I won’t always repeat subjects/text between here and the YouTube channel , but this one seemed to strike a chord, and I think it’s usually better to see things like this—the text examples—in written form, so once more into the breach!
Everyone tells you adverbs are bad, bad, terrible words! In On Writing Stephen King wrote that famous line:
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.
I even found a web site that said you can only use one adverb per 300 words , which is just bizarre. That’s not even a little bit a thing. This came from one of those goofy “writing” apps that count the number of adverbs in your manuscript so you can feel bad about yourself in a new and pointless way based on a software engineer’s lack of understanding of creative writing. Or, anyway, maybe not totally embarrass yourself in work emails.
But, quickly, what even is an adverb? tell me you’ve seen the Schoolhouse Rock episode and know the song. No? Well, here it is:
Basically, with an emphasis on basic , adverbs are descriptive words that end with the letters L and Y: angrily, happily, calmy… you get it.
I have seen people talking adverb hate online for years now as though one adverb anywhere in a full length novel is the sign of an amateur writer and no agent will represent any book with an adverb in it and readers will make fun of you on TikTok and Goodreads , and all hellfire and damnation upon the evil adverb.
I’m here to blow that nonsense to smithereens.
First, let’s take a deep, cleansing breath. Then let’s say it together:
Adverbs are fine!
Why say that to ourselves? Because it’s true. Adverbs are a perfectly acceptable, even necessary part of speech and blindly deleting them from a manuscript because an app told you to is the sign of an amateur. Learning how to use them properly is the sign of a writer .
I pulled out some examples from Perry Rhodan #19: Mutants vs. Mutants by Clark Darlton, translated by Wendayne Ackerman and published by Ace Books in 1972.
A fun book, though not necessarily well crafted and also fifty-two years old, so maybe we’re all more adverb-aware now than they were then. But anyway… here’s the good news: Learning to use adverbs properly is actually super easy, once we identify what all the fuss is really about—when adverbs go from perfectly fine to, yeah… let’s talk about this adverb right here. For starters, look at this example:
Rhodan smiled gently . “Overhead, my dear Mercant. Exactly 18 miles above us. Are you surprised?”
The adverb gently is, believe it or not, perfectly fine! It’s describing a smile in a way that’s clear and even vivid and human. Also, since Rhodan is the POV character, he knows what he means by the smile he’s smiling. He means to be gentle. He smiled gently on purpose. Keep that in mind, POV is everything !
In the meantime, I’m working past the fact that the author (or at least the editor) should have spelled out eighteen there, but I’ve covered that here already.
And then there’s this:
Pucky shook his little head, regretfully it seemed, and grinned.
First of all, we all have to immediately name at least one character in our work-in-progress “Pucky.” Let’s call the the Pucky Rule. But the adverb regretfully here is also perfectly fine—a reasonable observation from the POV character.
Pucky actually did something. There’s a verb there. He “shook his little head.” Then it’s up to the POV character to get the feeling, to draw the conclusion that Pucky was regretful. The skillful addition of “it seemed” after that makes that even more clear. We understand that Pucky only seems regretful, as far as the POV character is concerned. Sometimes, though, this conclusion is less clear, as in:
Rhodan leaned forward and looked inquiringly into Mercant’s eyes. “Do you know a Clifford Monterney?”
This begs the question: Is inquiringly necessary when a question—an inquiry —immediately follows? Doesn’t this work just as well without it?
Rhodan leaned forward and looked into Mercant’s eyes. “Do you know a Clifford Monterney?”
I think it’s fine without the adverb, and most editors will flag that as well, I think. And here’s where we get to the land of yeah… let’s talk about this adverb right here .
Most of the time—I might even be comfortable saying all of the time —I call out adverbs to authors I work with is when they show up as part of dialog attribution.
You know what I mean by dialog attribution. That’s the bit where you tell your readers who’s talking right then: Phil said, Superman replied, and stuff like that. Yeah? And for what it’s worth, Stephen King said so too in On Writing :
I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution.
I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions… and not even then, if you can avoid it.
Okay, so here’s an adverb I would have called out in Mutants vs. Mutants :
“What do you want? I believe…” shouted Mercant excitedly .
There’s all sorts of awful here, and it’s not just the adverb. Let’s break this down.
Here we know that Mercant shouted this, but I have to ask, can you end a shout in ellipses? Ellipsis indicates that a character has intentionally trailed off, or maybe some sound has prevented the POV character—and remember, it’s all about the POV character’s experience of what and how Mercant shouted this line of dialog—from hearing the rest of the sentence that began with, “I believe…” If the latter is true, we need to know that:
“What do you want? I believe…” shouted Mercant excitedly as the roar of the rocketship engines drowned out all other sounds.
Still, though, what exactly does the author mean by “excitedly”? I know I’ve pulled this out of context, so maybe seeing the whole page would help, but even then, is he excited in a happy way? An upset way? A frightened way? What does “excitedly” look like?
And that’s the comment authors I work with see, sometimes over and over again, in edits from me. Instead of reporting on the fact that Mercant is excited, show us Mercant being excited, and in a way that somehow moves the scene forward. That said, what could Mercant be doing to signal “excited”?
“What do you want? I believe…” shouted Mercant, waving his arms over his head and jumping up and down as the roar of the rocketship engines drowned out all other sounds.
That’s kinda goofy, I know, but think about something like that with a tad more finesse.
Now let’s look at this line:
“The mutant master is a hypno,” said Tatjana emphatically .
This has the same basic issue. Don’t tell us she’s saying something emphatically, show her being emphatic. As is, I’m not even sure which part of this short sentence she’s most emphatic about.
“Emphatic” can be shown rather than told by manipulating the punctuation in and around the line of dialog itself, and with the careful application of italics, which signal… that’s right, you guessed it: emphasis .
“The mutant master… The mutant master is a hypno ,” said Tatjana.
I added the ellipsis to trail off, showing Tajana trying to make sure it’s clear that the subject of her emphatic accusation is the mutant master. Then hypno in italics says she emphasized that key word, the accusation itself. If you really want to stress it, change “said Tatjana” to “Tatjana accused…” but that might feel a bit much to me.
Another, and more confusing example:
“Hold on,” begged the mutant master maliciously .
Alliteration, for starters… three M words in a row will at the very least trigger your audio book narrator, but more importantly what does “maliciously” look, sound, or otherwise feel like to the POV character who is listening to this? By using that particular adverb, the author is making an assumption that we—your readers—understand exactly what “maliciously begging” looks like. But I have to be honest. I can conjure up an image of someone begging, but how do you beg with malice? I don’t know about you, but that’s not already in my head as a reader. I honestly don’t have any idea what this looks like. It not only tells how the mutant master is begging, but fails even at that.
And that’s the whole crux of this adverbs in dialog attribution thing. For the most part—and no, I’m afraid there’s no “always” here—an adverb tells how someone is saying something, and that old advice, show don’t tell , lives, honestly, primarily right in this moment for the overwhelming majority of popular or genre fiction manuscripts. This is why people like Stephen King warn you away from adverbs in general.
We don’t read fiction to be told a story. We read fiction to experience a story, and we experience a story by becoming the POV character. The farther you push your POV character and your reader apart, the less engaged your reader becomes—and no one wants a disengaged reader. Bring those two together—just as close as you can. And do that by immersing your reader in the POV character’s experience then allowing them to bring themselves the rest of the way into the story.
Readers are human, just like you, and just like your characters—even if that character is ostensibly an elf or a Martian. Give your readers the benefit of the doubt. We can understand from body language, word choice and word order, emphasis, etc. what a character is thinking, and drawing that conclusion ourselves, as readers, is part of the creative act of reading. It builds a shared experience of people communicating and behaving… people signaling in all sorts of ways that draw your readers in.
Will some readers interpret those clues differently from what you expected? Sometimes, sure. If you’ve thought through what “maliciously” or “gently” or “emphatically” looks and sounds like, most of the time we’ll be right with you. And if we get a different idea, the rest of the scene may prove us wrong, but that doesn’t mean you’ve kicked us out of the story. It might mean you’ve provided an accidental “ah ha” moment: “Ah ha—I get it. He was begging maliciously!”
Adverbs are words and as authors we get to use all the words. We even get to make some up from time to time. And there’s nothing special about adverbs. Use them—just like you use adjectives, nouns, and verbs—with care and thought and in service to your characters and the story they’re sharing with your readers.
—Philip Athans
Fantasy Author’s Handbook is now on YouTube !
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