The wayward beginner

To adverb or not to adverb

I thought it only fitting to start any blog about writing with a nod to Shakespeare, the great English master.





My point is this: when you're writing (prose, not a script) is it best to use adverbs? Great writers like Hemmingway suggest that the verb should say everything it has to, so there should be no need to embellish it.





I’m finding it quite difficult, sometimes when I write, I try to be quite purple in my prose, verbose, if you will. Other times maybe I try too hard to copy Ol' Ernest and feel like I'm trying to force the simplicity.





Put it this way: simplicity is what I want but I don't want to sound amateur. Every time I write some dialogue and then just say "he said" or "she said" it feels like I'm a 4th grader without any imagination. Yet that's the way they do it, those timeless authors. There's an art to it and I want to discover what it is.