#so many adverbs
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
one of the worst things about this translation class is that sometimes we are translating things that are poorly written and i have to resist the urge to edit the original in my translation
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
gomens s2 canon divergence AU
had an idea a few weeks ago and now have about 8k of a gomens AU where the miracle to hide gabriel actually works as in it's not detected. this means aziraphale and crowley never decide to get maggie and nina together (nina is a viewpoint character though because i love them both,) and heaven and hell are still searching desperately for the missing archangel -- including sending muriel down as an investigator and sending shax around to be nosy. and it also means aziraphale is stuck minding gabriel. on his own. through a shopkeeper's meeting he doesn't want to be hosting, etc.
here's a scene where aziraphale screws up the courage to ask crowley to move in because minding gabriel on top of managing muriel has started to get a bit much, and not at all because he's noticed crowley is living in his car but it's not like you can say something about that, is it?
---
Knowing that Crowley likely would say yes rarely helped Aziraphale when it came to the tricky business of asking a favor. Rather it made it doubly important to ask correctly, to avoid any insinuation that he was asking for Crowley's sake. He fretted about it so much that twice he nearly spilled hot cocoa onto Gabriel, and he did once onto Muriel, who smiled blindingly at Aziraphale's suggestion that this was the sort of thing that must happen to human police officers all the time.
Crowley being Crowley -- that was, unfailingly sensitive during those occasions when Aziraphale would have really preferred a little bit of obliviousness from his friend so he might have the chance to sort through his feelings in private -- sensed immediately the tension when he strolled in. He was wearing the turtleneck getup again, which did nothing for Aziraphale's nerves. Really, with the vest and everything -- It took Crowley scarcely an hour to get Gabriel and Muriel trapped in a befuddling and pointless conversation together before pulling Aziraphale into the back room, sitting him down, and pouring him a generous-but-not-too-generous glass of wine.
There was another thing that had changed. Since they'd both submitted notice, so to speak, they had, by apparent mutual agreement but without discussion, stopped getting drunk together. They still drank, of course, but it was a respectable sort of drinking. Aziraphale hadn't been drunk at all since the night after the thwarted Apocalypse, when he and Crowley had made rather a heroic tour of London's finer drinking establishments.
The worst part was that Aziraphale missed it, but he was relieved, too. He wasn't even sure why. Perhaps it was the simple fear that in vino veritas and that under the influence he might ask for something he had no right to ask for, and that Crowley might say yes out of mere eagerness to please?
"Drink, angel," Crowley said, "and then out with it. You look like you've just seen someone sell a book."
It was the sort of familiar teasing that Crowley had used for centuries to shake him out of one of his moods, and it worked as it usually did. Aziraphale managed a thin smile and a deep drink, and it did help.
Crowley had set his sunglasses aside, and he was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed. He had his 'out with it' expression firmly on -- patient, and kind, if a trifle more wary than it would have been before Gabriel had arrived, which only made Aziraphale feel worse.
"Come now. What is it."
"I have a favor to ask," Aziraphale said, "and I don't think you'll like it."
Now Crowley had his 'try me' expression on.
"Gabriel here was one thing, but Muriel, too -- Crowley, would -- I hate to ask, but would you stay here awhile?"
Crowley's expression had gone carefully blank, and Aziraphale rushed to explain, so concerned about striking the right note that he feared he'd manage to say the wrong thing entirely.
"I hate to ask because of Gabriel, please, dear thing, not because I don't like you around -- you know you're welcome to stay here so everlong as strikes your fancy, but I also understand that perhaps, as a demon, you'd rather not watch over two daft angels in a dusty old bookshop." Or, thought Aziraphale miserably, really three daft angels.
Crowley's expression was doing several things that Aziraphale was too nerve-racked to unpuzzle and identify. Aziraphale blotted at his eyes before he could truly embarrass himself and topped up his wine glass because he didn't have anything better to do.
"Yeah, alright," Crowley said. He sounded, to Aziraphale's relief, more thoughtful than irritated or -- forbid -- prideful. "Might be a good idea, 'specially if Hell sends somebody up too. Which they will if they catch word there's an angelic scrivener hanging 'round."
"They probably will. I'm afraid Muriel isn't terribly discreet."
"And their hellish counterpart will probably be worse," Crowley said with gloomy relish.
"Good heavens. Were we that bad, do you think? All those years ago."
Crowley bobbed his head back and forth, mouth pressed thin, good humor dancing in his eyes. "Yyyyeah. Probably, yeah. Easier back then for us, though. No cell phones."
"Get into too much trouble and you could let your wings out and say 'lo, be not afraid!'" Aziraphale said, thinking back to several awkward moments in Mesopotamia, though his heart wasn't really in it.
"Mm. That one never quite worked right for me."
"But you caught onto things more quickly," Aziraphale said, now thinking more warmly of a cooked ox, and of wine.
"Every now and then," said Crowley, who managed to imbue the words with a sense that metaphysically he was preening his wings with what he thought was justified smugness.
Aziraphale finished his wine and set the glass aside. He didn't want to go back to Gabriel and Muriel; he wanted to stay here, in the back, with Crowley. He wanted Crowley to sit beside him, and he wanted to lean into Crowley's side and--
"I might," said Crowley, too casually, "bring a few plants by, if y'don't mind. Y'know. Keep a close eye on them."
"Of course," said Aziraphale faintly. "As many as you'd like."
#my fic#good omens fic#txt#good omens#aziracrow#not really line edited so pretend there are like 50% as many adverbs as there are please.#one billion thanks to katie for cheerleading this a bunch
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
quite a nasty ride
The ride back from London was terrible. Arthur’s ridiculous rhyme about the weather played in a loop in her head, and not for the first time did Guenevere curse the climate in England. Rain smacked on the top of the carriage, deafening when they passed under a copse of trees, and she closed her eyes against her pounding headache. The bruise throbbing underneath her eye and across her cheekbone kept her from leaning against the carriage wall.
Across from her, Sir Lionel sat scowling at the sword in his lap. She was certain he had his own bruises; she could see a line of dried blood trailing down his cheek even though his head was bowed. He hadn’t spoken to her except to apologize, profusely, face aghast, before they had set off again rattling down the road. As irritating and unpleasant as he was, she reflected, at least he had enough integrity to be remorseful.
Finally the noise of the carriage changed from rumbling to rattling—a sure sign that they were on cobblestones and not a dirt road. She couldn’t bring herself to feel relief.
Lionel dismounted first and then helped her down, surprisingly gentle. They made their way into the castle, painfully slow it seemed, or at least painful and slow. Her head still ached, and she had a suspicion that Lionel kept her hand tucked into his arm on purpose so that she wouldn’t stumble.
“Where to, ma’am?” he asked quietly.
She sighed. “The king’s office, Lionel.” She didn’t say thank you and he didn’t bristle like she thought he might.
They passed servants and knights as they moved through the halls, who watched their battered queen with wide eyes. She forced the corners of her mouth up to try and make an appearance of serenity, but she wasn’t sure it was very convincing.
Then Lancelot rounded the corner, and she felt a stab of dread. He stopped, bowed his head to her in respect, and then took a second look with narrowed eyes. “Your majesty���” he began.
“We were accosted by bandits on the road,” Lionel interrupted. “Entirely my fault. Which is what I’m going to relay to the king.”
“Your majesty—” Lancelot repeated, looking intently at her, but she held up a hand.
“I’m fine, Sir Lancelot,” she said, summoning the scraps of her imperiousness. “No need to hover. I’m retiring to my rooms as soon as we see the king.”
She meant it as a dismissal. He pressed his lips together very tightly, face a blaze of fury, but he nodded. “Sleep well, your majesty,” he said, and turned sharply on his heel back the way he’d come.
She had known he would be angry, and she was already exhausted by it. He had hated Sir Lionel since he joined the Table, and this would only made him hate Lionel more, which would create an even larger chasm between the English knights and their single French compatriot. And besides that, he would regret his anger—she could practically see him at the Table, shrinking himself to be smaller, shifting guilty glances her way—and he would treat her as though she were made of glass for the next few days, scared of hurting her more.
Lost in her thoughts, she was almost surprised when they reached the king’s office. The door was open, and she could see him at the desk, surrounded by uneven burning tapers, gnawing on the end of a quill. What a terrible habit, she thought, but even through her fatigue the thought was fond.
He looked up when they entered, smiling. “Genny! And Sir Lionel,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you together.”
“It’s not for a happy occasion, your majesty,” Lionel said heavily.
The smile faded from the king’s face, and he rose from the desk. “Sir Lionel,” he said, suddenly very serious, “why does my queen have a black eye?”
Lionel cleared his throat. “We were coming back from the fair and we were attacked,” he said. “There were highway robbers, waiting for some unsuspecting carriage.”
The king didn’t take his eyes off her face. “And you were unsuspecting?”
She heard the note of danger in his voice. “Arthur,” she said tiredly. “It was raining, and it was growing dark. He fought all three of them off once they were on us. Don’t judge him too harshly.”
“On the contrary, your majesty,” Lionel insisted, “I take full responsibility for whatever punishment you would give me.”
Arthur gave a long and hard look at his knight. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, only that like Lancelot, he was angry. When Arthur felt any strong emotion, he talked, and right now she could feel a tirade building. Please, she wanted to say, even though it was childish. Please don’t argue. Please don’t raise your voices. Just leave and let me go to sleep.
“I will think on it, Lionel,” he said finally. “I’m not in the best state of mind right now, and I’m afraid I’d be unjust. But I do thank you for getting the queen safely home.”
Lionel bowed his head. “Your majesty.”
Arthur watched him leave. His eyes flickered back to Guenevere’s face when the door scraped shut. “You could have been killed,” he said quietly. “They could have held you for ransom. Or taken you back to France.”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” She was trying to be ironic but she could hear it fall flat.
His expression softened. “Let me look at you,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her to a chair. “Sit down. How did this happen?”
He was reaching a hand to her face, and she sighed. “When they jumped the carriage, one of the men slammed my head against the window,” she said. “I think they were trying to knock me out.”
He touched her chin, gently, and moved her head to the side so that he could see. Whatever he saw there, he winced at. “You’ll be a sight for a few days.”
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” she asked, scrounging up some dry wit.
“Believe it or not,” he said, peering at her hair, “when you’re fighting a war someone’s bound to fall off a horse. We all learned what to look for pretty quickly.”
His tone was light, but she bit her tongue. She didn’t want to think of the war. And horses made her think of the bandits, and she had determined not to think of them tonight, not when the memory still made her heart speed up.
He probed at her scalp and she flinched. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “You might have a headache in the morning, but you’ve got quite the goose egg, so I think you’ll be all right to sleep.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
His eyes showed surprise. “For what?”
“For not getting angry at Lionel,” she said. “For not starting a duel for my honor right here in this office.”
He smiled. “Believe me,” he said, rising and fetching a damp cloth, taking her face gently, rubbing the dried blood away from her face. “I’m angry, all right. In fact, I’m tempted to cancel the cattle show in London henceforth. Forever.”
“But?” she asked, then winced as he moved to her scalp. He stopped for a moment, and his hand dropped to her shoulder, steadying, almost as though he hadn’t thought about it.
“But,” he said. His eyes, so blue, and soft like water. “I was telling the truth. I didn’t think I would be fair to Lionel if I dealt him a blow here in this room.”
She had to bite the inside of her cheek very hard, to not show her disappointment on her face. “I see.”
“And,” he continued, focused again on her head, “besides all that, you looked exhausted.” His eyes darted to her face, very quickly, and then away.
Now she was smiling, despite the stinging pain as he tried to be gentle with the cloth. “I see,” she said again in a lighter voice.
He worked silently for a few more moments, and then finally leaned away. She was sorry for the loss of him. “Well,” he said, “that’s the most of it, anyway.”
The relief must have showed on her face, because he smiled. “What a day you’ve had.”
“Wait till you hear about the cattle,” she said.
He laughed. “Come on, Genny. To bed with you. You can tell me about the cows tomorrow.”
#more camelot fic! i'm really trying my best to finish my big ones before [redacted] on sunday#this is only part 1 (I think?) so I'm not sure if I should delete this post and post the whole thing or post a new post for part 2 or just#reblog this with part 2#sorry i don't have ao3!! i know that would probably be easier#anyway title is from the musical obv#featuring: lionel being okay for once. lancelot being righteously angry. arthur being... arthur. and genny being Very Tired.#((part 2 is some good old-fashioned hurt/comfort bbys))#anyway there's too many adverbs in this. probably too many long sentences. trying to write like aaron sorkin but probably way too much in m#own head. forgive me.#camelot revival#camelot musical#fic#my writing
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
last ten fics meme!
Rules: Post the first lines of your last ten fics posted to AO3. (Sort by date posted.) If you have fewer than ten, post what you have.
Thank you for tagging me, @softest-punk! <3 Reminded once more I have yet to post ten fics on AO3 or write a first line that isn't in truth a first paragraph (or at least a First Two Lines). Nearly all of these are meant to be in a huddle of other short sentences and it's funny seeing them on their lonesome!
The Death of Translation Hob Gadling loves the way living language changes.
Just Like Love It’s just like love, but it's not.
Flower King Once upon a time, there was a boy born in the summer, whose destiny was winter.
Emissary of the Night It was not, actually, love at first sight.
Oaths Hob tipped his face up to the sun and shut his eyes.
Black Shore The sound of waves lapping against the shore makes it seem like they’re saying hush hush hush, but you are hearing it wrong.
Border Country There are two things that Dream does only once a century.
Saint Morpheus Hob stood alone inside a lovely limestone cathedral.
Unsent Letter It may surprise you to hear that many in my life think me unfeeling after my outburst tonight, but I am certain you will wish they were right by the end of this letter.
Tagging @teejaystumbles, @arialerendeair, @mandolinearts, and anyone who sees this and wants to do it! <3
#fic memes#i think my last line game is MUCH better#my first lines rarely stand alone and are rather untelling in comparison#very [subject] [verbed] [object]#maybe an adjective or adverb if i'm feeling flush#i'm a first line miser#SO many simple sentences#love the perfect 50/50 present and past tense#(and one epistolary)#neat how like i largely fail enormously at any kind of economy of language in my writing (and that's fine)#but clearly imitate it at the start of stories#i'm an absolute catfish lmao#pretending at punchiness when given to monologues and soliloquy#pfff!#i sit on a throne of lies
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
everyone please pray or manifest for me that i get one of the easy texts for my exam pleaseeeee
#its an oral exam where you have to read out and translate a piece of text from the curriculum (in japanese)#and some of the texts have a lot of kanji i am unfamiliar with#and while they said that the reading out loud doesnt count and is only to make sure we know how the kanji have to be read#its still kinda embarrassing if i have to stop up every other word bc idk the kanji#but the text i was revising today was so easy compared bc its written from the perspective of a 12 year old#so theres not that many hard words#while some of the other ones describe very unfamiliar phenomena etc#like theres one thats about some sea creature who lives in a hole in the ocean....#idk all those words pleaseeeee#also one thing about japanese is that theres so many onomatopoetica#like as adverbs.... its just onomatopoetica and i dont remember any of themmmmmm#but anyways after the translation part theres a conversation part which would be fine but i havent spoken japanese in 5 months so im#probably super rusty#while i think my reading skills have improved a lot and i learned a lot of new kanji this semester#i have not spoken a coherrent sentence since january lmao#but i actually dont care THAT much about this exam#bc when its the last exam for my entire bachelors degree#i just get extreme exam anxiety and the anxiety only gets worse when i have to come up with stuff in the moment#its fine if i can just stick to a script but i usually fall on the questions they ask
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Life would be so much easier if my library had the book I needed TAT. Now I have to wait to get paid to keep reading this series and I’m so impatient. In pain. Anguish, even.
#EDIT: i ended up buying the book anyway because i have no impulse control#the small spaces series by katherine arden my complicated feelings#your story.... is so good. but you have SO MANY WEIRD PACING ISSUES. AND ADVERBS. SO MANY ADVERBS#smiling man is hot asf tho id fold like a lawn chair
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
You better believe I'll die on that hill too.
I know adverbs are controversial, but "said softly" means something different than "whispered" and this is the hill I will die on.
#adverbs#show adverbs some love#I literally was just thinking about this the other day#you know how many adverbs we use without even realizing it?#because it is SO USEFUL to have a part of speech that does the job of an adjective but for verbs not nouns?#I mean Y'ALL#that's white-hot fucking genius#JRR tolkien once said adjectives are the root of fantasy#because they have the power to transform things#what about words that have the power to transform actions?#justice for adverbs#this is not an unpopular opinion#this is an unpopular fact#deal with it#writing#writers on tumblr#creative writing#books
58K notes
·
View notes
Text
This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.
e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.
I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.
This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.
And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.
26K notes
·
View notes
Text
yk what Really appears most often in my writing. present participles. i use the "subject performs action, present participle and further description" format way too often. catch me and my horrendously unvaried sentence structures. but also i'm bad at writing so what more do you expect.
#same reason that i use so many adjectives and adverbs. the need to describe overwhelms me.#allfatherly guidance#also pardon my likely awkward/incorrect phrasing. i don't know my terms i just know how to use words
0 notes
Text
i feel like everything i write lately is so amateurish and get frustrated w myself over it but also girl this is an essay u are writing for an undergraduate class nobody is giving u a nobel prize for it. chill tf out
#im like 'ugh i need to stop using so many adverbs'#meanwhile the paper is nowhere near complete. lets prioritize#txt
0 notes
Text
I think you might be having your perspective distorted by survivorship bias. a lot of the cringy YA that "had heart" that we remember from the late 2000's/early 2010's (I'm assuming that's the timeframe you're referring to) was, to be blunt, the shit that was worth remembering in the first place. a lot of the forgotten, and even much of the still remembered stuff, was very cynically tailored to hit all the right buzzwords to make a teen girl buy it.
lest we forget, teen dystopia('s mainstream relevance) didn't die a peaceful death. it went out mercilessly ragged on for the growing number of new releases with increasingly ludicrous and repetitive premises of unremarkable brunettes living in a world where no one feels hunger who has to choose between two hot boys. that's to say nothing of the progression of supernatural romance. i sincerely doubt your Fourth Wings and Lightlarks have much less passion or "heart" infused into them than your Fallens and House of Night's. YA fiction was not inherently any more soulful when Harper Collins commissioned Alloy Entertainment for a teen supernatural romance they could sell and Alloy hired L. J. Smith to pump out 7 Vampire Diaries books and then booted her and hired a ghostwriter to pump out 5 more (and that was one of the earliest examples, mind you).
I'm very willing to concede the nature of the shittiness has changed over the years in a way that makes it feel like a different thing (the priorities of getting a book to go tiktok viral are clearly different from just whatever the hell was going on before that. i guess just advertising them normally on television), but I'm not convinced that it was enough to constitute a moral difference. it's not a new thing to feel that the most recent literature is worthless trash and things used to be better when you were younger, in fact people do that a lot to a lot more than literature. i think sometimes we really need to take a step back and recognize that just bc we find tiktok more aggravating than the advertising methods we found permissible in our youth does not mean our precious teen cringe was any less of a worthless slop made to make people money
a lot of YA and fantasy stuff has always been a little cringe and silly but at least it used to be cringe from the heart instead of designed in a lab to get teens on tiktok to use a certain sentence from it
#comment provided#also not to mention i don't even think being marketed cynically and being written earnestly are mutually exclusive#say what you will about the women (and it's mostly women) who write that kind of slop. they certainly seem... passionate about it#like passionate enough to get into. A Lot. of drama. over it#none of this matters very much or is even very original to point out#but it's something that especially grinds my gears bc i (and i alone apparently) remember how it felt like to be like 11#and feel very aggravated at 20+ year olds shitting on my interests and circlejerking about how things were better when they were children#and i remember promising i would never become like that#so every time i see shit like this i think of all the grown ass men i had to see on the internet as a child#who acted unreasonably smug about how dragon ball z (the worst show ever made) was better than whatever cartoon was on the tv now#and it makes me very exasperated to realize that not a single other person my age i meet has internalized the same lesson#also i used too many fucking adverbs. again. somebody put me down like a lame horse
29K notes
·
View notes
Text
"Don't use too many adverbs"
"You should only have one adverb per page"
"Use adverbs sparingly"
No. I won't. I'm going to use adverbs recklessly and extensively and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
1 note
·
View note
Text
How To Make Your Writing Less Stiff 6
Part 5
Part 1
Adverbs
Gasp! Oh no. Dare come yet more writing advice burning adverbs at the stake? Vindictively, gleefully, manically dancing in the ashes?
No.
This is not about whether or not you should use them, but their frequency and obvious places to replace them. Most bad adverbs are the common ones that could be replaced by verbs we all know.
“She ran quickly” // “She sprinted”
“He said angrily” // “He snapped” “He chided” “He chastised”
vs.
“He ate voraciously”
“She swayed solemnly”
“She laughed sadly”
Bonus if you can add in some alliteration like ‘swayed solemnly’
If you can come up with an obvious verb to replace your verb + adverb combo, do so. If it would take more words or the closest applicable verb doesn’t hit the same vibe, then leave it. Adverbs should enhance the verb, not be redundant. Verbs shouldn’t be pretentious just to avoid them.
“She smiled happily” — most smiles are happy. Happily is redundant.
“He ran quickly” —a run is, by nature, quick
vs.
“She smiled sourly”
“He ran erratically”
Also!
The adverb need not always be after the verb.
“C accepted gladly” // “C gladly accepted”
But also
“Glad, C accepted”
“A shook their head resolutely” // “Resolute, A shook their head”
“The child skipped excitedly away.” // “Excited, the child skipped away.” // “The child skipped away, excited.”
English is flexible like that.
Which is what I mean with managing your adverb frequency. As most end in the -ly, too many in succession, on top of the repeat syntax of Subject - Verb - Adverb looks boring and dull (and so does beginning every sentence with the subject). It helps with your cadence and flow if you don’t have entire paragraphs at a time all starting with “He [verb]” or “She [verb]” or “They [verb].” We don't speak like this in natural conversation.
But at the end of the day, there are some juicy adverbs that have no equal without busting out the thesaurus for some obscure lexical nugget that no one would understand anyway.
#writing#writing a book#writing advice#writeblr#writing resources#writing tips#writing tools#adverbs
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
The Three Commandments
The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.
Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And
The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.
1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say
What’s your book about?
I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?
The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).
Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)
Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?
2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment
Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.
Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.
Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.
The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.
But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.
If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.
3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting
This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.
“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?
Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?
If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.
Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?
Hopefully these can help you, too.
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
LOL Spock is such a silly we love him
I know everyone says it’s best to just stick to “said” as a dialogue tag bc it disappears and that’s true and I mostly do but I want to take a moment for my all-time favorite dialogue tag, “lied.” Absolutely nothing hits like “‘I’m here to help,’ he lied.” NOTHING.
#vi-repost#i use so many dialogue tags because i hate using standalone said (i'll use it fine with an adverb if that makes sense)#but i honestly have to say I don't use “lied” enough#omg im thinking of all the “lied” adverb possiblities#“he lied inconspicuously”#“she lied suspiciously”#“they lied badly”#i love adverbs
109K notes
·
View notes
Text
mr. asım tanış don't you think this is a little overwhelming.
#two whole pages total of new words. sir#🌙rambling#''Epeyce yeni kelime verdik ama korkmaya gerekçe yok. Hepsini en azından otuz kırk sayfada inceleyeceğiz.#Böylece her sayfa başına üç dört yeni söz düşer ki bu da italyanca öğrenmek isteyen sizler için çok sayılmaz.#Kelimesiz yalnızca dilbilgisi kurallarıyla bir dili öğrenmenin‚ uygulamanın‚ olanayacağını söylemek gerekmez.''#sir! sir please you don't understand#(<-he'll be fine)#they are at least mostly words i know or can figure out due to similiar roots in english/turkish. i won't die its fine im being dramatic#but on god. sir its two whole pages of new vocabulary#so many new verbs and nouns and adjectives...#an adverb in there too.#well! these all look like words that will be necessary in the future and things i'd have to learn regardless.#so i can see where mr asım tanış is coming from#on the other hand. sir
0 notes