Generally, adverbs are relatively useless.
Basic example:
Quote:
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The gunshot echoes across the street. Dave's head shot up and he ran quickly towards his house, fearing the worst.
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You could drop the word quickly. Think about it - if you were out on a walk, and heard a gunshot coming from your house, you'd probably do one of two things. Book it away from your house, or book it towards your house. Either way, you're going to be running. And when was the last time you ran
slowly? The word running implies speed in and of itself. The adverb is redundant.
The reason I point this out is that a lot of newer writers tend to use a lot of adverbs. I guess it's because they think it makes their work sound more like a story or something, more professional? I really don't know. Just don't do it.
Also, a lot of sentences use the word 'was.' Don't get rid of all of them, but when I'm editing my own stuff, I often go through with a the "Find" deal on Word, and try and rewrite most of the sentences with 'was' in them. This helps with the 'showing instead of telling' aspect of the story.
Example:
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I walked into the room and was immediately filled with a sense of dread. There was a giant of a man standing over my sister, who was duct taped to the kitchen chair.
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Right, so we want to eliminate the word 'was' as much as possible. We can rewrite the above example and condense it to something like this:
Quote:
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I walked into the kitchen and froze at the sight of my sister duct taped to a chair and the giant leering at me from behind her.
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Just some really quick examples, poorly written, but I hope you get the point.
~Christian
Editing Question
