…she asked sternly, slowly shaking her head from side to side…
That was a comment made by the wife of someone who is currently reading the second draft of Night and Day – well, the part about me not liking adverbs.
Actually, I don’t have anything in particular against the adverb – it’s just that they can end up overused, which really makes the writing seem…overwrought. And if you’ve read anything I’ve written, or even this blog, you know that I’m not much for overwrought writing – I get wordy, occasionally (maybe more than occasionally), but I try to keep it simple and relatively straightforward.
Much like what I prefer to read…
Right now I’m in the middle of a couple of books – Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess and Risen by Brian Keene. Both zombie novels of a sort, though very different in their take on the subject matter and even more different in the writing.
The Keene book is written in a relatively direct manner, and though I haven’t found the writing to be especially memorable, it’s functional and serviceable, and does the job of telling the story. The Burgess book, on the other hand, is better written, but more…ornately written. Not heavy on the adverbs and adjectives, to the point where you want to scream “Stop!”. But the writing and imagery are very complex, which makes it more difficult to read – at least for me.
I’ll be honest – I’m not a fan of “The Great Books” – those classics of bygone ages that delight the souls of spinster English teachers and young pseudo-intellectual girls with their involved descriptions of everything, their stiff, formal writing (but using only the very best words for your reading pleasure), etc. Call me plebeian, but it’s just not what I want to read for pleasure.
I select a book for the story, the concept, what it’s about. Read the flyleaf, read the back cover, whatever. Tell me what it’s about in general terms. If it sounds interesting, I’ll give it a go. Then I judge how the author handles the story and the characters, and finally, the writing.
The writing isn’t the draw for me – if it’s competent, and it tells the story in a way I can understand, I’m good to go. If not, then I fling the book across the room (or stop reading it on the Kindle) and move on to another one – my to-read pile is very large.
So I write the kind of writing that I like to read. It’s not elegant (though I do have an occasional good sentence or line of dialogue), but it tells the story. Adverbs optional.