I love a good adverb and I get really pissed at adverb nazis; used properly, as you just did, they're stone cold gorgeous.

Yep. I know that they're often used improperly by beginning writers, but the adverb nazis are like people who'd take the toepicks off Michelle Kwan's skates because beginning skaters are too prone to use them as brakes.

I didn't go to that school. And I'm all for sublety. If some of the conflicts in romances played out in real life... Well, life usually doesn't work that way, is all I'm saying.

Wrod. And often the conflicts/setups just seem so forced and contrived that I have no patience with them.

And while I know you can't have a story without conflict, and there has to be something keeping the hero and heroine from reaching resolution on page 10 rather than page 350, I always make my protagonists like each other as well want each other. Partly that's because I like reading about friends and allies working together against the story's opposing forces, and partly because I find it a lot easier to believe the happily ever after if the hero and heroine like each other and work well together.

I know that they're often used improperly by beginning writers, but the adverb nazis are like people who'd take the toepicks off Michelle Kwan's skates because beginning skaters are too prone to use them as brakes

HA! Yes, this. I've always tended toward the "I can't use adverbs? Um, bite me continuously, deeply, richly and terminally, yo" type of reply.

My sisters in adverbs! "I decided to come home early," he said could mean so many different things.

Really.

It's weird. I use a shitload of adverbs and the occasional meaty adjective, and yet, I have never once been told by an editor - and I've had some world-class, world-famous editors - to tone back any of them.

I wonder who came up with the "write like Hemingway, but without the poetry! Pretend you've got an iron rod up your ass!" motif? Screw whoever it was, anyway.

I use adverbs. I use adjectives. My seventh novel, all through bigass publishing houses, comes out in October. So, sucks-boo to the adverbsaries.

Or, alternately, pftlypftlypftly.

I've always tended toward the "I can't use adverbs? Um, bite me continuously, deeply, richly and terminally, yo" type of reply.

Bwah!

Thing is, I do overuse adverbs in my rough drafts. So I look at them closely when I'm editing, because I know some of them will be unnecessary. But if it's the best way I can think of to say what I'm trying to say, the adverb stays. Just as passive voice sometimes gets to stay, or any use of a form of "to be" when I'd have to jump through hoops and write something awkward rather than a nice straightforward "He was such-and-such."

So, sucks-boo to the adverbsaries.

Or, alternately, pftlypftlypftly.

But which one of those shows instead of tells?

But which one of those shows instead of tells?

(looking innocent)

It's all in the POV perspective....

I think the rules are made for insecure, beginning writers.

Good writers don't need rules.

Bad writers like rules, but don't realize they can follow every single rule to the letter and they will still be bad.

Beginning writers trying to find a voice and figure out the limits of the form are the only ones who might benefit from rules, because they can maybe skip overblown crap they will only have to cut later. Trying to avoid adverbs, for example, might make them really look hard at how expressive their dialogue is.

Still, it's an awfully limited subset of writers who will find them at all helpful.

Robin, that was a superb breakdown of it.

You (we, you, universal, us) have to take the personality and reality of the writer into consideration, as well; the surest way to get me to to flatly refuse to do something under any circs at all is to tell me it's written in stone.

Because I'll find a creative (edit: and usually infuriating) way to show that it isn't.