A word on adverbs

Adverbs are unnecessary in the best writing, and harmful in the worst.

More than a word, but I said it. Yeah. I said it. Adverbs are bad. Wanna fight about it?

Adverbs are a source of controversy among writers, and the debate has raged on since before Mark Twain was ushered into the world on the tail of Haley's Comet. Some writers say they are evil, and lead to lazy and insulting writing. Other writers think adverbs are powerful, and help guide a story into deeper realms of description and imagery. I am on another end (as per usual, eh?) and just find adverbs unnecessary. I do tend to swing toward the "evil" camp sometimes, but that occurs when I see an adverb that is so horrible I would rather feed my eyeballs to Cthulu.

Those adverbs are what I like to call weak adverbs. They are adverbs that could be replaced by any multitude of words. For example, take "slowly". I could write "the car was moving slowly." Well, that's not much of a sentence is it? It's showing me absolutely nothing and is just 5 words. How dull. Instead, I could write "the car rivaled a snail in its pace, and I swore I saw one laughing as it sped past the vehicle on the asphalt." Ah, isn't that better? I threw in a whole new sense of imagery and description that made my sentence rich as escargot.

That's the key to writing, isn't it? I write for the sake of giving my readers a new world through which they can live their lives separate from reality for at least a few moments here and there. To use the classic maxim "show don't tell", I would rather show my readers a world, and let them experience it like they would a brand new plush sweater, rather than just tell them a story like they are a toddler I'm trying to bore off to sleep. "The car was moving slowly" is all well and good if I'm just trying to give you a simple statement about some car. Yawn. "The car rivaled a snail in its pace, and I swore I saw one laughing as it sped past the vehicle on the asphalt." Even if I were telling this to a toddler in the hopes he would fall asleep, I can be ensured that his dreams will have snails racing cars in them. That's my goal as a writer.

"But Bryan," you cast upon me from your lofty writer's desk. "You can't avoid all adverbs."

Perhaps, and let me refill your cognac and get you some fresh tobacco for your pipe, sir.

I have a professor at my university who is convinced anti-adverb writers are insane in their quest to rid writing of verbal and adjectival shackles. He says that whenever a writer mentions to him the phrase "don't use adverbs", he just has to point out that they used an adverb! Deus meus, he's right! I would use an adverb in that context, wouldn't I?

Well, he got me, I guess. There's really no possible way to avoid using "not", is there? But consider this. How much have I written on the subject of not using adverbs so far? A hell of a lot more than "don't use adverbs", right?

And that's why adverbs are unnecessary. An adverb can always be replaced by either a better word or a better phrase. Always. Wait...damn. Mea culpa. It is a rare incidence that an adverb has no replacement word or phrase, and I dare say it is impossible to find such incidences.

I think I've prattled on for enough time, and if you've stuck with me this far, I thank you. Please avoid adverbs in your writing. You're better than that.