Slaughter The Adverbs

Bestselling author Stephen King once said:

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

Before I go into detail about how adverbs and clichés weaken prose, and how you can delete them, you first need to understand that they aren’t always going to be a problem, and you don’t have to go overboard trying to eliminate every single adverb and cliché from your copy. Because sometimes, they just work. So,they do serve a purpose. Especially in dialogue. Of course, it also depends a lot on the voice of the character.

Sometimes it’s more concise to write, “She lightly knocked on the door.” Not every action you are writing about needs to be poetic and unique. There are time you need to write exactly what someone is doing because it’s not important enough to draw attention to. 

Also, if we just wrote, “She knocked on the door,”  your reader will have no idea whether it was loud or not. And if this action wasn’t all that significant, it would be a bit too wordy to say something like, “She knocked on the door as if her hand were as light as a feather.” (Did you see that cliché again, they sneak in so quietly, don’t they?)

These teeny-tiny writing obstacles are  In most cases, adverbs modifying verbs. you can delete the limp adverb and choose a bolder verb.

For instance:

• She walks slowly — She saunters; she strolls; she strides.
• He said loudly — He barked; he yelled; he shrieked.
• He talked aimlessly — He blabbered; he digressed; he yakked.
• They worked really hard — They slaved; they labored; they toiled.
• They ate their dinner greedily — They wolfed down their dinner; they devoured their dinner; they inhaled their dinner.

More'o this ahead!