When he feels it’s appropriate to use one - he will. Just don’t lean on them when a stronger verb would be better.Īnd as anyone who’s read On Writing - where the King quote actually comes from - will know, even King himself doesn’t actually advocate never using adverbs. If you’re sure the adverb is the right choice, then it may well be. However, refusing to use them completely isn’t the answer. The problem is, many inexperienced writers use them too often, and frequently using a more specific verb instead of an adverb and verb will make for more powerful writing. And it’s an elegant quote, to be sure.īut as with all advice, it’s a little more nuanced than that.Īdverbs have their place, and can be a useful tool in the toolbox of the writer. The quote from Stephen King ‘The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs’ is often trotted out by people who believe an adverb is the mark of the devil, and every last one should be eliminated from your writing. And she is one of the most successful authors alive, with her books touching the hearts of millions.įor the record, we back the advice that you should avoid too many descriptive dialogue tags…but if anyone tells you they should be completely eliminated or you’ll never get anywhere, you should expelliarmus their advice. Some go even further and advise you to eliminate dialogue tags altogether, saying that using them makes the writing sloppy.Īs Brandon Sanderson points out in his lecture series on novel writing, J.K. It is true that new writers have a tendency to overuse descriptive dialogue tags, such as:Įxperienced writers will try to point out that ‘said’ is a magic word, in that it becomes almost invisible to the reader. Descriptive Dialogue Tags Are For Amateurs Here’s a great article that explains things in more detail: 2. So remember, when we say in the midst of ‘things’, we mean the story and the lives of the characters, not a high-octane scene that immediately gives you whiplash. Not as catchy, I admit, but potentially more useful. So rather than thinking of it as ‘In the middle of the action’ it would be better to think of it as ‘in the middle of the protagonists’ internal conflict’. This is because we don’t care about action if we don’t care about the characters. Whereas, a story that starts with a woman on a train, staring out the window, can still draw us in and become a bestseller. So, well-meaning writers have started their novels with car chases, burning buildings, fistfights and more, and then been confused as to why readers are still not engaged. The problem is, this phrase has often been taken to mean ‘in the middle of the action‘and as we explain in this article, story, conflict, and action are not the same thing. Rather than making the reader sit through pages of backstory, get straight to the point of whose story it is and why we should care - preferably with a dash of conflict thrown in. In response to this, the advice to start ‘in medias res’ makes perfect sense. The Latin phrase ‘In Medias Res’ translates as ‘in the midst of things’, and (although it was first coined in ancient Greece) became popular as a reaction to early novelists spending a lot of time laying out backstory and spending many chapters setting things up before the main action of the story began. This advice isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just been distorted and misinterpreted. And what one reader finds excruciating, another may find delightful.īelow are some of the most common pieces of misguided advice that is either overstated, misinterpreted, or just plain wrong. What works for one writer might be torture for another. The problem with having all this advice is, some of it turns out to be contradictory, biased and sometimes just bad. There are hundreds, even thousands, of books, courses and other resources, all claiming to hold the secrets to writing a bestseller. You had to work everything out from first principles and forge your own path. A hundred years ago, there were hardly any resources to teach you how to write a novel.
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