When is enough enough? What do you think of the short paragraph below?
"Donnie was not always loud and obnoxious. From time to time, he also got tired of being stubbornly brash and unapologetically odious."
When is enough enough? What do you think of the short paragraph below?
"Donnie was not always loud and obnoxious. From time to time, he also got tired of being stubbornly brash and unapologetically odious."
Last edited by miyako73; 07-29-2010 at 02:46 PM.
Too long. No need for 'stubbornly' or 'uapologetically'.
Adjectives are not such a bad thing, as long as they are used sparingly (oops, an adverb).
But adverbs should be used with caution. If you have to describe to the reader how your character is speaking or behaving, the dialogue is not doing its job properly and you are not showing his behaviour effectively enough.
The secret is to give the reader enough information to figure out things for themselves without flooding them with descriptors (that can be interpreted in too many ways to be of much help).
I'm not a minimalist. I think it's fine. That rule about using adjectives and adverbs sparingly applies to beginning writers. Once you have developed skill and you know when adjectives and adverbs don't add anything, then you can add as many as you need. Sometimes rhythm and voice are more important than pared down writing.Originally Posted by miyako73
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
I'm going to agree with hillwalker.
Also, it sounds kind of like a vocabulary exercise rather than a sentence.
If even Donnie would on occasion become tired of being odious, then the word unapologetic becomes a bit of a stumble.
Also, the words themselves are descriptive, personally I don't think they require or are any the better with qualifiers.
My two cents, but your writing is your choice.
I'd rather have questions that I can't answer than answers that I can't question.
Sorry, for my sophomoric query. Adjectives and adverbs have caused my writer's block lately. I feel that if I don't use them my sentences are bare. When I read them in my sentences repeatedly, I get the feeling that they are vocabulary exercises.
another examples:
"Firm and forceful, as virile as the fisherman’s I once saw that trampled the seashore sand and kicked the frothy waves, his walking did not look lithe and effete at all, another confusing trait."
"“My life’s scripted,” he said when he suddenly turned somber and spoke lugubriously over a glass of red wine, in one of our weekend rendezvous by the sea so calm and blue that we did not notice the smell of salt, the scent of summer the steaming ocean reeked."
My tip - never use adverbs. It will make you a better writer because you will have to learn to show the reader how characters do things rather than tell.
H
Personally, I am not a fan of absolutes, but rather prefer to advise caution and moderation. Sometimes adverbs are necessary in showing the reader the action, by explaining how a thing was accomplished; 'the child ate the porridge greedily' for example.
I'd rather have questions that I can't answer than answers that I can't question.
This is a ridiculous statement. Adverbs are part of the available vocabulary and should be used wherever appropriate. Saying that not using adverbs makes one a better writer is like saying that not using minor seventh chords makes one a better composer, or that not using lime green makes one a better painter.
I think writing teachers got down on adverbs because too many students were using them badly. These teachers should have helped students learn to use adverbs well. Instead, they decided that the adverbs themselves were to blame for bad prose and not the students who abused them. This attitude absolved the teachers of the responsibility of teaching, so it was popular with them. The only problem was that it also cast adverbs into the dungeon of language, never to be used nor even seen, and therefore a huge number of people these days seem to think that any prose that contains adverbs is bad prose by definition.
Writers, learn to use adverbs well, and then USE them!
I think this prejudice against adverbs is caused by an inverted corollary. The problem is that an observation of a specific takes on the authority of a rule about the general. So,
a) many weak writers use lots of adverbs - true, though anecdotal
b) using lots of adverbs makes you a weak writer - untrue, and not even logically valid
Compare, for instance....
a) many bank robbers drive cars
b) driving a car makes you a bank robber
Whenever people get uptight about adverbs, it's worth asking a couple of questions.
First, have you ever read Wodehouse? You can't move in Wodehouse for adverbs - and also, incidentally, dialogue tags (he goggled imprecatingly).
Second, does this injunction apply to any kind of adverbial form? If not, which are acceptable, and why....?
1a) "Yeah, I believe that," he said sarcastically. (Adverb)
2b) "Yeah, I believe that, he said, in a sarcastic tone. (Adverbial phrase)
2a) He takes drugs intermittently. (Adverb - from adjective.)
2b) He takes drugs sometimes. (Simple adverb)
2c) He takes drugs from time to time. (Adverbial phrase)
3a)She trashed the place in my absence. (Adverbial phrase.)
3b)She trashed the place while I was gone. (Adverbial clause.)
4a) She stormed off drunkenly. (Adverb)
4b) She stormed off in a drunken fashion. (Adverbial phrase)
4c) She stormed off in the manner of one who is drunk. (Adverbial clause)
All adverbial forms do the same job - they give you more information about the action of the verb. But they can't all be bad - either intrinsically or even comparatively. For instance, I wouldn't say that there's much to choose - if we're talking about showing rather than telling - between 2a and 2b. But no one would say that 2b was unacceptable because of the adverb. And of the fourth group, I have to say that I think the first is the most concise and the most stylistically elegant. One might disagree about that - but you can't say that 4a) should never never be used.
This almost fanatical aversion to adverbs is not only unjustifiable - it's impractical. You can't write smooth English without adverbs. What people usually mean when they object to them is that they somehow feel that you shouldn't use words ending in -ly. I have never seen a justification for that prejudice that was consistent or sustainable. And in thirty years of writing for publication - national magazines, novels, short stories - I have never once come across an editor or a house-style manual that vetoed the use of adverbs.
Of course, like any part of language, adverbs require a bit of thought. Or, as the editor of Welsh Cheese Monthly once said to me, When you work for this magazine, you have to write caerphilly.
Last edited by MarkBastable; 08-02-2010 at 11:07 AM.
Adverbs not only modify verbs, they modify adjectives, as in the examples in your second sentence. I think the suggestion to avoid adverbs comes from this second usage which can become clumsy and redundant.
If you find yourself writing in this style, perhaps you could recast the sentence to eliminate the modifying adverbs: eg - 'From time to time, he got tired of his own stubborn brashness, even of the odious responses for which he usually felt no apology was necessary.'
My 'ridiculous statement' was a tip to someone (presumably a relative novice) looking for advice on improving their writing skills. I based this assumption on the cumbersome sentence miyako offered for analysis.
It is important to learn to express oneself first and foremost; one essential craft being the ability to streamline descriptions so that they add colour without overwhelming the reader (assuming the writer is keen to garner an appreciative readership).
Adverbs and adjectives of course are the tools used to do this, but too many lazy writers use them as handy, pre-printed, designer labels that allow them to pass off their shoddy writing as something better-class.
The key is to limit adverbs and adjectives in stories and look at other ways of painting a picture since their use often places the reader in a passive role - the reader doesn't have to visualize what he/she is being told.
Telling the reader 'Mary drank her juice greedily' is not as effective as 'The way Mary drank her juice reminded her uncle of the bilge-pump on his boat'. The word 'greedily' might signify she drank a large quantity of juice, or she was thirsty and drank it without taking a breath, or made a great deal of unnecessary noise as she drank it. Who knows? The writer in this case is not able to tell us.
So, moderation is perhaps better than avoidance..... but until you are able to master adverbs I would stick to my 'tip', use them at your peril.
H
How can you tell the first sentence is better than the second:
1) In an instant, he made me remember my childhood many moons ago.
2) He instantly made me remember my childhood many moons ago.
Your tip was not "use them at your peril"; it was "never use adverbs." The boldface was in your original.
You have to watch out that, when encouraging a novice writer to use vivid images, you're not just teaching them that good prose is prose without adverbs, and that bad prose is prose with adverbs. You have to make sure they understand WHY you're recommending that they limit their adverb use. And, by all means, encourage them to use adverbs when they know how to do it, and when such use improves the writing. Which it often does.
I agree that using a vivid image (such as the bilge-pump in your example) is often a better choice than just using an adverb, but even that technique can be used poorly. It's important to use images that have meaning for a general audience - perhaps few people have experience with bilge-pumps on boats, so that image may not be very helpful. It's also important to use images that are reasonably consistent, so that you're not mixing metaphors.
"The bow in little Mary’s hair looked like the radar antenna on an aircraft carrier as she turned her head to her leprechaun-like uncle at the other end of the bowling-alley that was the kitchen table. “Pass the salt, please,” she said, her hummingbird voice echoing from the Alps of the room’s bare stone walls. “Here you go, dearie,” he trilled, piccolo-like, as he flung the shaker down the planking like a curler tossing a stone down the ice, Mary’s smocked dress and plate and juice-glass forming the house and guard stones of his end-winning throw."
That awful passage is full of vivid images, yet it's terrible prose.
My point is that it isn't the presence or absence of adverbs, nor the presence or absence of vivid imagery, that makes for good prose. It's the talent, taste, and good judgment of the writer. That judgment doesn't come from following a tip like "never use adverbs." It comes from reading good writers, and from practice, practice, practice.
Miyako, it's rather pointless to try to compare and evaluate sentences in isolation. A large part of what makes a sentence good or bad, better or worse, is the context. What is the overall tone of the composition? What is the genre? There are sentences that would be wonderful in comedy that are unacceptable in serious writing, for example. Who is the audience? There are sentences that would be fine in a children's story that would be frowned on in a serious novel for adults.
Instead of trying to write perfect sentences (is there such a thing?), try to write good paragraphs, good scenes, good chapters, good stories. The sentence may be too small a unit of writing to use as a metric of quality.
Not as pointless, I'd suggest, as hillwalker's attempt to evaluate an entire grammatical class of words in isolation.
I agree with you that injunctions such as this are more harmful than useful. On another forum - a writers' site - I have seen inexperienced writers complaining that they've picked up some book that's on the NYTimes bestseller list "and it's full of adverbs, which everyone says is a bad thing, so how come it's winning awards and selling so many copies?"
And the answer is, Someone lied to you.
Last edited by MarkBastable; 08-02-2010 at 02:31 PM.
Agreed. I said similar in an earlier post in this thread. Sure, if your'e an inexperienced writer, you probably use adjectives and adverbs in a clunky way, and then you would be better off heeding the advice. But a good, experienced writer has the proper judgement and should use them to good use. If they had no role to play, then you might as well take them out of the lexicon.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
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