Stephen King is quoted as saying, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” It’s kind of harsh until you put it into context of why he is against adverbs in general. However, they do have a place in writing a book. It comes down to how often you use them.
Sure, you can remove every adverb within your manuscript and fill it with description or stronger word choices. But is that really a viable option when you consider things like pacing and emphasis?
Like most other elements of a good book, it often comes down to balance.
Why Adverbs Are Often Frowned Upon
Adverbs have a bad reputation in the writing community, which is odd considering how much they can do for a single sentence. Adverbs are words that modifies or describes verbs, adverbs, or adjectives. Sometimes, these are used to denote an emphasis in the sentence.
For instance, let’s take “Jack quickly ran up the staircase.” The adverb “quickly” conveys how Jack ran. He didn’t saunter or stroll. Instead, the writer is trying to tell you that there was haste in his footsteps.
So, if adverbs are so useful, why do people try to avoid using them?
Viewed as Weak Writing
Most authors view adverbs as a form of weak writing. Instead of diving into the description of the scene, it’s easier to simply toss in a few adverbs to tell what is happening in the story.
Using our example from earlier, we could write, “Jack skipped every other step as he moved with demonic haste to the second floor.”
In this example, we greatly expanded the scene of Jack running up the staircase and added a bit of a dark undertone to his movements. That’s because I am a dark author and it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Why write a description when an adverb will do? Because it intensifies the scene and draws readers into what is happening in the story. There is a caveat, though. Writing descriptions also slows the story’s pace. And the last thing you want is a book that is too slow to read.
I’ll dive a bit more into pacing here in a moment.
If you need help finding adverbs to improve strong writing, AutoCrit has a reporting system that can highlight them for you. Just remember that no automated system should be fully trusted, and only change terms that make sense to you and your story.
May Lead to a Redundant Structure
A lot of times, new writers will use adverbs in a way that creates a redundancy in the scene. Usually, these redundancies often mean the same thing but are of completely different words.
Let’s take our first example again. In a way, “quickly ran” could be viewed as a redundant phrase. After all, running is just a form of moving your legs quickly compared to walking.
Or, what about “Jack crept into the room quietly.” In this case, “crept” and “quietly” mean the same thing. That makes the adverb redundant in the scene.
For the most part, this is referred to as using filler words. It’s a common practice among beginners as they try to pad as many words into a manuscript as possible to reach some goal. I saw it a lot from new freelancers who needed to reach a certain word count for clients.
Of course, some new writers don’t realize the redundant structure. After being a full-time writer since 2013, I’ll find myself doing it occasionally. But that’s what the editing phase is for prior to submitting your work.
Telling, Not Showing the Story
Perhaps the most prominent to keep in mind is how adverbs are related to telling a story instead of showing it. This means you’re not letting the imagination of your reader run with the scene and simply breaking it down for them.
Knowing the difference between showing vs telling is a critical part of writing a good book.
Adverbs essentially help you clip entire chunks of a potential scene. In other words, you’re telling someone what is happening. To really grab their attention, you need to show them.
It goes along the lines of weak writing.
Now, there are times when you want to tell a certain element rather than show it. As I said earlier, describing everything in a book will lead to an exceptionally boring experience. But you don’t want to tell the reader too much as description can suck someone into the scene.
Quickens the Pacing
The best books have a mix of pacing throughout the novel. Telling what happens quickens the read while showing allows readers to immerse themselves in a single moment.
It’s common practice for authors to quicken the pace to get the reader to specifics that are more descriptive. And a lot of the time, you’ll do that by using adverbs. These quicker sentences are much shorter while giving the reader the barebones of what is going on.
How fast or slow should your book read? That is entirely up to you and what kind of audience you’re trying to reach. But for the most part, taking three pages to describe the scene in a diner is too long and has a greater chance of losing your audience.
Not every detail in a moment needs to be described in full.
Often Used as Filler
Adverbs often wind up being nothing more than filler in a sentence. This is especially true when you take into consideration redundant meanings as I pointed out earlier. In many instances, you can remove an adverb without affecting the flow of the sentence in the slightest.
For example, let’s take “Jack quickly made his way up the stairs, skipping steps along the way.” We can completely remove “quickly” from the sentence and it would still denote how Jack made his way up the stairs.
In fact, we can remove “completely” from the sentence I just wrote and it would still have the same impact.
As you edit the first draft of your book, you’ll find all kinds of filler adverbs. At least, I did. I wound up deleting around 200 or so from my latest manuscript.
Before you delete any words, however, read the context of the sentence. Some adverbs are going to make more sense in specific scenes, especially if you’re trying to quicken the pace to get to a more important element of your book.
Are Adverbs Absolutely Unnecessary?
Adverbs are not all that bad, in the grand scheme of things. You can use them to accentuate verbs, other adverbs, and adjectives. However, too many of them can lead to an unengaging book.
The whole purpose of telling a story is to pique the interest of the reader. If you use too many adverbs, you’re gutting the description of the story. Too few, and your book becomes long-winded and slow.
As I said earlier, it all comes down to balance. Using adverbs in a scene moves the story along until you come to a more important part that you want to describe in detail.
For example, we could still use the sentence, “Jack quickly moved up the stairs.” Then, we could fully describe what he saw on the second level. In this instance, we’re moving the reader past the stairs portion as fast as possible to get to the more interesting part.
So, adverbs do have a place in literature. It all comes down to how often they’re used and their intent. I can’t reiterate this enough, but you want to focus on balancing the story.
Long story short, no, you don’t want to remove every adverb in your manuscript. However, you want to keep in mind the pacing and whether you can describe that particular scene in greater detail.
You Have the Final Say
At the end of the day, you have the final say in what words remain in your manuscript. Well, at least you do if you’re self-publishing your book. And you’ll find that a lot of readers don’t even notice the small nuances that agents, publishers, or editors point out.
Still, it’s always best to publish the highest quality work you can for others to read.
Spelling and grammar are vital, but the words you choose to convey your story also have an impact. Publishing a good book is more than just having a good idea and running with it. Being able to write it in a way that engages the reader is imperative.
Sometimes, that means getting rid of a few adverbs and diving into a description, and vice versa.
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