Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Annoying Adverb-tising

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."~Stephen King

Today at work I realized how much my writer experiences effect me. Writing, editing, beta reading, and more editing tend to sharpen your senses. I've learned to look for things like tense changes, over usage of "was," too many adverbs, etc.

Apparently, (see how easily they sneak in there?) my brain has been conditioned to listen for adverbs too.

While listening to a resident explain why his rent would be late this month, he drove me nuts with adverbs. "Unfortunately, we really had an exceptionally rare situation..." It didn't stop there. He may have broke the world record for most adverbs used during a conversation. And I was painfully aware of every single one.

He's that guy that needs a word count limit on his story. Otherwise, he'd take 200k words to say something that would have been more effective and engaging if cut down to 80k.

Stephen King would have smacked him. I wanted to smack him, but I'm no Stephen King. If I was, I assure you, I would quit my day job.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to edit the world and people around you? Or am I the only writer who carries her editing habits into real life? Better yet, have you gone through your MS and removed all unnecessary adverbs? Really? Surely, you can find a few more to cut.

24 comments:

  1. I'm and huge spelling nazi!! I hate when people misuse their there and they're...go back to fifth grade people!!! Oh and wander/wonder, your/you're, want/won't (I think that is a southern problem because we sometimes pronounce them the same), etc.!!! Drives me crazy!!

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  2. Editing people: yes. *hangs head in shame*

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  3. I haven't gotten into editing their spoken words, but the emails I get... well, I would love to grab a red pen and return it to them corrected. I will never understand how some people made it to be managers at large corporations with grammar and spelling like that.

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  4. Haha :) Oh yes, I want to edit people all the time. Where is that program, the People Editing Program??? I want one:)

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  5. Oh, yes! All the time. UNFORTUNATELY, as you can see here, I'm ANNOYINGLY fond of adverbs. Although I take measure to ACTIVELY avoid them in my writing, I fail MISERABLY in my blogging.

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  6. I hate them too! I try to block my editor tendencies, but I fail most of the time.

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  7. I used adverbs ad nauseum in my blogging, but do try to cut the buggers out of my manuscript. My pet peeve out in the world is when people use a word the wrong way or say supposobly instead of supposedly.

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  8. My husband uses me as a living, breathing spell-check. I do a lot of online gaming as well (too much, really), and it takes a huge effort for me not to edit and spell-check conversations in the chat window.

    Black Orc: wer r we heding?

    Dark Elf Sorcerer: I gtg, cya l8r

    Goblin: ne1 want to do lairs?

    It drives me nuts when people can't be bothered to type out whole words. Lazy abbreviations irk me far more than adverb abuse. It must be the OCD in me. ;)

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  9. Ha, ha! Another fabulous post. You are adorable, Karen :)

    I only want to edit people when I hear them misuse "I" for me. Happens all the time. Even among writers!

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  10. The most annoying is use of "I would of" instead of "I would have". I'm not sure if it is a British thing but it drives me mad!

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  11. I'm finding that I'm watching for errors more and more, sometimes it takes the fun out of reading, because lots of times I'm saying, I would have written it this way.

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  12. I'm lousy in real life. I mean, I ramble on and skip topics. It's amazing I have any friends who hang around to hear the end of my jaunts ;)

    But, in my writing, a different part of my brain takes over and I am quite minimalistic with my words. It's an intereting thing to consider.

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  13. I can't help it...I love the word "apparently". I have a big adverb problem as well. Apparently it's very easy to do!

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  14. I tend to be an annoyance on forums when it comes to correcting people too, spelling and/or grammar. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say "should of" instead of "should have" or "should've"

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  15. Haha ... argh, I have to admit that I NEED TO BE EDITED when it comes to adverbs! ;-) [Or should I say, I TOTALLY need to be edited when it comes to adverbs ...] You've inspired me to challenge myself to limit the darned things in my next rewrite ...

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  16. LOL! Yes, all the time. It's becoming quite annoying, actually. ;)

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  17. Actually, I admit it. I like a good adverb now and then. And I definitely don't check my grammar and spelling as well as I should whilst blogging. ;)

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  18. For a while I was so vicious with adverbs that I cut them all in the beginning of my MS. It made my writing much better. I've gone back and added a few strategically placed ones. ("Apparently" used to be my favorite word, but that's a thing of the past apparently.)

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  19. You know, I like adverbs. Especially in dialogue. And though I have enjoyed Steven King’s stuff in the past, based on his recent rip of Twilight I find him pompous and out of touch with reality. As writers, we are picked to death for every little thing. The majority of our readers are not going to care how many adverbs we use if they fall in love with our story the way we did when we wrote it, adverbs and all. (Yeah, Emmy's Song is packed full of adverbs ;)

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  20. I want to edit people all the time. Unfortunately for my husband, he's the only one I edit out loud.

    BTW, "Come Home" is one of my most favorite songs ever (I saw it made your list, I almost put it on mine too).

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  21. Oh bloody hell. I feel very intimidated now. It was only because of your examples that I remembered what an adverb was.

    Shit. If all the people above edit other peoples work, I wonder how many have mentally edited mine?

    Aaaagh!!!

    Well I was going to say that I have a Creative Writing Workshop over on my blog today if you're interested? But now I'm scared!!! ;-)

    LBM x

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  22. I try to avoid being judgmental of other people's writing but sometimes it's quite a challenge. I'm not perfect either and I know that the minute we start "shoulding" on other writers, we're hurting ourselves (Self-esteem 101). However, if someone asks me to help them, I always enjoy doing that. I give as much support as possible and I always remind them that the fact that they have even written anything is a good start. Thanks for stopping by my blog. - G

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  23. My head-editor screams at me and I have to shush it with chocolate. It's unfortunate, but true. ;)

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