Tag Archives: adverb

It was really, just so—should you cut them all out?

Late last year, I was doing a quick/final once-over of a manuscript. I decided to see how many times I used “just.” The answer was around 300, or about once per page. I went through most of the manuscript and cut out about 90 of them.

Proud of myself for making that effort, I tweeted about it (naturally). An author friend responded that she had cut 242 justs from her manuscript the week before. (Granted, she was editing one of her early manuscripts, so I have no idea how many she started with.)

I had a momentary panic. Yes, this manuscript had been accepted for publication already, but did I need to delete the rest of my justs?

And justs are just one of this variety of word that pretty much everyone uses—and overuses—because it’s so common in speech. But in most writing, these words are pretty empty, almost like throat clearing. (I’ve committed a few of these “sins” in here. Catch them?) A few favorites:

  • just
  • really
  • very
  • pretty (as an adverb)
  • so
  • actually
  • finally
  • certainly
  • about
  • suddenly
  • almost
  • definitely
  • even
  • probably
  • slightly
  • sort of
  • kind of
  • around

But if they’re so awfully awful, why don’t we just cut all of them all out? It would certainly be even easier that way (though there would be a number of really odd gaps leftover). Or, conversely, do we argue that we want our writing to reflect how people really speak?

I think the answer is somewhere in between. As Arthur Plotnik says in Spunk & Bite,

Just because intensifiers course through informal speech, must we also use them in journalism and literature? Not necessarily—but we certainly can use them in situations where they feel natural, or communicate a particular tone. At the very least, we should not hamstring our writing styles trying to replace each intensifier with a more powerful locution. (123)

What does that mean? Don’t solve underwriting by overwriting every use. Because how is that any better?

So what should we do? Honestly, I’m not going to say you have to eliminate 50% of all your intensifiers (or de-intensifiers as the case may be). I do think we should be aware of how often we use them—so pull out the Find function and get a count. (In Word 2007 and up, if you Highlight All or use the Reading Highlight function, it gives you a count. Select Whole Words Only, though! Just != justice, justified, etc. etc.)

If the count is fairly high—let’s say one use for every two pages (or more frequently)—start at the beginning and check out how you used it. Take the word out of the sentence. It will probably may lose a shade of meaning—but is that meaning really necessary? Does it actually change the sense of the sentence or even the voice in a bad way? If not, finally cut it.

Editor Alicia Rasley gives more guidelines in an edittorrent post that has stuck with me for almost 3 years:

Of course, sometimes it works to over-modify (especially for comic effect). But this is something to watch for. “An inch below the bottom of her skirt” is a good description. “A little bit more than an inch” makes me envision some nun with a ruler measuring the space. Precision is actually distracting sometimes.

And especially watch out for redundancy. Mountains are high, but some are higher than others, so maybe we will allow “high mountains” (I did grow up in a valley below some not very high mountains, I guess– 3000-4000 feet, so I’d allow “high mountains” if you’re talking about the Rockies, say). But “toweringly high?” Come on.

But if the specific meaning is necessary, if the sense of the sentence is damaged or if the voice breaks because you took the word out, leave it in. If the modifier you’re checking is vital to most of the occurrences you find, use your judgment about whether you need to check the rest. Yep, you can stop. You have my permission.

What do you think? When do you take out intensifiers—and when do you leave them in?

Picture credits: Edit Ruthlessly by Dan Patterson; ruthless editing by Joanna Penn

The lesser of two evils: weak verb or adverb use?

I have a problem with smiling. And nodding.

enigmatic smileThee problem is this: there’s only a handful of words in the English language to express those actions: smile, beam, grin, smirk, simper. Nodding is even worse: nod. Other versions of this one tend to draw attention to the words instead of showing the characters’ actions: bobbed his head (“up and down,” if you want to make it even more annoying).

But the real problem here is that every smile and every nod don’t look like or mean the same thing. There are sinister smiles, eager grins, coy smiles, small smiles, half smiles, half smirks. There are greeting nods, indicating nods, assenting nods, effusive nods, reluctant nods, slow nods, quick nods.

Obviously my problem is not identifying the kinds of smiles and nods humans use. My problem comes from describing them in writing, because that’s against the rules. There are a lot of so-called rules in writing. As with anything with a body of ad hoc regulations, many of the rules contradict each other. Like these:

1. Never use adverbs. Ever! (Corollary: adjectives are bad; they are trouble!)

and

2. Always use strong verbs. Until you make yourself, your characters and your readers tired!

(We’ll talk more about Rule #1 another day.)

When do they conflict? I’ll show you. Consider:

He gave her a kind smile OR He smiled at her kindly

He shot her a bemused look OR He looked at her bemusedly

He gave his thumb a pensive chew (LOL) OR He chewed his thumb pensively

mmm lunchAnd do they need the forbidden modifier? I think so. Can you infer the meaning of his grin with just “He smiled at her”? (I have two images in mind here: “He smiled at her. Mmm. Lunch.” and “He smiled at her. Oh, a friend.”) A thumb chewer may be a small child seeking comfort, an adult pondering a problem or a guy with a nervous habit.

Now, of course, there are lots of other ways to show the intent behind nods and smiles. But setting aside all of the myriad other possible constructions, what do you think: which of the above contrasts are better? Which is the lesser of two evils?

Photo credits—Mona Lisa: Songkran; Jack-o-lantern: Joanie Cahill

Verbs with muscle

By Janga

Breathes there a writer with prose so perfect that she has not been told at least once to “show; don’t tell”? One of the best ways to follow this cardinal rule is to use strong verbs. Weak verbs are generic. They can be used in a wide range of situations. Strong verbs are precise.

walk vs pranceContrary to popular thought, not all action verbs are strong verbs. In the sentence “Ali walked down the road,” “walked” is an action verb. It is also a generic verb. It tells us that Ali is using her feet to advance across a surface and nothing else.

Skilled writers use strong verbs to reveal character and situation. If we change “walked” to a more precise verb, we show our readers Ali’s movements. “Strolled,” “pranced,” and “trudged” are just a few of the choices a writer might use to make Ali’s movement more vivid for the reader. Look at this passage from Judith Ivory’s Black Silk to see how a consummate artist shows a girl moving through a crowd.

The girl jostled her way through gripping hands and recriminations. She elbowed one man and grabbed another by the collar. She wanted to be in their midst. She was scanning the men’s encroaching, remonstrating faces, looking them over as thoroughly as they were trying to turn her about. After a minute of this tussle—the men would not organize themselves for her inspection—she clambered up over the edge of the billiard table, standing on it to look down on them all.

Strong verbs also help writers sidestep the adverb trap. Tessa Dare rightly observed in the “to be” discussion that adverbs used well can make prose more vibrant, but choosing a strong verb allows us to avoid graceless, adverb-heavy prose.

Let’s consider “Ali walked down the road” again. Suppose I have written this sentence as the first in a new chapter. I reread it, and I know that I need more. I recast the sentence: “Ali walked slowly down the road, as if burdened with the weight of the world.” By substituting a strong verb, I can cut a fifteen-word sentence to five words and eliminate a cliché in the process: “Ali trudged down the road.”

I confess that I am an overwriter, so I spend much of my revision time pruning my prose. Experience has taught me that strong verbs foster concise writing. Have/has/had phrases often signal wordiness that can be eliminated with a verb change. For example, if I rewrite “Lucia had had yet another argument with her mother” as “Lucia argued with her mother again,” I have cut the awkward repetition “had had” and exchanged a weak verb for a powerful one. In the original sentence, a strong verb (“argue”) is buried in a nominalization (a noun created from a verb or some other part of speech).

hayden flexesConsider this sentence: “Sari’s words caused Anthony great confusion.” The sentence is grammatically correct. Moreover, its meaning is clear. But how much more vivid and exact is the revised sentence “Sari’s words confused Anthony”? Or even better, “Sari’s words baffled Anthony.”

Some choices are stylistic, and they are intimately connected to the writer’s voice. But whether the style is simple and unadorned, lush and lyrical, or somewhere in between, the writer’s aim is vigorous prose. Cutting the “lard,” to borrow Richard Lanham’s term, and choosing verbs with muscle will move the writer closer to her goal.

About the author
Janga started reading her mother’s romance novels the summer she turned ten and has continued to be an avid reader of romance. Even a Ph. D. in English and years in academia were not enough to diminish her love of the genre. The enthusiasm of aspiring romance writers on the Eloisa James bulletin board refired her dream of writing a romance novel. She is in the process of revising her first mss, The Long Way Home, a contemporary with a Southern accent. She blogs at Romance Vagabonds and Just Janga.

Photo credits—Girl walking/prancing: Sanja Gjenero; Boy flexing: Jordan McCollum