improve it even more. It’s why writers should never accept or dismiss any advice out of hand but give it due consideration and then make the decision that is best for them.
