The Trouble With Adverbs

"I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs," writer Stephen King has declared. Many other writing pros agree that adverbial excess is the bane of creative prose, especially overuse of verb modifiers ending in "-ly." King is especially opposed to the use of adverbs in dialogue attribution. So what's so wrong with adverbs? Take this dialogue example: "'You're wrong,' she said angrily." Not awful, if your goal is "not awful" writing. This kind of adverb use is often the crutch of lazy or limited writing that lacks appropriately expressive verbs. So let's dump the adverb "angrily" and replace the neutral "said" with a verb such as "shouted," "snarled," "snapped," "shrilled" or "hissed." I think you can see that the alternative verbs, sans adverbs, paint a clearer and yet more nuanced scene, with implications about the degree of anger and the speaker's character. Or we could keep the "said" and replace the adverb with an action expressing anger, such as "she said through gritted teeth" or "she said, clenching her fists." Again, the reader can better visualize the conversation. Adverbs also can overpopulate the work of an insecure writer, who fears prose or dialogue just isn't getting the point across. So an unsure writer hits the reader over the head with a sentence such as "'You're wrong,' she shouted angrily." The adverb is redundant dead weight. Assuming the other person wasn't deaf, why would she shout if she wasn't angry? For more from adverb adversary Stephen King, including why King believes "fear is at the root of most bad writing," see http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/13/stephen-king-on-adverbs/