An adverb is just a word. That's all it is. It's not the antichrist and it's not the second coming, either.

They're like anything else - it's how and where you use them. Also, why you use them.

Oh, I agree. It's one of those many, many cases where a piece of sound writing advice--"Watch your adverbs, for they often mean telling rather than showing, or overexplaining"--is taken as an absolute fundamentalist Rule That Must Never Be Broken. If it ends in -ly, Thou Shalt Excise It.

Thing is, in my work, 75% of my adverbs don't belong in the finished version. I let myself use them freely in rough drafts, because all those "said thuslies" are like my notes to myself indicating what I'm trying to accomplish.

Some of them, I keep. I've got an "exquisitely, excrutiatingly" in my new version of Anna's first chapter that's staying, because those are the perfect words, dammit. It's not tied to a "said," though.

Part of it for me is I've entered that stage of an unpublished writer's career where my obsession is figuring out just what I have to do to get past all the damned gatekeepers, and deciding what compromises I will and won't make. So I'm questioning every adverb, because some gatekeepers care. And I'm upping the action in my early chapters, because the gatekeepers don't seem to like the subtle. And while I'm not about to change my central conflict, after having more readers than not question whether class difference is a strong enough conflict to build a 100,000-word novel around, I'm trying to be a lot more explicit about WHY it's not something that could be easily overcome.

Those are compromises I'm willing to make. What I'm not going to do is write anything that doesn't resonate with me because it sells, nor step away from what I'm passionate about because gritty Regencies aren't what's on the shelves.

Susan roooooocks.

Your mileage - whether reading or writing - may definitely vary. I have a dislike for "said" being used in every piece of dialogue; I find it particularly infuriating and pointless when there are only two characters on a scene. As in:

Thom and Billy, alone in the vast boardroom, stared down at the city lights.

"I'm going to Memphis tomorrow," Billy said. "It's time."

"I agree," Thom said. "Someone has to deal with it."

"I should probably go home and pack," Billy said.

Um, yo? Two characters in conversation. I am a grownup, who can follow dialogue. MUST you tell me which character is speaking, every single time?

edit: pssst, Susan, check your spellings. It's "excruciatingly": c not t.

It's correct in the manuscript. Though, now that I remember it, I typed it wrong there the first time, and Word helpfully underlined it in red.

(I have to give Word credit where it's due, since I bitch about it so much.)

I have a dislike for "said" being used in every piece of dialogue; I find it particularly infuriating and pointless when there are only two characters on a scene.

Oh, I agree. I only use it as often as I think it needs to be there to keep who's speaking clear. Because it's equally a pet peeve of mind to lose track of who said what and have to go back to the last attribution and put in the "he saids" and "she saids" myself.

I'd rather see a writer use illustrative actions in conversation than simply state "he said" "she said", anyway.

I try to mix them fairly evenly, though action tags are another thing that are second draft or beyond for me. They're just not one of the things that come to me early in the process.

What are action tags?

I find that if I'm seeing the character, I'm seeing them from moment one, and knowing whether they're sighing or stretching or feeling guilty or sneaking a look over someone's shoulder is part of that for me.

I can't do broad sketches on a character, and fill things in later; I just don't work that way.

Are action tags all the fancy words for "said"? He shouted, she spat, they ejaculated?

Are action tags all the fancy words for "said"? He shouted, she spat, they ejaculated?

Said means said. It means, spoke. Words coming out of a human being's mouth; a specific physical action.

When I say illustrative action, I mean I'd rather two parts of a character's spoken thoughts be broken by an illustration of what they're doing rather than by the author telling me they're speaking.

Such as

"Damn!" Jane glared across the kitchen at the cereal bowl, heaped to the brim with granola. "I can't believe I forgot to buy milk again."

rather than

"Damn!" Jane said (or remarked or shouted or whatever). "I can't believe I forgot to buy milk again."

"Jane said", to me, is lazy and incomplete in this instance. She could be anyone. There's nothing of the woman in the author informing me, the reader, that the character said something.

I want to be shown.

"Damn!" Jane glared across the kitchen at the cereal bowl, heaped to the brim with granola. "I can't believe I forgot to buy milk again."

And that's what I mean by action tags.

I find that if I'm seeing the character, I'm seeing them from moment one, and knowing whether they're sighing or stretching or feeling guilty or sneaking a look over someone's shoulder is part of that for me.

Well, I'm well aware I have what's perhaps the world's least visual brain. I hear my characters a lot more than I see them, except on rare occasions. Though I've gotten to where I can naturally and vividly visualize things up to 25% of the time instead of more like 5%, so maybe I'm getting better. But I'm fighting my brain's hardwiring on this one.