Do you think creative writing is for you? Do you like to imagine your name in print, at the cover of some story that the New York Times calls a “wonderful masterpiece,” with a few quotes from Stephen King and J.K. Rowling on the back praising about how they wish they could be half as good a writer as you are? Or maybe you just like writing for grins and giggles?

If so, then does the title of this article piss you off? If your answer is “yes,” then there’s a good reason: adverbs are bad for creative writing.

Take this simple, unassuming stitch of dialogue:

“Come on, let’s go play in the graveyard,” Johnny said excitedly.

“Well,” Susan said nervously, “I suppose if it’s still daylight out.”

See anything wrong here? No? Notice those two innocent little words: “Excitedly” and “quietly.” Or, maybe, not so innocent.

An adverb is, to put it short, unnecessary. It is simply not needed. At all. IF your writing is good. A good writer can communicate the emotions and tone of voice through their speakers without the need for adverbs to “explain” it to the reader.

Let’s take a look at the same snippets of dialogue above, but revised without adverbs:

Johnny shifted back and forth on his tiptoes, beaming. “Ooh, come on, Susan, let’s go play in the graveyard.”

“I don’t know,” said Susan, her voice faltering. “It’ll be dark soon. You promise we’ll be home before it gets dark out?”

Now, see what I did: I added a little action to the sentences. We know Johnny is excited because he’s restless, shifting on his toes, and his beaming obviously suggests he’s happy about something. We can “hear” Johnny’s excitement as we read his dialogue, and thus for me to put “excitedly” after “said” is unnecessary. The same goes for Susan and her nervousness; we can simply tell, by the words she says, that she is nervous, making it  unnecessary to tell the reader that she is, in fact, nervous.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, says that adverbs are the product of fear. When a writer uses them, he is afraid that he isn’t getting the message across. Let’s face it, adverbs are like a nightlight in a dark room, but just like nightlights, you have to wean yourself off of them sooner or later.

“But, Makhios, you handsome devil,” you may be thinking, “I read a lot, and a ton of great writers use lots of adverbs. The Harry Potter books, for example.”

Well, you’re right and wrong; a lot of bestselling books by a lot of today’s big-name authors are chock-full of adverbs, including (and especially) the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. However, in terms of mechanics, Rowling is, to put it bluntly, not a good writer. She’s a great storyteller, to be sure (her books got famous for a reason), but her mechanics (the writing itself) are very basic, and this leads to extensive use of adverbs.

Adverbs do not just ruin dialogue, either. Take this action sentence:

After running for an hour, he was breathing heavily.

Now let’s do an adverb makeover:

He stopped to catch his breath after an hour of running up the road. His sweat was soaking through his shirt, and his water bottle was almost empty.

Okay, so it’s not a work of art, but bear with me here. In the second sentence we clearly know that he’s breathing heavily; assuming he’s not a robot or superhuman, running for an hour will make him breathe pretty heavily; and the fact that’s he’s sweating a lot and drinking all his water “shows” the reader that, yes, this runner is tired and panting and sweating. The “heavily” is not only unnecessary, but also covers up a fair bit of the mental picture that the second sentence gives with its added description.

But don’t think for a minute that you’re a terrible writer if you use a few adverbs here and there. There’s always–always–room to improve. Hell, just look at my crappy work. But if you feel afraid that you’re not getting what you want to get across to your readers, act on that fear–you’re probably correct. But act by modifying your sentences with a little description, or emotion, or actions, that make what you’re getting across obvious to the reader. Adverbs are a very limited solution to a potentially story-breaking problem.