symphonicgryphon:
I've noticed that people constantly tell you to avoid adverbs. Why is that?

l;akjsdfkl; adverbs. They are the WORST.

The most adament anti-adverb writer I can think of is Stephen King (I quote his writing advice a lot, I know, but that’s because I agree with everything he says). This is what he says in On Writing:

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day … fifty the day after that … and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s—GASP!!—too late.”

Basically adverbs are a cheap way to describe something that the writer has otherwise failed to evoke. They are the embodiment of “telling” instead of showing. For example, if you say someone “Slammed the door angrily”, that’s just silly, because 1. we should already know that character is angry from his/her dialogue or actions in the scene and 2. it’s just redundant because obviously when someone slams a door, 9 times out of 10 it’s because they’re mad.

In my Why Henry James Should Rewrite The Hunger Games post the other day, I mentioned that Stephen King and I turned in our not-yet-existing graves when Suzanne Collins wrote that Katniss said something “icily”. First of all, it was obvious from whatever it was that she said that she didn’t say it in a friendly, bubbly tone. Plus, how does one say something “icily”? Did ice come out of Katniss’s mouth? Was her breath cold? A lot of times adverbs like these don’t even make any sense.

Hope that helps you understand!