The Contemporary Nomad is where five authors talk with you, dear reader, about the important subjects of the day. Whatever we decide they might be. Read more 
W I G N A L L
I blame Elmore Leonard. In his set of rules for writers he advises against using adverbs, particularly in relation to speech. Of course, the judicious use of an adverb might have enlightened us as to whether Leonard was being entirely serious.
It’s also something of an American trait to shun adverbs at the moment. I wrote a story for Neil Smith recently and he gently asked if I would be willing to give it one more pass to trim out some of the adverbs (I think I found four that weren’t strictly necessary, though they were hardly egregious examples of overuse). I joked with Neil that the American disdain for adverbs was part of their Puritanical heritage, that they saw these useful little tools as a sign of European linguistic decadence.
I will accept that adverbs, as well as the word “suddenly” and the use of words other than “said” to signify speech can provide pitfalls for the amateur writer, but so can countless other things. If you get around them by abandoning them completely it doesn’t actually make you a better writer, it just helps to mask the fact that you’re a poor one. The secret is learning to master those tools and use them to your advantage.
Back to adverbs then. When Clair Lamb read Who is Conrad Hirst? I put her in the unenviable position of asking how she’d have reacted if I’d asked her to edit it. She admitted she’d have probably trimmed some of the adverbs and was slightly surprised that an American editor had let them pass, so ingrained is the animosity to adverbs in American letters at the moment.
Fast forward to last week and Clair dedicated a post on her blog to Dubliners by James Joyce. She quite rightly described the last paragraph of The Dead as one of the most beautiful ever written. I agree and may have said as much on this blog in the past. Reading her post made me reach for that story once more, and I was surprised by one aspect of the ending. I repeat the final paragraph below, strewn with adverbs, a rebuke to Leonard, and a sign to would-be writers that the only hard and fast rule is to write from the heart.
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
March 26th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Oof! Hang on a second while I pull the arrow from my heart.
You’re in good company, Kevin, because I said much the same thing to John Connolly about his last book (haven’t read the new one yet) — at least, while I would not dare to criticize his writing, I did say that he makes my life harder because the clients I put on adverb diets can come back to me and whine, “But John Connolly (or Kevin Wignall, or James Joyce) does it.”
I’m standing fast on this one. It might be true that it’s a matter of American vs. British writing styles. I insist, however, that if a word draws my attention to it, that word probably doesn’t belong there. I don’t even notice the adverbs in the final paragraph of “The Dead” — they are organic to what Joyce is trying to do, which is not to propel a narrative but to describe a moment in time.
When you’re driving a narrative, adverbs are tin cans hanging off the back of a car.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I’m on record as defending adverbs (as well as other verbal eccentricities of mine). There’s nothing worse than the bland, canned language you find in most American mysteries.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I miss adverbs.
Those pen-slinging editors and their fundamentalist beliefs!
March 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Whatever.
I don’t like them because writers tend to think the adverb does more work in fiction than it truly does, especially describing character emotion and action. I prefer the “fictional dream” of John Gardner, not reminded of the author’s hand so much.
And then sometimes they’re okay.
Depends on the story.
FOUR, Kevin? Um…sure, why not?
March 26th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
It might even have been FIVE! And as I say, I could have lived with them, but I was also able to live without them, which was Neil’s point and a good editorial call.
I also agree that the writer’s hand should be as invisible as possible. All things in moderation.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I think it’s like you say, Kevin. Sometimes you need them, sometimes you don’t. A badly placed or unnecessary adverb can ruin a sentence, and too many of them can ruin a whole book, but there’s nothing wrong with using them judiciously.
It always seems odd to me that you’re allowed to qualify descriptions of objects but not supposed to do the same for actions. As though everyone runs at the same speed.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
“It always seems odd to me that you’re allowed to qualify descriptions of objects but not supposed to do the same for actions. As though everyone runs at the same speed.”
But people react in such different ways. I’d rather see a character’s reaction rather than have it explained to me as “angrily”. How so? A slow burn? A fist slammed against a desk? A shout?
But a “tightly wound ball of twine”, eh, okay, maybe that one doesn’t have quite as much room for showing.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Now I’m nervous about using the adverb to say I feel strongly about this — but I do want to add two points:
1) Elmore Leonard’s rules are for the game Elmore Leonard plays. He writes thrillers; they’re supposed to be fast. Adverbs slow things down. Sometimes an author might want that.
2) As a reader, I’m offended by an adverb that tells me something I already know. An author who writes, “‘I’m worried,’ she said anxiously,” assumes I am a moron. I am not a moron. A crank, a nerd, a sad pathetic creature, but not a moron.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
“‘I’m worried,’ she said anxiously,â€
THAT would irritate me.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It would annoy me too – unless the context was very specific and new information was being added: maybe that she was anxious about revealing she was worried. Even so, yeah, it’s clumsy. And it’s always better to show the anxiety or anger, or whatever. (Although it can also get annoying for me as a reader when you see a writer chaining physical reactions together to avoid an adverb: a character slamming the table one minute, pacing the next, then running his fingers through his hair while still somehow jabbing the air with one of them).
I think one of the problems with adverbs on dialogue tags is that they come after the dialogue. The reader’s already ‘heard’ the dialogue in their heads, and you’re making them go back over it afterwards. Same with verbs like ‘whispered’, ‘screamed’, and so on. They’re still dodgy, but they work a little better before the dialogue.
Within general description, I don’t have any problem with adverbs that I don’t have with other types of words. They all take time to read, so it comes down to whether you need them or not. To take a (rubbish) example off the top of my head, if you say the light from a monitor is flickering softly on someone’s face, the ‘softly’ can be doing more than describing the flicker. It’s building the mood too, and might save you a sentence further down.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I tend toward hating them too–I’m American after all. That said, though, I do use them, just hopefully not too much. Again, I think it’s a rule that should be followed by budding writers (especially non-thriller writers), then used judiciously thereafter. We’re all just so afraid of the amateur overuse–”angrily”, for example, really shouldn’t be in the English language at all.
In all honesty, I’d have cut “softly falling”–Joyce liked his poetic repetitions, often for good reason, but that one doesn’t work for me.
It’s funny how copyeditors teach you your personal tics. I’m going over my copyedited ms now and in the front notes my “more than usually generous commas before conjunctions in compound predicates.” What a kind way of saying I don’t have a handle on my commas!
However, despite the feeling here that US editors excise those things from manuscripts, I doubt this happens often–I don’t remember an editor ever nixing one of my adverbs.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Commas are often a matter of personal preference. And copy editors are among the more opinionated folks when it comes to language.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I think there’s a difference in grammar usage considering the length of the piece you’re writing. I write shorts and, you know, adverbs are sometimes necessary because the average acceptable word count is 3500.
He smiled tightly.
Succinct.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Not that Mr. Leonard needs my help, but the point of his rules is that if you write from the heart, there are no rules. In almost every case he gives you examples of writers, including Steinbeck’s own hooptedoodle, who break the rules with panache. As Joyce does in that heart-breakingly beautiful final paragraph.
That said, I follow my American colleagues in eschewing the dangly little things.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Great post, Kevin. I tend to avoid adverbs, but, yes, they can be insanely useful. (Especially in a first person narrative–most of us use them when we talk, after all.)
Where I disagree is on this whole “author’s hand must not be shown” thing. I won’t go into the reasons why, because trust me, I could write a thesis on the topic (and sort of am), but I think that’s an odd modern preoccupation–like that of Americans with adverbs–that is somewhat on the wane.
If you go back to Gardner’s original passage about the fictive dream, it does not mean that the author should never be present in the text. Gardner was a huge proponent of the omniscient point of view, and felt that first and limited third were overdone and, ahem, limiting choices. Give me a great omniscient narrator any day; I’ll be fully enveloped by the story. Anyway…
Yes to adverbs, and yes to life. Boo to bad writing, but transparent prose and lack of adverbs don’t necessarily stop it from occurring.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Gwenda, it’s funny that you should mention that about the writer’s presence because after making my original commment above I was thinking it over.
I notice in a lot of YA fiction the writer’s presence is much more apparent and it doesn’t cause a problem.
As with all other things, if it’s done well, it works. Which is perhaps what we’re all trying to say.