A while back I was on a panel at a writing event with a bunch of  American colleagues. Someone on the floor came up with what seemed to me a bizarre question. How did we feel about adverbs? Those words that usually, though not always, end in -ly and modify verbs and adjectives? The ones that make people walk <em>slowly</em> or  <em>really</em> bright when it comes to mathematics?

Funny one that, I thought. It opened the floodgates. The poor old adverb got kicked from pillar to post. In some quarters of the US, it seems, adverb use is akin to wife-beating or bull-baiting, a nasty old-fashioned habit that should have been laid to rest years ago.

Not being American this was new to me so I ventured the opinion that adverbs are fine so long as they're used in moderation (which you can say about pretty much every other grammatical construction too). I felt like Daniel walking into the lions' den, though a few brave souls (well one anyway, <a href="http://www.davidcorbett.com/" target="_blank">David Corbett</a> stand up and take a bow), did rise to my defence.

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Adverb-hate is one of those automatic 'never do this' rules you meet in writing schools and at book conventions from time to time. I hate 'never do' rules in creative fiction. We're trying to produce works of the imagination here, not business plans. Furthermore adverb-hate is very localised,  an American habit, one some people lay at the door of Hemingway (though whether that's true or not I've no idea). I'd never heard of this 'rule' before I started going to talk at writing schools in the States. And I have to be honest... no reader and certainly no editor <em>anywhere</em> has ever voiced the opinion that adverbs are so, like, nineteenth century, dude.

One particular habit that seems to infuriate people is the use of adverbs to qualify speech. For example...
<blockquote>'I don't suppose there's somewhere we could stop along the way for some lunch?' Peroni said <em>hopefully.</em></blockquote>
The haters say this should never happen. And you know something? Sometimes they're right -- it shouldn't. I don't need the word 'hopefully' here. Peroni likes his food and always wants to eat. In the context of one of my books anyone hearing that spoken sentence should understand the tone of his voice hopefully (there I go again). But the word requires excision here not because it's an adverb. It's unnecessary, plain and simple, and unnecessary words should go whatever label they carry on their backs.

Adverbs are just fine when they add something. One instance I cited at that panel was when people were speaking in a particular way -- quickly or slowly, for example, which could be indicative of a mood or a need to act swiftly. Ah, said an adverb-hater. You can handle that through punctuation. So for slow speech, you got people to s-p-e-a-k v-e-r-y slllloooowwwlllly or something.

Mother, pass me the gun.

Also, how do you deal with the opposite? Speaking very quickly? Never did get an answer to that one. And what about nervously, and hopefully and forcefully and all those other adverbs that can, in the right circumstances, add more meaning to the text? For example...
<blockquote>'I think there's someone outside', he said quietly.</blockquote>
I know what you're thinking...
<blockquote>'I think there's someone outside,' he whispered.</blockquote>
Which is probably what I'd write. But the adverb-haters always have another rule too. The only verb you can use to describe speech is the verb to say. No whisper, murmur, mutter, grumble, yell, bark, shriek. Just say. So that won't get through either.

Again, I'm with them up to a point. Some people will, in a desperate attempt not to repeat themselves, use anything instead of said: declaimed, asseverated, opined, orated. For pity's sake no. Keep it simple, but a little variety with everyday words surely doesn't go amiss.

Another overarching belief of the adverb jihadists is the idea that truly good writers should be able to convey everything -- <em>everything --</em> through the dialogue alone. The spoken words should tell you the tone, the delivery, the accent, the emotion, the lot.

This usually comes with another rule which says that proper dialogue has no need of attribution either. It should be so obvious who said the dialogue that there's rarely any need to identify the speaker with a closing '...,' said Peroni.

You can verify the insanity of this last point very simply yourself. How often have you encountered paragraph after paragraph of unattributed direct speech, going on for pages even, and found that, at some stage, <em>you have to work your way back to the last direct attribution then work forwards counting through the alternating paragraphs to work out who the hell is speaking?</em>

Quite.

Adverbs exist because, used properly, they bring something to writing and have done since we learned to  communicate beyond grunts. This is why we find them in Romance languages, in Japanese, Scandinavian, Greek and, of course, Latin (the term was actually invented by a fourth century grammarian, Charisius, from 'ad-verbium', literally adding something to a verb). Are we really such clever clogs today that we can dismiss centuries of literary usage through some blunt rule that means little or nothing to the average reader?

This is my opinion, of course. You're entitled to differ. The great Elmore Leonard certainly does as he says <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-adverbs-exclamation-points-especially-hooptedoodle.html" target="_blank">in this article in the New York Times</a>. He reckons the only allowable verb to be used to carry dialogue is 'say', and it must never ever be qualified by an adverb under any circumstances.

I'm with him on most of the points he makes. But in truth this is principally a great article for anyone wanting to learn how to write and sound like Elmore Leonard. If you're trying to define your own voice, ignore so-called rules and find it for yourself.