The Slaughter of Philippa’s Darlings

Oh, dear. I made a mistake. Yes, I admit it publicly, I made a mistake.

It wasn’t a dreadful or terrible mistake. It was just one borne of lack of awareness, ignorance and inexperience that combines to make me shake my head in near despair.

The other day I downloaded my story 'Moments' to my iPad and started reading. It’s a darling of mine – my favorite of all of my stories. It’s one that I threw onto the page without a lot of heavy thinking or editing.

As I read I saw some things that need tweaking. There is too much extraneous detail and back story that has no bearing on the story I'm trying to tell.

See, this story is about my fantasy me. 'I' write a book. It's successful. Not quite 'Harry Potter' or 'Fifty Shades' successful, but successful enough that 'I' get noticed and am asked to an interview. That's where it starts, but I then go on for far too many paragraphs about this other story - the one that got me there for the interview.

Since I haven't looked at it for a long while, it's fresh and it's obvious that I need to edit it with a heavy hand. I must get out the word, sentence and paragraph loppers, and get to work. After making my notes about what can go without undue distress, I start reading again and...Oops.

Or should that be ‘ouch’? I don’t know.

I began to notice a lot of 'bad' words, words that make writers itch and scratch; words that newbie writers tend to use, a lot. They are words that mark them out as newbies. They are... (drum roll).... adverbs.

Within a couple of pages they were like weeds, sprouting up everywhere and drawing so much of my attention the story was getting overwhelmed.

Out of curiosity, I popped open my laptop and did a find in the Word file.

Oops. What I found are 1,786 words ending in ‘ly ‘ (that’s ‘ly(space)’ so that extra space is deliberate). That does not include ‘ly,’ or ‘ly.’ I was almost afraid to look for those, too but being a masochist about stuff like this, I couldn’t help myself. I had to do it. It’s like a scab I must pick. So I did.

‘ly,’ = 419 occurrences. ‘ly.’ = ‘only’ 109.

I guess that means that my ‘oops’ and ‘ouch’ should be a ‘YIKES!’ That’s 2,319 uses of words ending in ‘ly’. Some of those might be valid but most… mm, probably not.

As a percentage of all the words, that isn’t huge. After all, I have 119,059 words in this book at this moment. However, it is worrying because that is almost two percent of all the words in my story so Ouch! or should that be YIKES!?

One telling point about the sheer number of these is that when I asked Word to highlight the occurrences, it stuck its virtual tongue out at me with a 'nyah, there are too many for me to show you like that!'

See, the problem is that those are probably almost all adverbs. Adverbs are, according to many experienced writers and editors, ‘bad’. These writers and editors say, and they’re mostly right, that people use adverbs when their writing is weak. It’s a way of compensating, an attempt to pump things up, to make things more exciting by tossing additive verbs in like confetti.

I'll demonstrate. Let's take a scene in which Jennifer is upset. She's just had a drawn-out, angry confrontation with someone and is livid.

* * * * *

The front door slammed behind her as she threw herself down the steps. 'That utter bastard,' she muttered under her breath as she walked away.

* * * * *

The front door slammed behind her as she threw herself down the steps. 'That utter bastard,' she muttered under her breath as she walked quickly away.

* * * * *

See that? That's what I'm talking about - that little word, quickly.

Given the scene, it's inferred that she's not going to be strolling or sauntering down the street. This is the end of a scene in which she's been fighting with someone. It's reached a point where she has to leave, so she slams out of the house. She's mad, furious, so of course she's going to walk quickly. Heck, she's probably (if she's like me) stomping and swearing and fuming.

Actually, re-reading that, I would probably change 'walked away' to 'stormed off', but that wouldn't make my point.

Throwing adverbs into a story is kind of like adding salt to a bland or boring dish, or it’s a bit like my oatmeal-flax adventure of a few weeks ago. Remember? I made soupy oatmeal. It was thin and weak so I dumped a bunch of flax (adverbs) into it to thicken it up. The result was … not … good. I mean, it was bad.

And here’s another confession for you: Until about a year or so ago, ‘adverb’ was a word I recognized but didn’t know what it meant. My only excuse, and it’s lame, is that I must have either missed those class days on which adverbs were discussed, or I slept through the explanation.

No matter. I knew they existed. I just didn’t know what they were. Along with pronouns, but that’s a different subject.

So, let’s get back to the writers and their outspoken allergy to adverbs.

There are some (and I have run into a fair number of them on Authonomy) who say that if you do not know every single dot and tittle of grammar and sentence construction you shouldn’t be writing. Ever. As in at all and period.

Hah! I say in return. Hah and Hah and HahahahaHA! *finger snap* Yeah, you! Take that!

I do know grammar. That is not a problem.

I do not know all the ins-and-outs of sentence construction and that is, according to some, a big problem.

To me, it isn’t really a big problem. It’s a matter of bad habit, of lack of awareness, and of ignorance.

I first learned about adverbs and their anathema value when I posted my first story on Authonomy. The finger-wagging of a lifetime followed (I’m convinced that person lost about ten pounds from the vigor exhibited). So I asked the question, ‘what is an adverb’.

I have no problem admitting when I don’t know something. It’s how I learn, by asking questions.

First, I got the ‘what the hell are you doing writing if you don’t know what the f*** you’re doing!?’ response.

That's a bit less than helpful, but I had seen this person around the site and knew that his favorite word is f*** in relation to others,along with c*** for anyone like me who is a woman and who dares to write without knowing what they’re doing. After having f*** and c*** directed at me, I decided the poor guy suffers from a severely limited lexicon and insecurity issues. Whatever, it's his problem, not mine.

Then a kinder person stepped up and explained. I thanked them and then went away and did some reading.

Merriam Webster’s ‘Secretarial Handbook’ is one of the two best investments I have ever made when it comes to my writing. It explained adverbs well, so well even I could understand. I should probably go back and look at pronouns, too, but that's an adventure for another day.

My vintage copy of Roget’s Thesaurus – the real one with the words listed in the back and the synonyms and antonyms listed at great length in the front was my first best writerly investment. That is so complete that it has words and meanings and all sorts of cool word stuff the more recent version only wet dreams about. But that’s a different subject, too.

So, I asked a question. I got broadsided and then got an answer, went away, read and learned.

Now I know what an adverb is, what it does, and why I don’t want to use them in my writing. Which means that faced with 2,314 uses, I have to go back through the entire story and evaluate their place, their purpose and decide how best to take the majority of them out.

What is it that they say about practice? Well, with all the practice I’ll be getting I should be pretty close to having this story perfect by the time I’m done.

Let’s see, 119,059 words on 386 pages… Reading, reviewing, modifying, weighing every single word for meaning and use… Editing and stripping and cleaning and… Yeah, this should take me about six months or so.

Well, I guess I had better get started slaughtering those adverbial darlings. In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely adverb-free day!

Best~

Philippa

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