Adverbs can be your friends WAS: Re: The Return of Tom Swift

[Caius Marcius]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "junediamanti" 
> <june.diamanti at b...> wrote:
> 

> 
> One of the things that makes JKR's writing so accessible to 
> young  people as well as adults who haven't read much fiction 
> before is those swifties, IMO. It takes experience with both real  
> life and the conventions of fiction-writing before you can decode 
> emotional content from  speech and gestures alone. The 
> adverbs make it simpler. 
> 
I think some authors like to use adverbs in an attempt to communicate 
more exactly how a character "sounds" in delivering the line. I have 
before me a text in which over the course of two pages, the various 
characters peak "blandly", "mutely", "encouragingly", "bluntly", 
"bitterly", "defiantly", and "haughtily" . The author is George 
Bernard Shaw (from Ceasar & Cleopatra), and though the objection may 
be made that Shaw was creating stage works rather than narrative, it 
is the case that Shaw put an uncommon amount of effort into the 
printed versions of his plays (e.g. the long prefaces, the hyper-
elaborate stage directions containing much information that cannot be 
realized on stage. etc).  

Some authors just like using adverbs.


   - CMC