Those Evil Adverbs and Adjectives

 I think it was Hemingway who said get rid of adverbs. I may be weak on this, especially after reading Melissa Donovan's What’s Wrong with Adjectives and Adverbs? on Writing Forward. Sometimes I think this failure is due to hearing too much in my head, and other times I put it down to laziness. It could be I am just not that good, but can I give my ego a little solace?

Ms. Donovan gives some very good examples of how to improve a weak sentence without modifiers:

 

In the examples above, loud is an adjective that modifies the noun sound. The word fast is an adverb that modifies the verb running. Both loud and fast are modifiers, which give the reader a better visual by providing more information. But in these examples, loud sound and walking fast could be considered weak language choices, because stronger, more vivid words are available. Instead of using adjective-noun and adverb-verb couplings, we can find nouns and verbs that don’t require modification:

• I heard a din.
• She’s sprinting.

And for intensifiers:

Sometimes we need to use these words. It’s not that writers should wipe them out of their vocabularies. But whenever we can find a single word that captures the meaning we want to convey, we’ll end up with more vivid language and a better piece of writing. Let’s see what we can do to remove the intensifiers from our two examples (“he’s very sad” and “the house is super big”).

• He’s heartbroken, bereaved, or disconsolate.
• The house is mammoth, titanic, massive.

I also like the first comment, if one uses adverbs or adjectives, then find the right ones.

Back in law school, I had a Contracts professor who pointed out what he called weasel words. They were always adverbs. He remains in my mind when I write.

As for myself, more to keep in my mind when I revise my next story.

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