The Bane of My Writing Existence: -ly Adverbs

  Multiple writing books that I have read advise against using -ly adverbs, but none do so in such detail as Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King, which I reviewed here. I still highly recommend it as a guide for new writers looking for tips on fiction writing mechanics.

     In their chapter on dialogue, the authors spend significant time showing that new writers are especially tempted to use adverbs when it comes to dialogue. Then they show why those -ly adverbs are unnecessary and should be avoided. For example, in my novel, I used the following line:

     “Get up, girl, and stop blithering!” The voice exclaimed angrily as Vixa found herself yanked to her feet by her arm. 

      

    A rewrite eliminating the unnecessary adverb becomes:

     "Get up, girl, and stop blithering!" The voice exclaimed as Vixa found herself yanked to her feet by her arm.

      

In that sentence, "angrily" is not a necessary word, since it is obvious from the context that the speaker is angry. "Angrily" is explaining dialogue that does not need explaining, and the authors of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers say that can be patronizing and distracting to readers if done over and over again.

     In the rewritten sentence, I eliminated the word "angrily" because the line itself indicates anger, between the dialogue itself and the action word "yanked."

     What about sentences where the emotion behind the dialogue is not obvious? The answer Self-Editing for Fiction Writers provides: fix the dialogue so an -ly adverb isn't necessary. It will make the writing more dynamic. I wrote the following line:

“A demon? Samil?” Vixa asked incredulously. “Those are just fables and myths.”

     Let's see what I can do to get rid of the adverb.

"A demon? Samil? You do not truly believe gods and demons walk the earth. All that is just fable and myth!" Vixa said.

     I suppose that is better. Well, at least it interferes less with the dialogue and distracts the reader less. Well, that is the intention. Let me know if that is true.

      Beyond dialogue, the authors of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers advise against using -ly adverbs in almost all situations, since writing can be so much more descriptive without them. The authors believe that almost every instance of an -ly adverb is just lazy writing, since the adverb is just fixing a verb that does not quite fit the circumstance. The writing will be more succinct, descriptive, and sophisticated if a more appropriate verb renders the adverb unnecessary. For instance, from my own writing:

     Without another word, Lord Laric turned from the room and went back into the nursery, roughly swinging the door shut behind him.

The sentence could be more precise if I wrote

     Without another word, Lord Laric turned and went back into the nursery, jerking the door shut behind him. 

"Jerking" conveys a more sudden action that is still rough, and it also seems to convey a little more about Lord Laric as a character than "roughly swinging" does.

     Unfortunately, I seem to use -ly adverbs a lot. Avoiding them will be a struggle. I will probably leave some in the first draft, just to keep my flow going, but I hope to have very few -ly adverbs in my final draft, since I think the challenge of getting rid of them makes my writing more dynamic. What do you all think?

Writer's Tip: Description: Utilizing the Senses

     I am currently just beginning of another book on writing called Description: How to engage readers and keep stories moving by creating vivid, believable depictions of people, places, events and actions by Monica Wood. It's pretty helpful so far, and it seems to be holding true to its rather lengthy title. I'll post a book review when I've finished it.
    One of the first tips the author offered really struck me as helpful. In Chapter One, she talked about how new writers tend to stick to the sense of sight when describing something, and they neglect smell, sound, taste, and touch. She says that using the other senses in addition to sight really helps to enrich descriptive writing. That technique invites readers to empathize more with the character and gives them a deeper understanding of what is happening in the story.
     Let's give it a try. Here is a descriptive passage from my novel:

     Liam got up, careful to not use the grimy steaming hot pipes for balance like he had the first few times he had used the corridors. He took up a jog, anxious that his mark not escape him this time. He expertly ducked under the low pipes and went around a few clouds of steam that hissed out of the cracks in the lead pipes. He did all this with his peripheral vision, because at his speed, he had to keep his eyes to the ground to watch out for the heads, legs, and arms of the dozens of people who used this passageway as a home. He did not trip on the uneven floor, even in the dim light that came only from the main gallery.

    It's reasonably descriptive, I guess, but it heavily utilizes the visual sense. The word "grimy" slightly evokes the sense of touch, and "hissed" brings up the sense of hearing, but it does not see like it's enough. Also, I'm pretty sure that my protagonist, having been raised on the streets, has no idea what the word" peripheral" means. I just noticed that. So, I am going to try to fix that part of the passage, and I am also going to try to add more of the tactile sense to it. 

Liam got up, careful not to pull himself up by the grimy steam pipes. He had done that the first few times he had used the corridors, and he still had the scaly burn scars on his fingers and palms as reminders of those early days. He took up a jog, anxious that his mark not get away from him yet again. Liam expertly ducked under the low pipes and went around the few clouds of scalding steam that hissed out of them. Despite all the overhead dangers, though, Liam had to keep his eyes to the ground to make sure he did not step on the heads, legs, and arms of the dozens of steam-sticky people who used this passageway as a home. Liam managed to not trip on any of them, nor did the crumbling floor trouble him, even in the dim light that barely managed to penetrate the narrow passageway from the main gallery. 

There, I kept the "grimy steam pipes." I also added the bit about the "scaly burn scars" so that readers could start to feel like they were in his skin. The steam is now "scalding," and the homeless people are "steam-sticky." Okay, that last one is probably not a good word to use. I've already talked about clouds of steam in the sentence before. Also, it just sounds stupid. How about "sopping mass of people who used this passageway..."? That sounds better. Next, I'll fix that and try to add some smell and taste.

Liam rose, careful not to pull himself up by the grimy steam pipes. He had done that the first few times he had used the corridors, and he still had the scaly burn scars on his fingers and palms as reminders of those early days. He took up a brisk jog, anxious that his mark not get away from him yet again. Liam expertly ducked under the low pipes and went around the few scalding clouds that hissed out of them. Despite all the overhead dangers, though, Liam had to keep his eyes to the crumbling ground to make sure he did not step on the dark shapes of the sopping masses of people who called the passageway home. Liam lept over sweaty arms, legs, and heads, and he could almost taste sweat in the air. But, he did not wrinkle his nose at the heavy odor of unwashed humanity. He was too used to it. 

There. Some taste and smell. The taste is obvious-- the taste of sweat in the air. The smell part is probably pretty obvious, too, actually. I've already done sight and touch. I suppose the only one left is sound.

Liam rose, careful not to pull himself up by the grimy steam pipes. He had done that the first few times he had used the corridors, and he still had the scaly burn scars on his fingers and palms as reminders of those early days. He took up a brisk jog, anxious that his mark not get away from him again. Liam expertly ducked under the low clanging pipes and darted around the few scalding clouds that hissed out of them. Despite all the overhead dangers, though, Liam had to keep his eyes to the crumbling ground to make sure he did not step on the dark shapes of the murmuring masses of people who called the sopping passageway home. Liam lept over sweaty arms, legs, and heads, and he could almost taste sweat in the air. But, he did not wrinkle his nose at the heavy odor of unwashed humanity. He was too used to it. 

There. Sound. The pipes not only hiss, now; they clang. And, the people murmur. So, in that one paragraph, I've used sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. I think that it is much better and much more evocative than the first paragraph, which really only used sight. Maybe it is a little too much description, but if I have to, I will edit down later. 

Let me know what you think!

Point of View and Plot

         Every single book I have read about writing has emphasized just how important point of view is. There's first person, third person, omniscient, and even head-hopping, where you jump from person to person. I decided to go with third person for my book. It just seemed like the easiest one for me to do. I felt like it would be too difficult to do first person my first time out, and it just seemed to easy for me to get sloppy using omniscient, where the writer can pretty much just reveal whatever he/she wants to the readers. Third person was a good way to keep myself in line. 
         I didn't know just how important point of view could be to the development of a novel until I actually went to write one. In my first chapter, I started from the point of view of the Lady Clariss, who is in the midst of a small... insanity, shall we say. However, at one point, I thought that it would be interesting to show the reaction of the household staff to her behavior. I had a couple of good lines expressing the thoughts of the young maid who had just run into the room to find her mistress going mad.
     Problem: I'd already written a few paragraphs from Lady Clariss' point of view, and I was determined to write just one point of view for each chapter. I couldn't just jump in and out of the then-nameless young maids head. So, I decided to the maid's thoughts on the situation.
       However, the more I thought about it, it seemed like a better idea to use the maid's point of view to show what was going on. Lady Clariss was a bit out of her head, and on top of that, she's wasn't a likable character at all. I didn't want to stick the reader inside her head for an entire chapter. It would have just been a string of incoherent thoughts of a selfish and slightly sadistic madwoman. That didn't seem at all like an enjoyable reading experience. 
      So, I decided to go with the maid's point of view. First, I had to give her a name. On a whim, I went with Vixa. Just unusual enough for a fantasy novel without going over the top, I think. I started writing from her viewpoint, and the more I wrote, the more I got to know her. The more I liked her. 
     My protagonist, Liam, still needed a bit of a backstory. I didn't know how to get him out of the house of an aristocrat as a baby to growing up on the streets while not letting him know of his roots. At the same time, I needed to make his birthparents thoroughly unlikable. Since Vixa was so conveniently present in the scene, I decided to use her to take him away as a baby (it wasn't exactly a kidnapping. It was more like a rescue after the Liam's parents  attempted to kill him. Yes, as a baby). 
       Vixa could have dropped him off at an orphanage or a church or something. But, my society was ruled by a tyrant that controlled the society's main religion. Tyrants generally don't allocate funds for orphanages. So, no orphanage or church. That just left adoptive parents. Vixa was taking him, I thought, so why not her as an adoptive parent. 
       Thus, Vixa became a significant character in the book while Lady Clariss' role was minimized. Her addition completely changed Liam's backstory. I am so much more pleased with Liam as a protagonist that I was before. He was so bland before Vixa came along, and I didn't really know what to do with his personality. Vixa, as a character, gave Liam a parent to love and be influenced by, which added a depth to him that he hadn't had before I threw Vixa into the mix. Plus, since she died before the main part of the story (there is a fifteen year gap between the first and second chapters), Liam can grieve over her a bit throughout the story. Instant character depth. 
       So, the point of all this? Point of view is really, really important when developing a novel. It makes some characters important and others not so much.  The plot changed entirely because of the point of view that I chose. So, I suppose the lesson here is, pay attention to point of view. It matters. 

Book Review: Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print

     I just finished Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King. I thought I would post a  review of it while it was still fresh in my mind.

     I decided to read this book after Fiction Writing for Dummies cited to it several times. I figured I should just go straight to the source. And am I glad I did. 

     While the authors caution in the introduction that their book is for the editing process and not the first draft, after reading it, I have to disagree. It has some great tips that new writers need to know on everything from plot structure to word choice. The book contains the following chapters: 

Show and Tell

Characterization and Exposition

Point of View

Dialogue Mechanics

See How It Sounds

Interior Monologue

Easy Beats

Breaking Up Is Easy To Do

Once Is Usually Enough

Proportion

Sophistication

Voice

    The section on dialogue was particularly helpful. It had concrete tips on how to create living dialogue. The other books on writing that I've read so far have been rather vague when it comes to that subject. This one was quite on point, though.

     For me, one of the most valuable ideas was for authors to make sure that they don't explain dialogue that can really stand for itself. And, if a writer must explain dialogue, they should do a rewrite to make that unnecessary. For example, on pages 49-50:

     What not to do: "'I find that difficult to accept,' she said in astonishment."

     The rewrite: "She dropped the whisk, splattering meringue up the cupboard door. "You can't be serious."

      The first sentence above has to explain the dialogue, which, on its own, cannot properly convey the feeling of astonishment. So, the writer is reduced to telling the reader instead of showing. The rewrite of the sentence fixes that and conveys so much more about just how astonished the character was. Very useful.

      The other section of the book that I found particularly helpful was the one on "Sophistication."It had all the little tips about how to really make your writing dynamic and appealing to the reader. It's the little tips a new writer needs to know: get rid of adverbs as much as possible (anything that ends in -ly); try using commas instead of periods for dialogue; don't use italics or exclamation points unless they are really, really called for. I have a habit of using adverbs in my writing, so that's something I'll have to work on. I will probably do a special post on it later on down the road.
      Conclusion: 5/5 stars. I liked it so much that I bought a copy for myself. I am very certain that I will refer to it frequently.

     Cheers! And, good luck to all those in Hurricane Irene's path. I'm thinking of you.

Writer's Tip: Use Short Sentences

I recently finished The Writer's Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules for Mastering Your Craft by Steven Goldsberry. I will post a review on it later, but right now I would like to address his 45th rule: Be Brief.

      Goldsberry quotes Hemmingway, who said that his editor for the Kansas City Star gave him the following set of rules: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." Goldsberry amended part of the phrase to be "Use shorter sentences." There, he says that he means it in the sense that writers should cut unnecessary words. 

      I think that also probably means to not pack so much into one sentence. Of course, that means that one must be sure to not creating choppy sentences that are repetitive. After reading over some of my previous posts, I think I might be guilty of that. However, my focus now is creating brief sentences, not avoiding them. 

      So, two tasks: 1. Cut superfluous language; 2. Don' pack too much into one sentence. 

      I am going to have to work on that. I read over some of what I have written for my book, and I did both of those things several times. Of course, I was just rushing to get what was in my head onto the page, so I did not pay much attention to sentence structure (or word choice. Forgive the sample sentence below. I was planning on going back and changing or even eliminating the descriptive words. Honest). 

      Here is a sentence I wrote for my book that needs some paring down:

"The pipe corridors that ran along side the main gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business, but they often restricted him to the wrong side of the long, worn, brick hall while his target wandered off to new stores and stands selling trinkets or food."

That is way too long. First, to separate all of that into more than one sentence:

"The pipe corridors that ran along the main gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business. Unfortunately, they often restricted him to the wrong side of the long, worn, brick hall while his target wandered off to new stores and stands selling trinkets or food."

I can hardly express how sorry I am that you had to read that horrible, horrible paragraph. I promise I'll fix it. 

Moving on. This is an introduction to the chapter and to the setting, so I need to keep a lot of the adjectives somehow. I can probably lose the "main" from "main gallery." I think in the sense I am using it, it does not really matter. However, the other adjectives need to be worked in better in describing the setting. I need to show and not tell. In the next attempt, I include some facts and sentences from other parts of the chapter. I provided some short explanations in parentheses. Here goes attempt number two:

      "Liam [main character] peered through the pipes and up the brick corridor. Seeing his mark walk across the hall to yet another trinket shop, he swore. "Samil's Bane!"[just go with it] The pipe passages that ran along the  gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business without unwanted attention. Unfortunately, Liam sometimes got stuck behind the pipes while his mark wandered off to the other side of the expansive hall. 

      If Liam lost this chance, it would be the third this morning, and he would not get any more until next month. He was running out of time. The Septarians [aristocratic class] would only stay in the King's Center for a little while, and they only came in the first place for the sake of tradition. Who could blame them? People with so much wealth could only be expected to put up with uneven bricks and peeling paint for so long."

    

      Better? I think it's better. Well, I hope it is, anyway. Any comments would be appreciated. 

      Now, I just have to write the rest of my book-- almost all of it-- and then edit every single description to be more like the one above. Gee. I'll be done in no time. Hopefully, now that I am conscious of it though, I will just write the first draft with better, shorter, and more descriptive sentences. 

Uh oh.

Crap. I just figured out that I'm going to have to read up on physics.


I will post a real entry later. I just wanted to share that little revelation.

Umm... so I'm writing a book. When does the writing part happen again?

       I started off this process with a vague idea of where I wanted the story and a load of ideas that I wanted to work into a plot. I naively thought, All I have to do is have a general plan and just sit down and write it out, right? Right. Oh, how wrong I was. At this point in the process, I've spent as much time planning and researching as I have doing actual writing.
       I wrote a first chapter that is really a bit of a prologue, and I even made it through the second chapter without an immense amount of planning. Then I decided that I had to  plan out a plot. Novel idea, there.
       So, I started to outline what I wanted to happen in the book. That got very confusing very quickly. I don't think that I've ever used copy and paste so much in my life. I gave up on that after a day of deleting and moving around lines of text.
       I moved on to the old-fashioned bulletin board and index cards. That worked a lot better, but I have discovered it is very time consuming to really structure a story properly-- or what I hope is "properly." I had to write out all those index cards, consider what I wanted to happen as I was doing it, and then arrange all those cards on a board. I am still not done with that last part. I had to go out and buy a bigger bulletin board since I had so many index cards.
      Then there is the research that I have not started in the least. I have a book of steampunk short stories appropriately called Steampunk that I have not opened. Additionally, I have three books on medieval Europe to read so that I can add a little more depth to my setting. I know that eventually I will have to read up on steam power and the early history of airplanes. I feel like I'll be doing more reading than writing for my book. But, that is why I have started this blog-- to make sure that I am writing most days, since I am spending so much time doing other things for the novel. This is all in addition to the writing books I am working my way through in order to learn about the craft.
     Frankly, I am really surprised that so much non-writing is involved in writing a book. For you writers out there, have any of you had similar experiences?