In Defense of Adverbs

I love adverbs. Ardently. Passionately. These powerful little "ly" words can subtly shift the meaning of a sentence, adding nuance and style. I am an adverb advocate, but these days it seems I am in a steadily shrinking minority of adverb aficionados.

I have been told, dear reader, that I use too many adverbs. The source was a fellow author who did me the courtesy of reading my work. She circled and struck through the offensive little parts of speech to emphasize the frequency with which I inflicted them on my readers. And I do inflict them frequently. I am quite aware that I am a shameless adverb whore, but I'm afraid I am not at all inclined to change my ways.

No matter how many times I'm told that adverbs are weak words, no matter how many creditable sources tell me that I should eradicate them from my lexicon (don't you just hate the word 'should?'), I simply will not do it. I like them. They are part of what makes my writing my own.

Perhaps I do use them too often. Perhaps I should rephrase here and there. Perhaps I will. But I flatly refuse to agree with those who write the writing rules, those handy-dandy guidelines on the One Right Way to write fiction, when they say that adverbs fall into the taboo category along with passive voice, head-hopping, and info-dumping.

I am adamantly pro-adverb. Are you?

Go ahead, comment. Disagree with me. I know you're itching to. Desperately.