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/lit/ - Literature

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21352609 No.21352609 [Reply] [Original]

>During my sixteen years as a teacher of writing, I removed many adverbs and adverbial phrases from students' writing. I decided long ago that a writer who needlessly modifies words is either a nervous writer who does not believe in the worth of what they are writing or a vain writer who wants to be seen as discriminating and sensitive to nuances or meaning.

Thoughts?

>> No.21352664

>>21352609
>Thoughts?
>cute girl I know had had my Dune book for around 18 months and still hasn't started it
H-how do I ask for it back? I want to read the series again.

>> No.21352672

>>21352609
All he is saying don't modify words unless you have a very good reason, not exactly controversial. Verbs tend to get pointless modifiers, probably comes through speech since we often use those sorts of modifiers in combination with other thing that make them less pointless but things like auditory cues, body language, and voice (lit sense not actual) do not translate well into writing.

>> No.21352734

>>21352672
>All he is saying don't modify words unless you have a very good reason, not exactly controversial
*unless you have a good reason
*not controversial
t. murnane

>> No.21352865
File: 556 KB, 1080x2181, Screenshot_20221206-222414_Firefox.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21352865

>>21352609
I like to read a sample of people's work (if possible) when reading their sweeping statements about prose stylism. It makes total sense to me that someone who writes like picrel would think that everyone else's prose should be simple and unornamented as well.

>> No.21352870

>>21352609
>ADVERBS BAD!
t. some faggot bitch no one ever heard of

>> No.21352871

>>21352609
>Australian
opinion discarded

>> No.21352872

>>21352865
I had... I had... I had...

>> No.21352880

Peak boomerizm.
Someone trying to reject the ideas of younger authors. Often adverbs are a direct challenge to the social context of the verb, this upsets old people.

Noooo you can't have a "natural birth", no birth is unnatural, nothing unnatural qualifies as a birth etc etc.

>> No.21352883

>Melbourne
Yea that explains a lot, fucking faggot city of neoliberals.

>> No.21353063

>>21352609
Don't even know what an adverb is, let alone what "adverbial phrases" might be :^)

>> No.21353213

>>21352883
The guy looks in bumfuck nowhere, grew up in Melbourne in the 60s, which was nothing like it is now

>> No.21353217

>>21352865
>simple
I am a writer of books. I am a ghost. While I was writing I died and became a ghost. While I was writing I saw ghosts of hundreds of books that I have never seen, nor will ever see, in libraries where ghosts of men that I have never seen, nor will ever see, dreamed of writing to young women in America. I saw ghosts of my own books in ghosts of libraries where no one comes to unlock the glass doors of bookcases. I saw ghosts of men staring sometimes at ghosts of glass panes. I saw ghosts of images of clouds drifting through the ghost of an image of sky behind ghosts of covers and spines of ghosts of books. I saw ghosts of images of pages white or grey drifting through the same ghost of an image of sky. And I went on writing so that ghosts of images of pages of mine would drift over ghosts of plains in a ghost of a world towards ghosts of images of skies in libraries of ghosts of the ghosts of books.

>> No.21353224

>>21352609
Any opinionated prescriptive metrics is cancer

>> No.21353248

>>21353217
This is really good.

>> No.21353251

>>21352865
I hate this style so much and I hate even more that this faggot is so high on his own farts he thinks he can prescribe how other people should write.

>> No.21353257

i dont know what an adverb is

>> No.21353279

>>21353257
>>21353063
Adverb is a word you can slap anywhere within a sentence without collapsing the grammacal structure. It's the most flexible part of an otherwise rigid language that is english and it's weird to see writers of all people seething about them.

>> No.21353282

>>21352609
mm. yes and no. a lot of time, yes. but I also just like using them, especially in fun and unusual combinations, and there are books I enjoy where authors do the same.

>> No.21353284

>>21352865
>The storm broke... when schools are dismissed.
lmao what a clunky sentence.

>> No.21353299

Isn’t he a huge Proust fan lol? Wtf...

>> No.21353426

Once also saw a quote from Stephen King to never use adverbs or words ending in -ly. I'd be willing to bet he never takes his own advice on that one.

>> No.21353442

It depends.

I actually like reading wordy stories if it were set in a Victorian era and the main protagonist is just classy like that.

But I don't expect flowery writing from a hard-boiled detective novel.

>> No.21353489

>>21352609
>le hecking new writer OP just discovered and will insistently spam for a few weeks until he discovers le new hecking writer to spam

>> No.21353506
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21353506

People make writing so complicated. It's just communication. If the sentence communicates what you want to communicate then how can it be wrong?

>> No.21353543

>>21352609

Absolutely based. Enforcing an adjective and adverb quota on twitter would solve ALL of its problems.

>> No.21353558

>>21352609
Fitzgerald is the first author I fell in love with and he uses adverbs like they're going out of style to great effect. Why anyone would claim an entire class of words isn't ok to use when WRITING is beyond me. If you can't figure out how to use adverbs well then just get gud or shut up. There are countless authors who can use them fine.

>> No.21353622

>>21353506
Based