A Kick Up The Adverbial.
Using Adverbs To Describe Dialogue.
Hello and welcome to this week’s #TuesdayTip!
Today I am going to be looking at an essential piece of grammar the adverb.
If, like me, you went to school in England in the eighties, you were probably never taught grammar properly. That includes the meaning of words such as ‘adverb‘. The good news, is that you will have been using, reading and writing them all of your life, you just had no idea that was what they were called!
In a nutshell, adverbs are words that modify and add context to a verb (a ‘doing word’). For example ‘she said happily.‘ ‘He ran slowly.‘
In these examples, the verbs (doing word) are ‘said’ and ‘ran’. The adverbs are the modifiers, underlined (happily and slowly).
As I have been looking at dialogue in previous TuesdayTips [Tip166 and Tip167], I am going to continue with that and focus on adverbs and dialogue tags.
As a rule of thumb, you should try and minimise their usage. Ideally the words chosen and the surrounding prose should tell the reader how the person is feeling, or their tone of voice.
It is drummed into writers that we should ‘show not tell’. This also applies to dialogue. By carefully choosing words and phrases, we can avoid the need to explicitly tell our readers how our characters are feeling. By constantly having to signpost our character’s feelings with adverbs, the text can become clunky and lose its flow.
But don’t ditch them entirely. Sometimes they are essential. For example:
“You went out drinking without saying anything,” she said angrily. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?“
In this example, you need to reinforce that the speaker is angry, because the language is actually quite ambiguous. I can easily change the tone of the statement by changing the adverb.
“You went out drinking without saying anything. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she said teasingly.
Other times, you can lose the adverb by using a different dialogue tag.
“You went out drinking without saying anything,” she shouted. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?“
Or
“You went out drinking without saying anything. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she teased.
A bonus here, is that you have also shortened the sentence by one word. Not much, but sometimes every little helps!
Sometimes, you can even cut the dialogue tag and the adverb entirely.
The following says the same thing, but its meaning is so clear that you don’t need to tell the reader what the character is feeling. Place it in context, and you can easily leave the reader in no doubt that this is being said at high volume, without ever needing to tell the reader this.
“So, you just decided to go out on the piss? Seriously, did you really think I wouldn’t notice?“
Ultimately, the decision whether or not to use adverbs is a personal one. However, I generally think that their overuse should be avoided. Ask yourself if you really need one or if there is an alternate way to write the sentence? On the other hand, they exist for a reason. Sometimes readers need additional help, especially if they speak English as an additional language or are not neurotypical, and require extra clues to judge a character’s mood.
What do you think of adverbs? Are there times when they are necessary? What about different audiences?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Today I am going to be looking at an essential piece of grammar the adverb.
If, like me, you went to school in England in the eighties, you were probably never taught grammar properly. That includes the meaning of words such as ‘adverb‘. The good news, is that you will have been using, reading and writing them all of your life, you just had no idea that was what they were called!
In a nutshell, adverbs are words that modify and add context to a verb (a ‘doing word’). For example ‘she said happily.‘ ‘He ran slowly.‘
In these examples, the verbs (doing word) are ‘said’ and ‘ran’. The adverbs are the modifiers, underlined (happily and slowly).
As I have been looking at dialogue in previous TuesdayTips [Tip166 and Tip167], I am going to continue with that and focus on adverbs and dialogue tags.
As a rule of thumb, you should try and minimise their usage. Ideally the words chosen and the surrounding prose should tell the reader how the person is feeling, or their tone of voice.
It is drummed into writers that we should ‘show not tell’. This also applies to dialogue. By carefully choosing words and phrases, we can avoid the need to explicitly tell our readers how our characters are feeling. By constantly having to signpost our character’s feelings with adverbs, the text can become clunky and lose its flow.
But don’t ditch them entirely. Sometimes they are essential. For example:
“You went out drinking without saying anything,” she said angrily. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?“
In this example, you need to reinforce that the speaker is angry, because the language is actually quite ambiguous. I can easily change the tone of the statement by changing the adverb.
“You went out drinking without saying anything. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she said teasingly.
Other times, you can lose the adverb by using a different dialogue tag.
“You went out drinking without saying anything,” she shouted. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?“
Or
“You went out drinking without saying anything. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she teased.
A bonus here, is that you have also shortened the sentence by one word. Not much, but sometimes every little helps!
Sometimes, you can even cut the dialogue tag and the adverb entirely.
The following says the same thing, but its meaning is so clear that you don’t need to tell the reader what the character is feeling. Place it in context, and you can easily leave the reader in no doubt that this is being said at high volume, without ever needing to tell the reader this.
“So, you just decided to go out on the piss? Seriously, did you really think I wouldn’t notice?“
Ultimately, the decision whether or not to use adverbs is a personal one. However, I generally think that their overuse should be avoided. Ask yourself if you really need one or if there is an alternate way to write the sentence? On the other hand, they exist for a reason. Sometimes readers need additional help, especially if they speak English as an additional language or are not neurotypical, and require extra clues to judge a character’s mood.
What do you think of adverbs? Are there times when they are necessary? What about different audiences?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
