Why are adverbs bad?

When I first started writing, I learned that adverbs are bad. According to the internet, adverbs are evil stains on the page that instantly turn good writing into bad writing, and if I find too many of them in my writing, I should repent for being a bad writer.

But is this actually true?

In this article:

• What’s wrong with adverbs? Adverbs explain verbs, but we don’t want to explain things all the time. Good writers paint pictures instead of explaining.

• Beware of adjectives: Adjectives explain nouns the same way adverbs explain verbs. Should we be avoiding adjectives?

I Wrote This Article Diligently

Ask twenty writers what the first rule of writing is, and all twenty of them will tell you that it’s “show, don’t tell”. Ask them for the second rule of writing and most of them will tell you it’s “eliminate adverbs when possible”.

Ask them whether they realize first and second are the same rule, and you’ll get twenty blank stares.

The point of fiction writing is to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. People read fiction to experience a world different from their own. The clear the writer can paint a picture, the more engaged the reader will be.

The problem with adverbs is that they don’t paint pictures. Instead, adverbs are used to explain verbs.

Let’s use an example:

Timmy walked away angrily.

“Angrily” can mean many different things. Is Timmy stomping his feet? Is he cold and brisk? Is he spewing curse words? Slamming the door? How does the reader’s brain know what picture to paint, if the adverb can mean so many different things?

You see, “angrily” is an explanation of what Timmy did. The sentence “Timmy walked away angrily.” does not paint a picture. It’s something a nature documentary narrator might say, as we watch Timmy’s actual actions on the screen. But we are not BBC narrators. Our books do not have an accompanying video feed.

Let’s try to paint Timmy’s walk.

“Fuck this!” Timmy shouted. He turned, pushing the manager aside with an elbow, and stomped through the hotel lobby, shouting obscenities at every guest and employee that even dared to look in his direction.

Now we’ve shown the details of what Timmy’s anger looks like, we realize we no longer need the adverb to explain Timmy’s actions. Our prose painted what it means for Timmy to walk away angrily. We conveyed a picture. We helped the reader glimpse at Timmy’s actions step by step, so the reader’s understanding of the scene is not vague anymore.

Should I avoid adverbs at all costs?

The short answer: no.

The long answer: it depends on the purpose of the adverb in the context of the sentence. If the adverb is there to explain a part of the story, you should eliminate it. If the adverb helps to paint a better or more effective picture, you can keep it.

For example, here’s an adverb we can keep:

Timmy smiled sadly.

We keep this adverb because there is no better way to paint this particular picture. You can’t just drop it, because “Timmy smiled.” means something wholly different. You can try to describe what it looks like for a person to smile sadly. Maybe Timmy’s eyes are drooping. Maybe the corners of his mouth are tense. Maybe “his lips curled into a fragile arc, a subtle dance that revealed the weight of unspoken sorrows”, a la ChatGPT. But doing any of these will kill your reader’s comprehension of the story, when a simple “Timmy smiled sadly." works just as well.

What About Those Pesky Adjectives?

Adverbs are universally hated in the writing circles, but for some reason, adjectives get a free pass.

First, a crash course in English grammar. Adverbs modify (explain) verbs. Adjectives modify (explain) nouns. In the sentence “The hungry man ate hungrily.”, hungry is an adjective that explains the noun man, and hungrily is an adverb that modifies the verb ate.

Remember, our goal as writers is to paint a clear picture for the reader to see. Tell me, then, what picture does the following sentence paint?

A beautiful woman walked past Timmy.

In the above sentence, there are no adverbs. There’s one adjective, beautiful, that explains a woman walking towards our POV character Timmy. But like the adjective, it doesn’t paint a picture. What woman do you see in your mind’s eye? A blonde in a red dress? A petit Southeast-Asian lady with tattoos? Maybe a tall, muscular girl in a tank top.

See the problem? Many adjectives are guilty of aiding and abetting vagueness. In other words, adjectives also explain instead of paint.

Now let’s try painting this scene:

She wore a tight blue dress that billowed as she walked with her heels clicking on the tile floor. Her dark hair glimmered under the thick yellow light of the chandelier. As she passed, Timmy caught himself gazing at the auburn small of her back and the yet-darker nape of her neck.