I made that comment yesterday about Gaiman liking adverbs a bit too much, and I thought I’d be clearer today. It’s his use of utterly. Actually, to give more clarity still, on the edit of Red Audrey, my editor told me that I’d used the word slightly too much. I did a search of my manuscript and I’d used it five times. That didn’t seem so bad, but then I read each entry and I realized that people were slightly doing things that they were, in fact, doing. Gaiman had a line in Neverwhere in which a character stumbled slightly. Really? Stumbled slightly. What would that look like, and how is stumbling slightly different from stumbling? Or someone being utterly lost? How is being utterly lost more lost than lost?
I had an instructor in college who’d freak out if someone wrote complete stop. Is there another kind of stop? she’d ask. I do think adverbs are important—if someone smiles slightly, that is not the same thing as smiling. But adverbs are about a subtle difference in the modification of the verb, and Gaiman doesn’t use them that way. Is that a crime? No. To a certain extent, it’s just a style-thing, or possibly, an unruly pet peeve that I’ve had beaten into me.
Nance Van Winckel was my thesis advisor, and she hated the word and. She’d take it out of poems and prose even at the risk of complicating meaning. One day, I went straight from our session to a poetry class with Christopher Howell. At one point in the class, he told us, “I think and is the most beautiful word in the English language. I use it whenever I can.” Style-thing and personal preference.
“Suddenly, everything became utterly still.” A weak, inactive verb surrounded by unclear adverbs. I use the adverb ‘actually’ too much. Particia Cornwell has a fondness for compound sentences whose structure makes me cringe: I am going to the store, and am preparing dinner. It is a habit that she can’t seem to break, and of which she may be utterly unaware. Totally. Completely.
Actually, I am very aware of my overuse of actually. As opposed to being vaguely aware, or just slightly aware. I am too aware, but this hyper-awareness doesn’t stop me from using the word. Too much.
I know a writer who refuses to use the same word twice. I don’t know if that rule applies to a paragraph or a page or an entire novel, but if a word crops up more than once, she goes after it with a popgun and a net. Or a red pin and a thesaurus.
My Comp teacher in college used to litter my papers with “omit needless words” scrawled a hundred times in the margins. With exclamation points. I thought then she was overly dramatic about the issue. I have an aversion to exclamation points.
I do love adverbs, however.
OK, I laughed through this entire comment; it’s beautiful. I’ve re-discovered my love of adverbs while writing my fifteen-year-old protagonist in the current manuscript. Nothing says sarcastic inflection—as you have just demonstrated—like an adverb.
Oh, ditto. Jesus, Bett, you’re funny.
I freaking love adverbs. Maybe it’s the sound — the soft “-ly” like lilly. Utterly, actually, totally, slightly… yes, so often unnecessary. But sometimes, don’t you think, the rhythm of a sentence demands them?
Well, to appease the style gods, I have paid closer attention to how I use these words in recent years. But my style is not about economy. And I think you’re right, Jill, that adverbs facilitate the adolescent voice.
I guess everyone has their thing. I have an issue with ridiculous tags like “hissed” and “spat.” God, are you kidding me?
I do think adverbs give a certain music—like the word “and”—that is completely necessary. Or perhaps just necessary.
For my own part, I hate the phrase, “Thought to myself.” Who the hell else do you think to but yourself? Holy redundant.
Totally.
Are you absolutely certain?
Like utterly and completely certain, more or less.