Tuesday, September 29, 2009

adverbs

Finished Ch 20; 36038 word count
Writers hear the advice to avoid -ly words. This is good advice, but when people are talking they often pepper their sentences with the -ly adverbs. Eliminating them makes the conversation sound stiff and unnatural.

"I'm fairly sure these were planted here by Obidoddex."

4 comments:

  1. I'm fairly sure my lovely story will require many ruthlessly revised versions of my happhazardly written manuscript.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree you can't eliminate adverbs completely, especially in speech. It wouldn't sound natural.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Every rule--even writing rules--are made to be broke at times. "Avoiding" -ly words doesn't translate to "never use" -ly words. But I believe in using them sparingly.

    hee hee

    "TEE"

    ReplyDelete
  4. I positively, absolutely, whole-heartedly loved your comments, gang.

    ReplyDelete