Welcome romance writer, Paula Martin, to Hearticles. She's guest posting about adverbs in our stories. Take it away, Paula. • • • ‘The road to hell is paved with adverbs.' - Stephen King In one sense, I agree with him. Adverbs can often indicate lazy writing. Recently I read a novel (by a best-selling author) which was littered with adverbs, especially after dialogue tags. On one Kindle page alone, there was: said truculently, said coldly, retorted sarcastically, said wearily, reiterated sullenly, said dourly - and when I got to 'she ejaculated hoarsely’ I nearly splurted my coffee in the middle of Starbucks! Yes, there are times when we should avoid adverbs, especially when they are redundant e.g. she whispered quietly or when the adverb can be replaced by a stronger verb, e.g he raced down the street instead of he walked quickly . Of course, you could tell your readers: The rain came down heavily, and the wind blew strongly against the side of the car
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