11 May 2026·3 min read
The adverb argument, settled
Everyone knows the rule. Almost nobody has been told what it is actually detecting.
An adverb is a rash rather than the disease, and the rash tells you where to look.
When a sentence needs one, the verb underneath is usually doing too little. Walked slowly wants a better verb. Said angrily wants a better line of dialogue. The adverb is propping up a weak choice, and deleting it without fixing that choice leaves the sentence worse than it was.
The exercise that teaches it
Take two pages. Strip out every adjective and adverb. Read them.
Now put back only the ones you actually missed. It is usually about a quarter of what you took out, and twenty minutes of this teaches you more than a lifetime of hearing the rule repeated.
Where the rule is simply wrong
Some prose piles things up on purpose. Some writers build rhythm out of accumulation. A narrator who qualifies everything might be telling you exactly who she is.
The question is never whether the adverb is there. It is whether it is paying rent.
Read more
Everything above came out of one of these. If any of it was useful, they are where it gets explained properly, with more examples and more patience than a short piece has room for.
Steering the Craft · Ursula K. Le Guin
Short and exact. The exercises are the point, so do them.
On Writing · Stephen King
Half memoir, half toolbox. The toolbox half is unusually free of nonsense.
Stein on Writing · Sol Stein
The most practical book on revision I know. Nearly every chapter ends in something you can do today.
These are search bait. I spent about five minutes on each. The letter you get back is nothing like this. Why that is
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