Why are adverbs considered to be evil?
Most writers have this goal: to transfer an image from their minds into the minds of readers. And they want readers to be as struck by that image as possible. If a writer sends me “cat,” I may receive the word, but just receiving isn’t good enough. I may receive it and forget about it a moment later. Writers want to transfer images, and they want those images to STICK. Which means they must describe those images in a way that’s as vivid and sensual as possible. (Sensual, because we experience through our senses, so if you can con a reader into believing he’s seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling or touching, you win.) Most writing-rules boil down to this: “lick the reader.” If you lick his face, he’ll remember you.
For instance, we avoid the passive-voice because it doesn’t lick the reader’s face. (Though, perhaps, the reader’s face is licked.) When I first wrote the paragraph two places above this one, I started it “Which means images must be described…” it’s hard to imagine images being described. Being described by whom? The easiest sentences to see are the ones in which an agent does something TO something. So I rewrote it as “they [the writers] must describe…” It’s still not great, because “describe” is a weak verb – one that doesn’t evoke a strong image – but at least I’m evoking the idea of a writer DOING SOMETHING and not of something just happening.
But you don’t have to remember to avoid modifiers if, instead, you write to spark the senses. “Avoid modifiers” is an okay way of achieving of forcing yourself to write more sensually, because if you’re robbed of modifiers, you have to pick vivid nouns and verbs to get your idea across.
A person can point to a tree, and a person can run, but a person can’t dangerously. It’s impossible to imagine dangerously. There is no such thing as dangerously. It’s possible to imagine dancing dangerously or holding a knife dangerously, but these phrases put a burdon on the reader. He must first evoke “holding a knife.” Then he must add “dangerously” to it. You run the risk that he won’t: that he’ll just mush everything together into some vague “understanding” of what you’re trying to evoke. The worst thing a writer can achieve is his reader “getting the point.” You don’t want the reader to get the point. You want to lick his face.
Which of the following is easier to imagine? “talking quietly” or “whispering”? “walking nervously” or “pacing”? “acting aggressively” or “fighting”?
Amongst writers, one of the ever-quotable Mark Twain’s most quoted witticisms is the succinct bit of advice (which could just as easily have referred to adverbs) found in Pudd’nhead Wilson: “As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.”
Ah, modifiers! What writer hasn’t had a joyous fling or two with that most seductive of all parts of speech? In an effort to convey the brilliance and vividness of our prose, we hand out modifiers like candy at a Fourth of July parade. After all, it’s imperative that the reader understand that the barn in question is big, red, and rundown. That the kid on the playground is fighting wildly and ferociously. That the ship’s white canvas sails are billowing in the wind. That’s all need-to-know information, right?
Well, maybe. No one will argue that modifiers clarify mental images. At least, that’s the message we absorbed during all those grade school years of diagramming sentence after sentence chocked full of adjectives and adverbs. What we probably didn’t learn from all those years of diagramming is that modifiers are the sign of a lazy writer. Modifiers break the cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell.
In the three sentences mentioned above, never once did I show you what the barn looked like, or the kid who was fighting, or the ship’s sails. With the help of my modifiers, you probably got the general idea, but how much more vivid would those sentences have been had I taken the time to show you?
What if I had allowed you to see the dust swirling in the shadows of the barn, the pigeons roosting in the patches of sunlight that spill through the holes in the roof? What if you had seen the kid on the playground smacking his fists into someone’s face, blood splattering from his opponent’s nose? What if the wind had whipped the ship’s sails, filling them to bursting and churning the waves to froth at the prow?
See the difference? By deleting my modifiers, I was forced to dig deeper for specific nouns (pigeons, fists, nose, froth, prow) and vibrant verbs (swirling, roosting, spill, smacking, splattering, whipped, bursting, churning). These are words the reader can sink his teeth into. Suddenly, we can hear the flutter and coo of the pigeons in the rafters, we can feel the warmth of blood against our skin, we can smell the salt and seaweed of an ocean voyage.
But does this mean that the modifier is dead? Should we avoid them completely? Of course not. Modifiers, like all parts of speech, serve their purpose. Another quote from Twain:
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” ( Letter to D. W. Bowser, 3/20/1880)
Adjectives and adverbs exist in the English language for the sole purpose of refining it. We cannot show the reader every detail, both due to time and space constraints and the simple fact that some things—such as colors—are impossible to show on the written page without a bit of telling. When added to an already strong scene, modifiers can boost the description into precision and vibrancy.
Take, for instance, one of our example sentences. The new description of the ship doesn’t indicate that the sails are white canvas. I didn’t include those details because most readers will assume this to be the case unless told differently. But what if my ship belonged to the Dread Pirate Roberts who always lofted black sails when he went into battle? Suddenly, we have a vital detail that could only be conveyed with a modifier:
The wind whipped the ship’s ash-black sails, filling them to bursting and churning the waves to froth at the prow.
Notice that this sentence conveys everything the original version did (and more), yet it contains only one modifier.
Even when modifiers are necessary, economy is vital. It’s ridiculously easy to get carried away with modifiers. When we write phrases about “the remarkably, incandescently, breathtakingly gorgeous woman,” we not only smother our reader in repetition, we also drown out the already strong modifier “gorgeous.” So, in short, while we probably need not go to Mark Twain’s suggested extreme of extermination, our writing can only be better for a careful pruning of adjectives and adverbs. Modifiers do their job best when used sparingly.