Hot writing tips from an editor #4

Every writer wants to write beautifully, meaningfully, clearly, and uniquely. And when it comes to a character’s actions, sometimes a verb just doesn’t cut it.

Consider the following (unartful) example:

‘He moved, and the punch missed him and went into the wood pillar instead. He shouted. His opponent knelt and showed his teeth.’

Boring. As. Dust. We know that some verbs [actions] occurred and that the scene involved two characters, but we have no clue about the manner in which the verbs were done, and no idea how we as a reader should feel about the verbs (or the characters, for that matter). The telepathy that is writing asks too much of the reader’s imagination – too much! — and so for one reader the movement might be slow and for another reader it might fast; one character might be evil, or it could be the other one. These conclusions construct entirely different scenes, attitudes, and outcomes. Enter: the adverb.

‘The who?’ you might ask. Thankfully, like a good superhero, an adverb tells us what it’s all about in its name alone. An adverb adds to a verb. Bravo.

An easy identifier of and adverb is when an adjective [a describing word] has an ‘-ly’ chucked on the end of it (but because this is English, this is not a hard-and-fast rule).¹ This suffix comes from the Middle English ‘-lic’ meaning ‘like’. So, if something is ‘quick’ it happens like it was quick – quick-like – or ‘quickly‘; when something is ‘evil’ it happens like it was evil – evil-like – or ‘evilly‘.

Now that adverbs can come to our aid, let’s revisit our scene.

‘He moved quickly, and the punch missed him and went painfully into the wood pillar instead. He shouted triumphantly. His opponent knelt feebly and showed his teeth evilly.’

Look at all those adverbs! They show us speed, pain, triumph, and evil. That’s a lot less work for the reader to do, and the scene will be more similar from reader to reader as a result.

But something feels off about this scene. For one thing, the adverbs pull attention away from the verbs at the same time as they build upon them – when ‘he moved’, I no longer imagined the movement but its speed; when the punch ‘went […] into the wood pillar’, I no longer imagined the punch or the pillar but the concept of pain; when ‘he shouted’, I focused on the concept of triumph; when ‘his opponent showed his teeth’, I focused on the notion of evil.

And then there’s the repetition, that damned ‘-ly’ ending so popular among adverbs. Can you imagine reading a whole book of adverbs? It’s like the sentences are explaining themselves to somebody named Lee (‘He moved quick, Lee! His opponent is feeble, Lee!’). These superhero adverbs crave attention. There must be another way.

Consider: why might a verb need to be carried by an adverb? Because the verbs aren’t strong enough to stand on their own. The solution, then, is to recruit stronger verbs. What else might we call a ‘quick movement’, a ‘triumphant laugh’, an ‘evil showing of teeth’? Something more precise, more evocative, more appropriate for the scene.

Let’s try again.

‘He dodged, and the punch missed him and crunched into the wood pillar instead. He cheered. His opponent collapsed with a snarl.’

I’ll admit, this isn’t the most compelling writing. There’s a lot to do to add to the pace of the scene, the tension, the atmosphere, the setting, showing versus telling, the physicality, the senses (all this in such a short span?!) … But it’s a heck of a lot clearer than what we started with, and much less distracting than when it was riddled with adverbs.

The point is to use adverbs sparingly. To do this, we have to be able to first identify an adverb, and then understand when an adverb may be necessary and when it mayn’t. And then, swap them out for stronger verbs.

This isn’t to say adverbs are always bad. Sometimes adverbs can lend to voice. And sometimes it’s just easier. But more on that another time.