The Adverbial Dilemma

By Cindy Causey

I wrote my book Sensible Shoes without obvious, telling adverbial dialogue tags. Are there adverbs in the book? You betcha. It’s hard to write a book without them.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I received edit notes from my publisher informing me there were 940 adverbs in my 73,000-word novel, and half of them would need to be removed.

I walked onto the nearest ledge and sat there for three days. I complained mightily to everyone I spoke to, including telemarke...