Do adverbs still exist?

[Penny Lovestedt]

I am not a writer, but I am a voracious reader. What has happened to adverbs? Has the Great Editor in the sky declared them null and void? If so, I missed the memo. Rick Riordan is one of the worst offenders I have run across lately--in both his children's books (which is really bothersome since he is a middle school teacher) and the Tres Navarre murder mysteries, but they seem to be missing across several genres. I haven't read all of Jim's books, but he seems to get it most of the time.

[Thrythlind]

I'm not sure how you mean "missing" adverbs are never a requirement...I'm pretty sure I use them, but I also prefer to use extended descriptions of action rather than condense things into a single adverb....and then at other times I use the adverb...depending on the situation...but yeah, I have never heard anything about adverbs ever being required, so I'm really not sure what you're saying

[Gruud]

Oh, I have seen plenty of writing advice that says to dispense with them all together, and similar statements that apply to adjectives, although they are still a bit more tolerated ...

Advice that I, whether for good or for ill, have quite consciously chosen to ignore.

I'm not sure what else I'd be left with ... nouns and verbs and prepositions? 

It's all a part of the movement to write leaner prose, to always show and never tell, to write stories that play in the readers's head just like a movie, since the pundits say that's all they can handle these days.

Whether or not I will be punished for using all parts of speech remains to be seen, but I've found that I just cannot write without them.

I need those adverbs and adjectives and gerunds (on my!) no less for what they add to the picure I paint than for the lyric and rhythym of my sentences.

At least for me, without them I might as well be writing "See Jane run" ...

[meg_evonne]

I am not a writer, but I am a voracious reader. What has happened to adverbs? Has the Great Editor in the sky declared them null and void?

Yes. Why? The best explanation I've heard was from Brett Anthony Johnston, National Book Award Winner and head of Creative Writing at Harvard, who said, "If you are using an adverb, you haven't found the right verb." and he is right. This is also a rule (remember all rules can be broken and should be, but in general) that is in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. Also, the editors all are on the same page.

Yes, I didn't understand this over five years ago when it crossed my learning curve. I mean, how can you write without them, right?

Here is an example of why and I'd love to see your examples if you disagree. It can be a real challenge to find that right verb, but when you do? That short cut with the 'ly' simply can't compare.

I recently did a bit of editing on a friend's wonderful quick sparked first-draft paragraph. Remember first drafts are, 'get her done, get it down'.  The line was 'I slowly and deliberately relaxed my hands on the steering wheel' or something like that. Get  the feel of this alternative.... 'knuckle, by knuckle, I peeled my hands...' To me the second hits my gut. The first reports it to me. As a writer, you go for the gut hit, not the report. (Subject to all-rules-are-meant-to-be-broken rule.) And that is in all genres, including literary.

Like I said, post a challenge and let us have at them with alternatives and then we can look the results.

[Penny Lovestedt]

Actually, what I was referring to was using adjective forms rather than adverb forms. For example: He drove slow, rather than he drove slowly.

[LizW65]

Actually, what I was referring to was using adjective forms rather than adverb forms. For example: He drove slow, rather than he drove slowly.

(Bolding mine)  Well, that's bad grammar, but it can be an effective vocal tic in, for example, a first-person work.  Overused, I find it annoying rather than edgy, though.

[Thrythlind]

as I stated earlier, whether I use adverbs or not depends on the situation and which perspective I am currently anchoring the narration around...I do third person, but my narration still tends to be modeled off the thoughts, personality and experience of the central character of the scene

adverbs can give a rather halting sense to action that very well fits someone who only has a modest understanding of the circumstances they are facing...characters with more applicable knowledge will be more precise and fluid or evocative

[Gruud]

@ Meg

The exampe you give is really more a question of converting telling to showing, and it's a good one. Your way is definately better than what you had found.

And I am trying to do a better job of showing. I am more conginzant of it, and when I review my work I do seem to be showing more than I had originally thought. And I have little doubt once I finish the first draft and make that first edit pass I will be doing a lot more "conversions".

And just to be cleasr, the rest of this post is not directed at you (although you're welcome to play along). You give quite a lot of very useful advice, and  I wouldn't want you to think I was picking a fight with you or anything, because I'm certainly not.

I just get a little dismayed when I read that writers should stop using certain parts of speech, or should write down to the level of their perspective readers, as viewed by other members of the writing profession.

And it's not necessarily a new thing. I belive it was Mark Twain who advocated, when editting, to kill any adjective you come across.

And it just makes me crazy.

As an example of a strong verb being helped by an adverb, take the prhase "smoke billowing skyward".

Now, obviously smoke (almost) always goes up .. and yet, in my mind the adverb "skyward" as used does add ... something, by lifting the reader's internal eye upward, following the smoke as it rises, possibly to be sent "wafting westward" by some upper level wind.

Sticking with the noun smoke, there can be all kinds and colors of smoke: Oily, black smoke boiling out; thick gray smoke the color of storm clouds; the hissing white smoke of a fire being doused with water.

But to hear some pundits, these things are all to be cut down, editted out, thrown away in favor of some shorter, tighter text that has more punch.

But geez, its not like they'll be paying us by the word (if they ever do  ) so why this almost blanket antagonism against perfectly useful parts of speech?

That's what I don't get. 

[LizW65]

I think much of it has to do with the popularity of a stripped-down, minimalist style of writing exemplified by authors such as Elmore Leonard and Robert Parker.  Don't waste time describing people or things, just get right to the action!  I don't like this style myself; it's way too bare-bones and uninteresting for my taste, but a lot of people with a lot of influence seem to love it, and it's somehow become the template for all writing.  However, I think it's possible to find a balance between that and over-the-top purple prose, and I do agree that a lot of adverbs just aren't necessary; (I tend to overuse them in my first drafts as a kind of shorthand, after which I go back and eliminate most of them in favor of stronger, more appropriate verbs.)

[jtaylor]

And yet one of the most wildly popular Fantasy novels to come out recently is Patric Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles, and it is the opposite of the minimalist style being pushed by most of the industry. Look at the prologue to Name of the Wind:

    Prologue

    A Silence of Three Parts

    It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

    The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumns leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music….but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

    Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

    The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

    The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

    The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

[Kali]

Excellent writing will always trump the rules.

Most people who break the rules are not excellent writers.

Everyone thinks they're an excellent writer.

[Aminar]

I was going to mention Rothfuss.  And Erickson.  And Martin.  I can't consider any of them minimilists.  And yet there are times in all of their writing where description is done perfectly in a few words.

My favorite example is from Memories of Ice.
He uses the phrase "cold as a rapists's touch"
This line on its own conveys cold, unnatural, terrifying, wrongness; all in 5 innocuous small words(except maybe rapist's).  The brilliance there astounds me, and he does it all without adverbs.