Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
Part 8
Part 7
Part 1
I can't believe there's now 9 of these holy butts
I’ve already talked about crutch words like “character feels” but I want to focus this list specifically on modifiers, and why they’re way less necessary than they seem. Full freedom if they're in dialogue of course, we're talking about the narration itself here.
Modifiers include:
Almost, nearly, slightly, very, a bit, certainly, probably, likely, definitely, really, basically, totally, virtually, rather, quite, etc. (here is a long list of filler words to work off)
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These words seem necessary because we say them all the time without thought, and their inclusion tends to make the distinction between a literal amount and hyperbole (though even “literally” is rarely used properly anymore).
“I nearly slept a week” is hyperbole, we all know you did not sleep for an entire week straight.
“I totally died” is also, obviously, hyperbole, unless you’re a zombie.
However.
There are times when these words are necessary.
“I almost stopped for gas” does not mean the same thing as “I stopped for gas”.
But “She laughed almost childishly” pretty much does mean the same thing as “She laughed childishly”.
What’s the difference you’re trying to highlight, and is it such a bad thing that she does indeed laugh like a child?
In essence, a modifier tends to be necessary when discerning between whether an action was or was not done, vs how that action was or was not done.
“He almost kissed them” vs “He kissed them.” Well, did he or didn’t he?
“He kissed them almost tenderly” vs “He kissed them tenderly.” What even is ‘almost’ tenderly? If you delete the modifier, you probably won’t realize it’s missing the next time you read that line.
Is a venue basically filled, standing room only? Or is it filled, standing room only? What difference does 'basically' make? Give your prose confidence!
Hope this helps!
Part 7
Part 6
Part 1
As I go through editing my latest manuscript, I'm faced with the dilemma of when to drop a to-be verb, but also when to keep it and how the differences between the two in any given situation can make just a little... a little *garnish* of a difference.
Am, is, are, was, were; a subset of auxiliary verbs
To do, to be, to have (simplified)
Auxiliary verbs tend to indicate tense, but we use them more often as crutch verbs, filler verbs, because you can just conjugate the verb itself to the proper tense without the need of the auxiliary verb.
The advice generally goes to remove these, as they count as filler words when followed up by a second verb. Versus the TBV or AXV and an adjective.
He does look / He looks She is cooking / She cooks They were standing / They stood I am fishing / I fish She does cry / She cries We have slept / We slept
vs
He is afraid / He fears She was sorry / She regrets They were happy / They cheered I was confused / I hesitated
The verb+adjective combo can't so easily drop the verb without changing either the tone, the flow, or the actions of the characters, because one is an act of doing, and one is a state of being (for the most part, 'fear' is one of those exceptions in English).
You would have to rearrange the sentence, e.g. "I was confused by this" to "This confused me," to elimiate the TBV. Which, most of the time, does help the narrator feel less passive in the story, but, again, we're here for flavor text, not an MLA formatting guide.
So, sometimes the inclusion of the TBV or AXV adds subtext to the action itself.
"He does look" has slightly more urgency and weight than simply "he looks" because the AXV emphasizes that this is an action the actor might not have taken otherwise, for better or for worse.
In the silence, she stands there huffing, voice wrecked from crying as he heads for the open door. “Don’t you walk away from me.” He turns, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.” vs He does turn, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.”
The latter indicates that this might be hesitation or regret on his part, as opposed to a decisive, quick action, or that this is an action that she, the narrator, didn't expect him to take.
It also helps convey the tone of voice (or at least the general direction of the level of emotion in a voice). This absolutely varies on a case-by-case basis and the context of the action and should not be abused.
One of the juicier verbs for subtext here is "try"
He tries to coach her through how to do it properly. vs He does try to coach her through how to do it properly.
The former is direct and simple. He is attempting (he attempts) to help but through the act of "trying" and not "doing" there's an indication that she isn't getting it.
The latter is a little more hopeless, where he and she both know that whatever she's attempting to learn, she won't succeed, but he's doing it anyway. Maybe because he cares or he feels bad, or, that he wasn't going to help her, but something changed his mind.
Deciding when to use these helps convey the inner thoughts of non-narrating characters without head-hopping, and also shows the biases of the narrator.
Hope this helps!
Part 6
Part 1
Gonna shoutout a specific fanfic, “Salvage” (ATLA) for writing that is even leaner than mine is, and mine has zero fat whatsoever. This was really good. I particularly like how some scenes were only 2 or 3 lines long as an example of what I’m going for here.
When I say “stiff” in the following examples I’m specifically talking about a lot of the same syntax, few similes and metaphors, few ‘said’ synonyms, very little, well, “life” in the prose. And this can be good in a few situations.
Shock doesn’t all look the same, but the kind of shock I mean is the one where the person is really quiet and un-emotive, they’re probably not speaking or reacting much to whatever catastrophe just happened and probably not responding to their name or anything spoken to them. Their body is pretty much going “uhhhhhhhhh factory reset!” when whatever it is, is too much to process.
A asks them a question. Once. Twice. B stares ahead. There’s a brown stain on the wall that looks like a thumb.
So if they’re narrating, they’re probably going to be giving the absolute bare minimum, need-to-know information and won’t be thinking about the best adjectives and adverbs. Especially if you normally write with fluffier prose, a jarring shift like this can really help sell the shock and dissociating of the character, something so traumatizing that it effects how the story is told.
Somewhere between New Moon’s 4 pages of just Months to show Bella did absolutely nothing in a depression rot and normal prose (though it was effective, particularly in the movie when they could draw out the words on the screen for longer and did the whole spin-around-her-depression-chair montage).
January came. It rained a lot.
They’ll probably either narrate very thinly, or listlessly. They might focus on a random detail and start going on a long ramble about that one detail that isn’t at all important, but it’s either all they can think about or all that can move them to feel anything in this moment, like:
On the bedside table, that coffee mug still sat there in a thin sheet of dust. What had been liquid now long since dry and gluey. It still sits there, collecting cat fur.
This might be the best place for sentences that all sound and flow exactly the same, but use it sparingly.
Different from shock in that while they are physically capable of moving and interacting, they can’t let themselves describe what they’re seeing and feeling in grand detail. Maybe they’re moving through the horrific aftermath of a battle and all they can describe is the mud under their feet and how it squelches. Or they simply say that “there’s bodies everywhere” because looking too long or too hard at who those bodies belonged to is too much.
This post was inspired by a fic I just wrote that spanned about 5 months in about 18k words. Narrative was skipping days ahead between paragraphs at some point as my character was processing the end of an abusive relationship. It sped up and slowed down where necessary, but compared to its sequel that I also just finished (22k words across 7 days), I’d covered a whole month in about 2 sentences in the first one.
See nearly any part of Salvage (or my fics if you feel like it)
What happened in that month didn’t matter, only what was before and what’s different now and how this character realizes how their life is slowly changing, some things they never noticed that are suddenly right in their face or things that quietly slipped away.
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TLDR; sometimes the lack of emotion and sensory details and frenetic, dynamic syntax is the point, that can sell the reader on the narrator’s mental state far better than picking the juiciest adverbs. If it’s so impactful to them that the physical telling of the story is changed, you’ve done your job.
Part 5
Part 1
Gasp! Oh no. Dare come yet more writing advice burning adverbs at the stake? Vindictively, gleefully, manically dancing in the ashes?
No.
This is not about whether or not you should use them, but their frequency and obvious places to replace them. Most bad adverbs are the common ones that could be replaced by verbs we all know.
“She ran quickly” // “She sprinted”
“He said angrily” // “He snapped” “He chided” “He chastised”
vs.
“He ate voraciously”
“She swayed solemnly”
“She laughed sadly”
Bonus if you can add in some alliteration like ‘swayed solemnly’
If you can come up with an obvious verb to replace your verb + adverb combo, do so. If it would take more words or the closest applicable verb doesn’t hit the same vibe, then leave it. Adverbs should enhance the verb, not be redundant. Verbs shouldn’t be pretentious just to avoid them.
“She smiled happily” — most smiles are happy. Happily is redundant.
“He ran quickly” —a run is, by nature, quick
vs.
“She smiled sourly”
“He ran erratically”
Also!
The adverb need not always be after the verb.
“C accepted gladly” // “C gladly accepted”
But also
“Glad, C accepted”
“A shook their head resolutely” // “Resolute, A shook their head”
“The child skipped excitedly away.” // “Excited, the child skipped away.” // “The child skipped away, excited.”
English is flexible like that.
Which is what I mean with managing your adverb frequency. As most end in the -ly, too many in succession, on top of the repeat syntax of Subject - Verb - Adverb looks boring and dull (and so does beginning every sentence with the subject). It helps with your cadence and flow if you don’t have entire paragraphs at a time all starting with “He [verb]” or “She [verb]” or “They [verb].” We don't speak like this in natural conversation.
But at the end of the day, there are some juicy adverbs that have no equal without busting out the thesaurus for some obscure lexical nugget that no one would understand anyway.
Dredging this back up from way back.
Make sure your characters move, but not too much during heavy dialogue scenes. E.g. two characters sitting and talking—do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them…
Gesture
Wave
Frown
Laugh
Cross their legs/their arms
Shift around to get comfortable
Pound the table
Roll their eyes
Point
Shrug
Touch their face/their hair
Wring their hands
Pick at their nails
Yawn
Stretch
Sniff/sniffle
Tap their fingers/drum
Bounce their feet
Doodle
Fiddle with buttons or jewelry
Scratch an itch
Touch their weapons/gadgets/phones
Check the time
Get up and sit back down
Move from chair to tabletop
The list goes on.
Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t—what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.
As in, you could say “he’s nervous” or you could show, “He fidgets, constantly glancing at the clock as sweat beads at his temples.”
This site is full of discourse on telling vs showing so I’ll leave it at that.
In the Sci-fi WIP that shall never see the light of day, I had a flashback arc for one male character and his relationship with another male character. On top of that, the flashback character was a nameless narrator for Reasons.
Enter the problem: How would you keep track of two male characters, one who you can't name, and the other who does have a name, but you can’t oversaturate the narrative with it? I did a few things.
Nameless Narrator (written in 3rd person limited POV) was the only narrator for the flashback arc. I never switched to the boyfriend’s POV.
Boyfriend had only a couple epithets that could only apply to him, and halfway through their relationship, NN went from describing him as “the other prisoner” to “his cellmate” to “his partner” (which was also a double entendre). NN also switched from using BF’s full name to a nickname both in narration and dialogue.
BF had a title for NN that he used exclusively in dialogue, since BF couldn’t use his given name and NN hadn’t picked a new one for himself.
Every time the subject of the narrative switched, I started a new paragraph so “he” never described either character ambiguously mid-paragraph.
Is this an extreme example? Absolutely, but I pulled it off according to my betas.
The point of all this is this: Epithets shouldn’t just exist to substitute an overused name. Epithets de-personalize the subject if you use them incorrectly. If your narrator is thinking of their lover and describing that person without their name, then the trait they pick to focus on should be something equally important to them. In contrast, if you want to drive home how little a narrator thinks of somebody, using depersonalizing epithets helps sell that disrespect.
Fanfic tends to be the most egregious with soulless epithets like "the black-haired boy" that tell the reader absolutely nothing about how the narrator feels about that black-haired boy, espeically if they're doing so during a highly-emotional moment.
As in, NN and BF had one implied sex scene. Had I said “the other prisoner” that would have completely ruined the mood. He’s so much more than “the other prisoner” at that point in the story. “His partner,” since they were both a combat team and romantically involved, encompassed their entire relationship.
The epithet also changed depending on what mood or how hopeless NN saw their situation. He’d wax and wane over how close he believed them to be for Reasons. NN was a very reserved character who kept BF at a distance, afraid to go “all in” because he knew there was a high chance of BF not surviving this campaign. So NN never used “his lover”.
All to say, epithets carried the subtext of that flashback arc, when I had a character who would not talk about his feelings. I could show you the progression of their relationship through how the epithets changed.
I could show you whenever NN was being a big fat liar about his feelings when he said he's not in love, but his narration gave him away. I could show you the exact moment their relationship shifted from comrades to something more when NN switched mid-paragraph from "his cellmate" to "his partner" and when he took up BF's nickame exclusively in the same scene.
I do the same thing in Eternal Night when Elias, my protagonist, stops referring to Dorian as "it" and "the vampire" instead of his name the moment they collide with a much more dangerous vampire, so jarringly that Elias notices in his own narration—the point of it being so explicit is that this degredation isn't automatic, it's something he has to conciously do, when everyone else in his clan wouldn't think twice about dehumanizing them.
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Any literary device should be used with intent if you want those layers in your work. The curtains are rarely just blue. Whether it’s a simile with a deliberate comparison or an epithet with deliberate connotations, your readers will pick up on the subtext, I promise.
Let’s keep this train rollin’! This time less down to line edits and more overall scope of your narrative
Part 3
Nothing quite like the catharsis of accurately predicting where something’s going to go. It doesn’t have to be a huge plot twist or a character death, it can (and should) be little things that reward your audience for paying attention. Double points if it adds to rewatch/re-readability.
Example: In The Dark Knight, this exchange happens:
Harvey: “You’ve known Rachel all her life.”
Alfred: “Oh, not yet, Sir.”
You won’t think anything of it on your first watch. Alfred is just making a witty joke that throws Harvey off. Watch the movie again, when Rachel dies, and it becomes some incredibly dark foreshadowing. Turns out Alfred has, actually, known Rachel all her life.
Chekhov’s Gun is a narrative concept where a seemingly inconsequential element introduced at some point in the narrative (a gun) must “fire” by the end of the narrative. Sometimes this element leaves audiences uneasy or anxious, because they know something bad must come of it. Sometimes they think nothing of it until it’s about to fire and you get a one-two punch of the realization that it’s about to hit, and then the impact of the hit. It helps create tension, and tension is incredibly important (if you want a whole post of my take on it, lmk).
It also helps your narrative look more cohesive, where nothing is left on the table. Your set-ups and payoffs leave no threads dangling.
The Rule of threes can apply on a micro and macro scale. I like doing lists of adjectives in threes, (e.g. My cat is soft, fluffy, and adorable) because the cadence and the flow of three is something we’re familiar with in spoken language. We like three supporting examples for an argument. Any less doesn’t feel strong enough, any more feels like you’re trying too hard. This is not a rule it’s a suggestion.
On a grander scale, you can look at the script of Curse of the Black Pearl for a masterclass in macro rules of three, like three parlays. Doing this helps your narrative look more cohesive and like every detail is thoroughly interwoven and nothing is coincidence. Your audience will get to the third instance and mimic that DiCaprio pointing meme—they will absolutely notice.
Motifs as well, beyond threes, help. Colors are a huge one. For example every time you mention the color purple, you could attach it to an emotion, or a character, or an important plot beat, like how leitmotifs work for character themes in movies and TV shows.
Obvious examples in film are like lightsaber colors or dressing up the good guys in white and the bad guys in black. I did this whole post about color in fiction.
It’s a lot of other things too. Weather elements and times of day, or specific inconsequential objects popping up over and over again, like birds, or litter, fallen leaves, clothing items. Whenever the narrative mentions them, the author is trying to clue you in on some subtext within that scene.
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My new novel is here!!! Do you like supernatural fantasy? How about queer vampires? How about acespec characters? Then Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is for you!
Crazy how one impulsive post has quickly outshined every other post I have made on this blog. Anyway here’s more to consider. Once again, I am recirculating tried-and-true writing advice that shouldn’t have to compromise your author voice and isn’t always applicable when the narrative demands otherwise.
Part 1
Part 2
Am/is/are/was/were are another type of filler that doesn’t add anything to your sentences.
There were fireworks in the sky tonight. /// Fireworks glittered in the sky tonight.
My cat was chirping at the lights on the ceiling. /// My cat chirped at the lights on the ceiling.
She was standing /// She stood
He was running /// He ran
Also applicable in present tense, of which I’ve been stuck writing lately.
There are two fish-net goals on either end of the improvised field. /// Two fish-net goals mark either end of the improvised field.
For once, it’s a cloudless night. /// For once, the stars shine clear.
Sometimes the sentence needs a little finagling to remove the bad verb and sometimes you can let a couple remain if it sounds better with the cadence or syntax. Generally, they’re not necessary and you won’t realize how strange it looks until you go back and delete them (it also helps shave off your word count).
Sometimes the to-be verb is necessary. You're writing in past-tense and must convey that.
He was running out of time does not have the same meaning as He ran out of time, and are not interchangeable. You'd have to change the entire sentence to something probably a lot wordier to escape the 'was'. To-be verbs are not the end of the world.
I made a post already about motivated exposition, specifically about character descriptions and the mirror trope, saying character details in the wrong place can look odd and screw with the flow of the paragraph, especially if you throw in too many.
She ties her long, curly, brown tresses up in a messy bun. /// She ties her curls up in a messy brown bun. (bonus alliteration too)
Generally, I see this most often with hair, a terrible rule of threes. Eyes less so, but eyes have their own issue. Eye color gets repeated at an exhausting frequency. Whatever you have in your manuscript, you could probably delete 30-40% of the reminders that the love interest has baby blues and readers would be happy, especially if you use the same metaphor over and over again, like gemstones.
He rolled his bright, emerald eyes. /// He rolled his eyes, a vibrant green in the lamplight.
To me, one reads like you want to get the character description out as fast as possible, so the hand of the author comes in to wave and stop the story to give you the details. Fixing it, my way or another way, stands out less as exposition, which is what character descriptions boil down to—something the audience needs to know to appreciate and/or understand the story.
Much like sentences that are all about the same length with little variety in syntax, sentences that follow each other like a grocery list or instruction manual instead of a proper narrative are difficult to find gripping.
Jack gets out a stock pot from the cupboard. He fills it with the tap and sets it on the stove. Then, he grabs russet potatoes and butter from the fridge. He leaves the butter out to soften, and sets the pot to boil. He then adds salt to the water.
From the cupboard, Jack drags a hefty stockpot. He fills it with the tap, adds salt to taste, and sets it on the stove.
Russet potatoes or yukon gold? Jack drums his fingers on the fridge door in thought. Russet—that’s what the recipe calls for. He tosses the bag on the counter and the butter beside it to soften.
This is just one version of a possible edit to the first paragraph, not the end-all, be-all perfect reconstruction. It’s not just about having transitions, like ‘then’, it’s about how one sentence flows into the next, and you can accomplish better flow in many different ways.
I don’t see this super often, but when it happens, it tends to be pretty bad. I think it happens because writers feel the need to overcompensate and over-clarify on what’s happening. Remember: The more specific you get, the more your readers are going to wonder what’s so important about these details. This is fiction, so every detail matters.
A ridiculous example:
Jack walks over to his closet. He kneels down at the shoe rack and tugs his running shoes free. He walks back to his desk chair, sits down, and ties the laces.
Unless tying his shoes is a monumental achievement for this character, all readers would need is:
Jack shoves on his running shoes.
*quick note: Do not add "down" after the following: Kneels, stoops, crouches, squats. The "down" is already implied in the verb.
This also happens with multiple movements in succession.
Beth enters the room and steps on her shoelace, nearly causing her to trip. She kneels and ties her shoes. She stands upright and keeps moving.
Or
Beth walks in and nearly trips over her shoelace. She sighs, reties it, and keeps moving.
Even then, unless Beth is a chronically clumsy character or this near-trip is a side effect of her being late or tired (i.e. meaningful), tripping over a shoelace is kind of boring if it does nothing for her character. Miles Morales’ untied shoelaces are thematically part of his story.
Sometimes, over-describing a character’s movement is meant to show how nervous they are—overthinking everything they’re doing, second-guessing themselves ad nauseam. Or they’re autistic coded and this is how this character normally thinks as deeply methodical. Or, you’re trying to emphasize some mundanity about their life and doing it on purpose.
If you’re not writing something where the extra details service the character or the story at large, consider trimming it.
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These are *suggestions* and writing is highly subjective. Hope this helps!
Part 1
Again, just suggestions that shouldn’t have to compromise your author voice, as I sit here doing my own edits for a WIP.
Specifically when you have your narrator taking an action instead of just… writing that action. Examples:
Character wonders/imagines/thinks/realizes
Character sees/smells/feels
Now not all of these need to be cut. There’s a difference between:
Elias stops. He realizes they’re going in the wrong direction.
And
Elias takes far too long to realize that it’s not horribly dark wherever they are
Crutch words are words that don’t add anything to the sentence and the sentence can carry on with the exact same meaning even if you delete it. Thus:
Elias stops. They’re going in the wrong direction.
I need a word in the second example, whether it’s realizes, understands, or notices, unless I rework the entire sentence. The “realization” is implied by the hard cut to the next sentence in the first example.
Unless the tone of the scene demands otherwise, my writing style is very conversational. I have a lot of sentence fragments to reflect my characters’ scatterbrained thoughts. I let them be sarcastic and sassy within the narration. I leave in instances of “just” (another crutch word) when I think it helps the sentence. Example:
…but it’s just another cave to Elias.
Deleting the “just” wouldn’t hit as hard or read as dismissive and resigned.
I may be writing in 3rd person limited, but I still let the personalities of my characters flavor everything from the syntax to metaphor choices. It’s up to you how you want to write your “voice”.
I’ll let dialogue cut off narration, like:
Not that he wouldn’t. However, “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
Sure it’s ~grammatically incorrect~ but you get more leeway in fiction. This isn’t an essay written in MLA or APA format. It’s okay to break a few rules, they’re more like guidelines anyway.
There is a time and a place to abandon this and shoot straight because oftentimes you might not realize you’re using these at all. It’s the difference between:
Blinding sunlight reflects off the window sill
And
Sunlight bounces like high-beams off the window sill
It’s up to you and what best fits the scene.
Sometimes there’s more power in not being poetic, just bluntly explicit. Situations like describing a character’s battle wounds (whatever kind of battle they might be from, whether it be war or abuse) don’t need flowery prose and if your manuscript is metaphor-heavy, suddenly dropping them in a serious situation will help with the mood and tonal shift, even if your readers can’t quite pick up on why immediately.
Whatever the case is, pick a metaphor that fits the narrator. If my narrator is comparing a shade of red to something, pick a comparison that makes sense.
Red like the clouds at sunset might make sense for a character that would appreciate sunsets. It’s romantic but not sensual, it’s warm and comforting.
Red like lipstick stains on a wine glass hints at a very different image and tone.
Metaphor can also either water down the impact of something, or make it so much worse so pay attention to what you want your reader to feel when they read it. Are you trying to shield them from the horror or dig it in deep?
Nothing sticks out on a page quite like a line of narrative all by itself. Abusing this tactic will lessen its effect so save single sentence paragraphs for lines you want to hammer your audiences with. Lines like romantic revelations, or shocking twists, or characters giving up, giving in. Or just a badass line that deserves a whole paragraph to itself.
I do it all the time just like this.
Your writing style might not feature a bunch of chunky paragraphs to emphasize smaller lines of text (or if you’re writing a fic on A03, the size of the screen makes many paragraphs one line), but if yours does, slapping a zinger between two beefy paragraphs helps with immersion.
Not gibberish! These, like single-sentence paragraphs, mix up the usual flow of the narrative that are lists of concepts with or without conjunctions.
Asyndeton: We came. We saw. We conquered. It was cold, grey, lifeless.
Polysyndeton: And the birds are out and the sun is shining and it might rain later but right now I am going to enjoy the blue sky and the puffy white clouds like cotton balls. They stand and they clap and they sing.
Both are for emphasis. Asyndeton tends to be "colder" and more blunt, because the sentence is blunt. Polysyntedon tends to be more exciting, overwhelming.
We came and we saw and we conquered.
The original is rather grim. This version is almost uplifting, like it's celebrating as opposed to taunting, depending on how you look at it.
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All of these are highly situational, but if you’re stuck, maybe try some out and see what happens.
*italicized quotes are from ENNS, the rest I made up on the spot save for the Veni Vidi Vici.
Part 5
Part 1
Gasp! Oh no. Dare come yet more writing advice burning adverbs at the stake? Vindictively, gleefully, manically dancing in the ashes?
No.
This is not about whether or not you should use them, but their frequency and obvious places to replace them. Most bad adverbs are the common ones that could be replaced by verbs we all know.
“She ran quickly” // “She sprinted”
“He said angrily” // “He snapped” “He chided” “He chastised”
vs.
“He ate voraciously”
“She swayed solemnly”
“She laughed sadly”
Bonus if you can add in some alliteration like ‘swayed solemnly’
If you can come up with an obvious verb to replace your verb + adverb combo, do so. If it would take more words or the closest applicable verb doesn’t hit the same vibe, then leave it. Adverbs should enhance the verb, not be redundant. Verbs shouldn’t be pretentious just to avoid them.
“She smiled happily” — most smiles are happy. Happily is redundant.
“He ran quickly” —a run is, by nature, quick
vs.
“She smiled sourly”
“He ran erratically”
Also!
The adverb need not always be after the verb.
“C accepted gladly” // “C gladly accepted”
But also
“Glad, C accepted”
“A shook their head resolutely” // “Resolute, A shook their head”
“The child skipped excitedly away.” // “Excited, the child skipped away.” // “The child skipped away, excited.”
English is flexible like that.
Which is what I mean with managing your adverb frequency. As most end in the -ly, too many in succession, on top of the repeat syntax of Subject - Verb - Adverb looks boring and dull (and so does beginning every sentence with the subject). It helps with your cadence and flow if you don’t have entire paragraphs at a time all starting with “He [verb]” or “She [verb]” or “They [verb].” We don't speak like this in natural conversation.
But at the end of the day, there are some juicy adverbs that have no equal without busting out the thesaurus for some obscure lexical nugget that no one would understand anyway.
Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.
This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.
So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.
You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.
Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”
“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”
“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.
Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.
They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at
They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~
They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.
It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.
General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.
Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.
Drip Drip Drip
Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.
You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.
Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.
The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.
If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.
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Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.