It’s interesting how different readers react to the characters and events in Hannah’s Voice – either praising or being offended by how certain characters are portrayed. Some think I’ve written a Christian novel, or a novel that ridicules people of faith, or a conservative novel, or a novel that makes fun of people with conservative values or people with liberal values.

I didn’t write a political novel or a religious story. It’s a story about a little girl whose life gets caught in the crossfire of the adult world, and how she maintains her integrity and her childlike faith despite the dysfunction all around her. The innocence and forthrightness of childhood clash with the selfishness and guile of grown-ups.

Some of the various groups that interfere in Hannah’s life are portrayed – or at least were intended to be portrayed – at a level approaching absurdity. In the course of real world events, now that the book is published, it no longer seems so absurd.

I’ve found it mildly amusing that some readers have picked up on the portrayal of one group, but not another. The story contains some deluded religious fanatics. A couple of readers have said they liked how those ‘fundamentalists’ are portrayed. Another thought it was going to be yet another novel that presents a distorted negative stereotype of Christians. But the story also contains sympathetic, even heroic, characters of faith, and bumbling, dishonest left-wing ideologues. There are reactionary forces, political and religious, at both extremes, each of which displays hate and intolerance toward the other side for trying to impose their beliefs, while they are also trying to impose their beliefs.

Other institutions get the same treatment as well, such as the news media, public school administrators, psychologists and counselors, social workers, and the foster care system. There are rigid bureaucrats and loving foster parents; journalism vultures and an ambitious but compassionate news anchor; incompetent administrators and devoted teachers and nurses.

The characters with big hearts and actions to match are from all walks of life, just as the deluded fanatics are.

Isn’t that how real life is?

Hannah, however, is silent. She doesn’t try to impose anything on anyone. She just wants to live her life. She maintains her faith, but she certainly doesn’t hold herself up as perfect. In fact, she breaks one of the Ten Commandments in the opening lines of the novel.

So what is Hannah’s political viewpoint? She’s six years old when the story begins. She has no political views. She just wants to be left alone. She doesn’t want to be the center of attention. She wants to be understood and believed when she speaks. When she has nothing to say, she wants to be ignored. She wants to be with her family. She wants to live her life and her faith without interference and without the meddling of those whose intentions are infused with personal agendas.

If Hannah spoke, she might say “Don’t tread on me,” rather than, “It takes a village.” In Hannah’s case, it’s a village full of idiots – idiots of all political ideologies, occupations, and religious beliefs who think they are the sole owners of revealed truth.

Perhaps Hannah is a libertarian.

I’ve heard that mixing “ing” and “ed” verbs in a sentence is wrong. But isn’t this is the grammatically correct way to describe when a second action takes place within the time frame of another past tense action? – Ben H. Hugh

What verb forms should you use when a sentence contains two actions? It depends. How’s that for an answer?

There are lots of variables, and verb tense gives writers and editors fits. I see it done incorrectly all the time on work I edit. I also mess it up in my writing until I go back and edit myself, or my editor catches it.

There are two basic ways in which multiple actions occur in the same sentence. Either sequential (one thing then the other) or simultaneous (both things happen at the same time).

Sequential actions—a character does one thing and then does another thing:

He drove home and cooked dinner. [Correct. Don't use the -ing verb]

Driving home, he cooked dinner. [Wrong, unless he's cooking dinner in the car while driving.] 

Simultaneous actions—a character does two things at the same time:

He drove home, thinking of her. [Correct. The -ing verb shows the two actions happen at the same time]

It can get slightly more complicated if the two actions are done by two different characters.

She walked down the beach, the sun shining on her face. [Correct. The two actions are happening at the same time]

You could break it into two separate actions and it will be just as clear.

She walked down the beach. The sun shone on her face.

You can also use one of those timing words such as then, as, or while to indicate timing of actions. Sometimes one of these is necessary, but they can be cumbersome, so don’t overuse them:

As he drove home, he thought of her.

He drove home then cooked dinner.

She walked down the beach, while the sun shone on her face.

A problem shows up if the actions are sequential, but written as simultaneous, like the example above about the guy driving and cooking dinner at the same time. It’s not always that obvious:

She walked down the beach, going for a swim. [Wrong. She didn't walk on the beach and swim at the same time.

She walked down the beach and went for a swim. [Correct.]

Another problem comes in with the famous dangling participle:

Walking down the beach, the sun shone on her face. [Wrong. The way this sentence is written, it means the sun was walking down the beach.]

You could say:

She walked down the beach, and the sun was shining in her face.

But that adds a passive ‘to be’ verb where it’s not needed and weakens the sentence.

Then there’s the past continuous tense, which pairs a ‘to be’ verb with an ‘ing’ verb. This indicates an action that was in progress over a period of time in the past. If writing in simple past tense (the standard for most fiction), the continuous tense indicates an ongoing action.

She was walking down the beach. [Shows an ongoing action; she started walking at some point in the past, and continued to walk for a period of time]

Why is it needed if ‘She walked down the beach’ is just as clear in context? The continuous tense gets used a lot when it’s not needed, even if technically correct.

But let’s get back to sentences with two actions. If you need to show a continuous action that started in the past and continues until the next action, you might need the past continuous verb tense:

She was walking down the beach when the assailant robbed her of her flip-flops.

This shows she was in the process of walking down the beach—she started walking before she was robbed, and she was still in the process of walking at the moment of the robbery. Sort of a mix of the sequential and simultaneous actions because one action took place over a period of time, then the second action occurred at a single moment in time while the first action was still happening.

Then there’s past perfect, which often uses ‘had’ with the -ed verb:

She had walked down the beach.

This shows she started the action in the past, and that action is now completed. It happened at a prior time, such as:

Every day this week, she had walked down the beach. Today it rained, so she stayed inside. [Note that this is all in past tense, even the current moment of 'today.']

The word ‘had’ makes it clear that this was a prior action that had been completed in the past. That, of course, gets confusing if you’re writing in past tense, because everything technically happened in the past. When writing in past tense, use the past perfect to indicate an action that was completed before the ‘present moment’ in the scene. It helps differentiate between the present moment written in past tense and an action that happened prior to the present moment.

To really get confusing, when ‘had’ is paired with a ‘to be’ verb + an ‘ing’ verb, you’ve got the past continuous verb tense.

She had been walking down the beach.

This also refers to a prior time (maybe five minutes ago, maybe five years ago, doesn’t matter). But it shows a continuous or progressive, longer term action, something that started in the past, continued for a period of time, and was completed in the past. This verb tense works best when it leads to the next action or event.

Yesterday, she had been walking down the beach when the assailant robbed her.

This indicates that it happened at a time prior to the present moment in the story, not the current, live action scene in the story; that the walk was a progressive action that took up some amount of time; that the walk had finished before the current moment in the story; that the walk was still in progress when she was robbed. That’s packing a lot of information into two verb tenses.

The issue with these various verb tenses is that they get misused, or they’re used when not needed. They use extra words and pad the writing. My personal preference is more direct writing with as few words as possible (not that you can tell from this blog post). I like to reserve the more complex verb tenses for the times when they are truly needed.

To complicate matters even more, all these recommendations change slightly if you’re writing in present tense.

Remember that each verb tense has a specific use. Sometimes more than one tense can work, depending on exactly how you want to portray the actions to readers and the surrounding context. There are lots of ways to use them incorrectly, and there are ways that are technically correct, but tend to water down the prose, especially if used too frequently.

Which way should I publish? Should I try for an agent and a contract from a major publisher, or self-publish? I hear with self-publishing, I can get my book out to the public in a lot less time and I get to keep a larger percentage of the profits rather than share it with a publishing company and an agent? — This is a question I’ve received from several clients. I’ve also heard this question in writers’ groups, seen it on blogs, Facebook, and online writer communities. I’ve been down about each of these roads, so here’s my take on it.

First, I would go in clear-eyed about ‘profits.’ These days, the average debut fiction author with an agent and a publishing contract gets an advance of less than $5000, which is paid out in three or four installments over a one- to two-year period from the point of signing the contract. That, of course, may be after you’ve spent a year or more writing the book and another year or two (or longer) editing, revising, querying agents, and eventually landing an agent, if you’re lucky enough and good enough to get one. Then the agent has to pitch it to publishers. For debut novelists, the agent is often not successful with that first book. The vast majority of debut authors who do land that contract don’t sell enough copies to earn back the meager advance. From the time you are offered a publishing contract, if you ever get that far, it will likely be 18 months to two years before your book is published.

So if you land an agent and a major publishing house contract, maybe you will have earned $1000 a year for your hard work on that novel. Then, if the book’s sales don’t cover the advance, there’s probably no second book deal from any publisher. Why would the publisher, or any other, take a chance on an author whose first book didn’t sell well? They’re looking for the next big thing, and it wasn’t you. So the agent eventually drops you.

The average self-published writer will sell less than 500 copies a year. Depending on pricing and whether it’s an eBook, in print, or both, maybe you earn a $1000 a year in royalties. But you’ll pay for cover design, the cost of any stock photos used on the cover, editing (assuming you hire an editor), formatting and uploading (unless you can do all this yourself), plus the set-up fees and printing costs from companies such as Create Space, Lightning Source or Lulu.

Whether self-pubbed or traditional, you’re going to shoulder all or most of the cost of marketing and promotion. One excellent and successful writer I know spent $10,000 on marketing her debut novel. It sold well and won awards, but she lost a few thousand dollars on it. Of course, her second novel starts at a much higher point with a readership base, benefiting from all the promotion of the first book. So it may pay off in the long run, if you’ve got that kind of cash to invest and can consistently write a new award-winning novel every year.

There are also a wide range of middle ground publishers. These run the gamut from traditional small presses (often aimed at the literary market), to self-publishing assistance (for a fee and/or a percent of profits), to writer co-ops, to small digital publishers and niche publishers of all sorts. And there are still the old-school vanity presses that are always finding new ways to play on the hopes and dreams of naive writers.

Yeah, we all see the Rowlings and the Pattersons and the Meyers, the Stephen Kings and the John Grishams, but for every one of those, there are a few hundred thousand writers trying to break in.

So that’s all the gloom and doom. Now back to the question. If you’re still interested in writing, and you’re still interested in people reading and enjoying the fruits of your passionate labor, you’ll put all that aside and concentrate on the art and craft of writing compelling fiction. Then you’ll research all the various markets and methods to get your work in front of an audience.

You need to figure out which one suits you and your temperament and your knowledge/expertise. No one can answer that question for you, and there isn’t a “this is the best way to get published” response.

Ask yourself, with brutal honesty, if you have a book that agents and major publishing companies will be clamoring for? There are books with strong commercial potential. Agents and major publishers are constantly on the lookout for great stories. Is yours one of them? But remember that most agents sign a tiny fraction of one percent (1 out of 10,000 or less, according to some agents’ blogs) of the query letters they receive from new writers.

Ask yourself if you have what it takes to be a self-published author and handle everything yourself as a writer and publisher and business person and a marketer, and if you can consistently put out top quality products all on your own (plus whatever professional help you have to hire). Do you have the money to invest, knowing it might or might not ever pay off? Sometimes lightning strikes, and a self-published author hits it big or captures the attention of a major publisher. Just remember that these instances are extraordinarily rare. Don’t make that your plan and take out a second mortgage based on that happening.

Would you feel more comfortable with a small press or digital publisher? Is there a niche publisher that fits your book and your potential audience? Do a lot of hard research in this area, and talk to a lot of writers who have used a particular publisher before you sign with one. There are great ones, and there are scam artists galore more than happy to part you from your money. Have an attorney review any contract before you sign anything. Search the Internet for reviews and comments and complaints about any publisher you’re considering.

The bottom line is that you can’t count on a bottom line. There are pros and cons to every possible avenue to publication. Each writer has to sort through it all and find the best fit.

Figure out which is the best way for you to build a readership audience and reach people with your books rather than trying to figure out which way will provide the largest profit.

It’s perfectly fine to dream big, but act with optimistic yet cautious realism, and spend more energy writing your next novel than calculating your potential profits.

I’m wrestling with flashbacks. Do they confuse the reader (as they often do in films)? Do they interrupt the narrative flow and annoy the reader? Do writers only do it because it can be fun? Is it best to avoid flashbacks? —Anonymous

I like flashbacks—as a reader—if done well. But there are lots of ways to go wrong with them.

A flashback is when the main story stops, the new scene starts from an earlier time (the day before or fifty years earlier, doesn’t matter), and a ‘live action scene’ is shown from that previous time.

The advantage flashbacks have is you can start the story where it needs to start, not at the very beginning, but in the middle of things. Dive right in. You can fill in the back story gradually.

Flashbacks are one way to fill in back story. Filling in back story gradually can be better than beginning the story at a much earlier point and going forward for several chapters to fill in the back story in a chronological fashion until things eventually get interesting.

Some of the problems I see with flashbacks in editing (and I’ve done all of these at one time or another, often more than once):
— Too many flashbacks. Like anything, use sparingly.
— Too long flashbacks. Shorter is usually better. Drop into a flashback and stay there too long, and readers can lose the main narrative. That means you can lose the readers.
— Unclear flashbacks, going in or coming out. Add signals so the reader knows when the story slips into a flashback and a clear signal when the story returns to the main story timeframe. Don’t confuse your reader.
— Flashbacks that reveal nothing important to the story. Flashbacks need serve a specific purpose. They exist to drive the main story, fill a story gap, reveal character motivation, or something relevant to the main story. Don’t throw in a flashback because you think, “Here’s a really interesting scene I thought up about something the character did twenty years earlier.” The main test here is the question: If this flashback wasn’t in the story, would readers even notice? Is the main story incomplete without it?
— Flashbacks at the wrong time. Use a flashback at precisely the point where readers need to know about that earlier event. That doesn’t always mean immediately adjacent to some important, related event. You might want the back story info planted in the reader’s mind earlier, so when an event happens later, the back story is already known. You might want to reveal the back story at a later point, after the related event happens to give readers that ‘ah ha!’ moment. But make sure the flashback blends with the scenes immediately preceding and following. Otherwise, it can have a jerky feel, and can seem like the writer is telling the reader, ‘Okay, I’m stopping the story here to take you back in time to show you a scene from the past for no particular reason,’ even if the reason becomes apparent later.

There are other methods to fill in back story, so don’t just rely on flashbacks. The back story event can be filtered into the main, live story without dropping back in time and re-creating the full scene. A character might stumble upon a letter from her grandmother stuffed in a box in the attic (the letter was stuffed in a box, not the grandmother). In the live scene, the character sits in the attic with the box and reads the letter, but the scene never leaves the character in the attic.

Back story can be filtered into the main story as a character remembers an earlier time, reads a newspaper clipping, reminisces with a friend, or countless other ways. But an occasional, well-done flashback can be a great way to make these ‘previous moments’ more dynamic.

The Sonoran Desert in the American Southwest is a place of extremes and contrasts, of beauty and death, of independent spirits and lost souls, of fresh starts and exiles.

SONORAN DREAMS: Three Short Stories from Exile, published June 2012 by fiction writer Robb Grindstaff of Phoenix, Arizona, is a collection of stories in three different genres, all set in the Arizona desert, each featuring characters in exile of one form or another.

Available now in all e-book formats, currently on Amazon for Kindle , Smashwords, Barnes & Noble for the Nook, Kobo, and soon on Apple iBooks.

 The trilogy features the award-winning horror story, Desert Rain, selected by readers and editors of Horror Bound magazine for its ‘Best of 2008-2012′ collection.

SYNOPSES
Cordelia lives alone in a shack miles from civilization, somewhere no one can find her except for a very determined suitor. Raymond shows up every twelve years to consummate his marriage to the bride he’d claimed at her birth. Every twelve years, Cordelia fends off his unwanted advances—by killing him. The smell of death precedes his arrival each time, unless the sweet scent of a freshly fallen DESERT RAIN masks his approach.

Denny has lost everything in the recession. His business. His Scottsdale home on the side of a mountain with swimming pool and four-car garage. His ambition. His wife. With nothing left to lose but his sanity, his life, or maybe his injured foot, he heads out on a hundred-mile DESERT WALK in search of Hope.

When the sun goes down and the scorching heat cools to an uncomfortable swelter, bored teenagers gather to spend the DESERT NIGHTS out by the power lines, drinking beer, hooking up, arguing over the best rock bands of all time. Maybe shoot at some rattlesnakes and jackrabbits. Nothing could possibly go wrong here.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
“Robb Grindstaff is a master storyteller!” —Maria Grazia, editor, Horror Bound Magazine

“I don’t think there is any genre Robb Grindstaff can’t conquer. Some writers excel at characterization, others at plot, and still others are best known for their unique prose style. Robb is a triple threat, and any book with his name on it is bound to be a great read. —S.P. Miskowski, author of Knock Knock

Robb Grindstaff has a wicked sense of humor, a keen eye on the human psyche, and impeccable timing. His prose crackles and doesn’t waste a syllable. These stories turn the desert Southwest of Cormac McCarthy into a carnival funhouse.” —Pete Morin, author, Diary of a Small Fish

“Robb’s talent for creating real-life characters and bringing us into their lives is extraordinary, but what marks him apart from so many others writing today is how American his voice is—Robb’s writing amuses, charms and yet, when you least expect it, can still challenge and shock.” —Alexander McNabb, author, Olives: A Violent Romance

“Robb Grindstaff’s seamlessly written stories are full of strong characters, rendered with wit and subtlety. Stories unfold gently, judgments are never made, and the reader is left with a story that resonates long after the book is closed. His writing reminds me of John Irving (The World According to Garp; A Prayer for Owen Meany). ” —Phillipa Fioretti, author, The Book of Love

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After a career in newspaper journalism and management took him from Arizona to North Carolina, Texas to Washington, D.C., plus five years in Asia and around the world, Grindstaff returned to the desert, where he now writes and edits fiction full-time.

He has two completed novels in preparation for publication while writing his third and fourth. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies, print magazines and e-zines. His articles on the craft of writing fiction have published in magazines and websites in the U.S., Europe, and Australia.

His editing clients include traditionally published, agented, and high quality indie authors from the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.

For more information, to request a review copy or an interview, or to inquire about book editing services, email robb@robbgrindstaff.com.

Have you ever had an agent, editor, or a reviewer say something like this about your novel?

“This story has a weak (or non-existent) narrative arc.”
“While the characters are strong, the narrative arc did not maintain my interest.”
“The writing is solid, but the narrative arc is unclear and inconsistent.”

I have. And on many occasions, I’ve had to be the editor to say something along that line.

It’s easy to say that a story doesn’t have a strong narrative arc. It isn’t so easy to define and describe a narrative arc. It’s even harder to write a story with a strong narrative arc. I know how difficult it can be from my own experience as a writer.

Think of narrative arc as a bell curve. It starts at a point on the lower left hand side of a graph, rises in a curve to a peak, and then drops back down again. The standard narrative arc is often referred to in terms of the three-act play: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Act one, the beginning, introduces the characters and sets the stage—the current situation. Then an inciting event sets the story into motion.

In act two, the main character must try to overcome the conflict presented by the inciting event. The character wants something, has a goal in mind. The conflict and tension of the story rise, and obstacles are thrown in the path of the character to prevent her from achieving her goal. The character faces these obstacles on her way to overcoming the conflict. The obstacles get bigger, more difficult, and the character may be on the verge of defeat or surrender. At this point, the character must make a critical decision or a moral choice that changes the direction of the story.

That decision leads to act three and results in two things: the climax to the story (the peak of the curve), and the character is profoundly changed in some way. The character finds the strength within and a method to overcome the conflict. The story questions are resolved and the character has changed from the person she was at the beginning of the story. Or, the character is defeated, fails to accomplish the goal, dies, or some other tragic ending, but even then, the character has changed is some way, for the better or worse.

A slightly more complex outline is the eight-point narrative arc, described by Nigel Watts in his book, Write a Novel and Get It Published. Merging these eight points with the three-act play formula would look something like this:

ACT ONE
1. Stasis – the current situation and characters in everyday life
2. Trigger – the inciting event that sets the plot in motion

ACT TWO
3. The quest – the trigger results in the character needing to accomplish some goal
4. Surprise – a series of events presents obstacles that make achieving the goal more difficult
5. Critical choice – the character must choose a particular path to confront the obstacles
6. Climax – the critical choice results in the climax of the story, the highest peak of tension

ACT THREE
7. Reversal – the consequences of the critical choice changes the status of the character
8. Resolution – the story ends at a new point of stasis, and the character is changed is some way

Note that the ‘typical’ three-act play structure in a novel does not usually break down neatly into equal sections of one-third each. Act one may be a single chapter or two. It can be longer, of course, but it may be contained in the first few pages. Likewise, act three might be fully contained in one or two chapters at the end.

Act two is the giant middle in which the story takes place. This is the toughest slog for any writer to execute, and this is where the narrative arc can fall apart. Does each scene add to the story: raise the stakes, increase tension, create obstacles, or show the character overcoming (or failing to overcome) an obstacle? Does the scene further a sub-plot that is inextricably tied to the main plot (a love interest, a personal or family issue that the character must deal with while also trying to save the world from aliens or her family farm from the tax collectors)?

Or, are new sub-plot elements created, new obstacles raised, or new characters introduced that have nothing to do with the main storyline? Does the main plot disappear for chapters at a time? Does the character go here and do something, go there and do something else, then go somewhere else and something completely different happens? Do all these events create a disjointed storyline that bounces hither and yon with no coherent narrative arc?

Each scene should lead to the next in a logical, coherent manner that advances the story. This proceeds until the obstacles and the conflict are overwhelming and it appears the character may fail unless she makes the right choice in her critical decision. Instead of ‘this happens, then that happens, then something else happens,’ the narrative arc will look like ‘this happens, which leads to that happening, which causes something else to happen.’

This doesn’t mean every scene has to be more dramatic than the one before it. Pacing in a novel is important. Readers need a slower, more sedate scene periodically to catch their breath. The character needs time between obstacles to review her journey and think about how to proceed, time for romantic interludes, times where things seem to be going right for the character just before BAM the next big thing happens. If you chart the scenes in a novel, it might look like a rising stock market over a period of time with a series of ups and downs, but on an overall rising path until the climax and the slow curve down during resolution and denouement.

If you think (or have been told) that your narrative arc is weak, try writing out a scene-by-scene outline of your current draft. See if the outline makes sense, if each scene advances the story in a logical way, or if there are scenes that veer off course and distract from the main storyline.

Your narrative arc should look like a bell curve, not a map of a suburban neighborhood full of circle drives, cul-de-sacs, and dead end roads.

For more resources:

Nigel Watt’s book, Write a Novel and Get It Published

Alan Rinzler, a renowned book editor, blogs about narrative arc.

The late, great Kurt Vonnegut Jr. talks about the shapes of stories here in a wonderful four-minute video.

I read the POV article on your site and I have a question. I am currently writing a novel in the first person POV. There is a conversation between my main character’s sister and his girlfriend toward the end of the story. I NEED the reader to know this information before my main character does. The reader needs to witness this conversation, if you will. How can I do this without switching POV to third since the entire novel is first person. It seems off to all of a sudden have a chapter that’s in the third person. Any help would be greatly appreciated. — Michael Harrison Tennessee

My first, instinctive reaction is that you may need to find a different way to approach the information. A sudden, unexpected shift in the voice from first person to third, and a shift to a new POV, this late in the story would most likely feel very jarring and yank the reader right out of the carefully crafted first-person narrative that you’ve created over the course of an entire novel. It might feel to readers as if the author wrote himself into a corner and had to resort to a different voice to get out of it.

So before deciding to switch to a different voice and POV, I’d look for other options. Is is absolutely critical for the reader to know the info before the main character? Is there a way that the MC can hear the info (so the reader hears it too) but the MC misunderstands it or doesn’t realize its significance, but readers will understand (the unreliable narrator approach)?

It’s tough to make any sensible recommendations without knowing the whole story, of course, so I’m pretty much shooting in the dark here. But the general idea of introducing a new POV and switching out of a first-person narrative late in the novel might, I’m afraid, feel like a cheap trick to readers. Introducing new information to the reader–which the first-person narrator doesn’t know–might feel a bit too much like the deus ex machina twist that makes readers feel cheated at the end.

I wish I could give a more positive recommendation or suggestion, but without knowing the whole story, I’m just not able to do more than suggest you avoid the late POV and voice switch.

Any readers out there have more suggestions?

If you’ve been writing fiction for more than a day, and have ever read a writers’ magazine, visited a writing website or blog, attended a writing critique group, or taken a college course in creative writing, you’ve probably heard this rule.

Here’s a good piece of advice: Anytime someone says ‘Always do this’ or ‘Never do that’ when it comes to writing, that’s a good time to tune them out. The only hard and fast rule to writing fiction: Never bore your reader.

But like many of these alleged rules and regulations for writers, there is a kernel of truth packed away underneath the prose fascist’s pronouncement.

Most of the time, these never-rules have morphed over time through misinterpretation, like the children’s game of gossip or telephone. What started as good advice to help keep novice writers from falling into the most common novice writer mistakes has transformed into dictatorial fiat by the literazis.

Adverbs are an easy place for novice, or even more experienced, writers to slip into lazy writing habits.

The problem is obvious in many beginning writers’ manuscripts. The problem isn’t that they’ve used an adverb. The problem is that they’ve never met an adverb they didn’t like. If a sentence feels flat—add an adverb! If one adverb is good, two must be better! There’s no adverb in this sentence—get one!

Adverbs aren’t wrong. They’re just weak. There is usually a better verb that conveys the image the writer wants to show, a verb that doesn’t need an adverb tacked on in an attempt to make a boring verb interesting. It’s like dressing a Chihuahua in doll clothes. Just get a more interesting dog, like a Basset hound or a Siberian husky or an Australian shepherd.

“I quickly ran home.”

Boring. Maybe “I sprinted home.” Or “I dashed home.” You’ve got dozens of choices more interesting than ‘ran’ that don’t need to be shoved into an adverb like Panchita into a Cabbage Patch dress.

One of the most common offenders of the ugly adverb syndrome is the dialog tag (he pontificated wisely). Dialog tags will be the subject of a blog post all to themselves in the near future, but if you’re adding an adverb onto your ‘said’ or ‘asked’ more than, oh, let’s say twice in a 100,000-word novel, you’re probably overdoing it. It sounds amateurish. Really, it does. Get over it.

“Wh-wh-what do you mean by that?” he stammered haltingly.

Is there any other way to stammer other than haltingly? In fact, why do you need to say ‘stammered’ since the dialog clearly shows th-th-the character stammering? You don’t. Lose it.

So when can you use an adverb? That’s easy.

When it’s right. When the adverbly verbed combination says exactly what you want to say, you’ve got the adverb in the right place for the right emphasis, and you’ve used them sparingly throughout your story. Adverbs, like adjectives, are a pungent spice. A little goes a long way. You can use them more than never, but less than distractingly, irritatingly, obnoxiously frequent.

And now a quick note on adverb placement for when you do use them—say, zero to twenty times per novel (okay, twenty-five if you’re writing an epic historical saga trilogy, or ninety-seven if you’re writing category romance or erotica). As a general rule, place the adverb closest to the word it modifies. This is especially true if it’s a complex sentence with two or more verbs or a prepositional phrase. Otherwise, you can change the meaning of the sentence. Consider these two sentences:

I nearly lost all of my money.

I lost nearly all of my money.

Example number one, nearly modifies lost. Something happened in which I came very close to losing all of my money, but thank goodness I didn’t lose it. I still have all of my money.

Example number two, nearly modifies all. Something happened in which I lost most, but not all, of my money.

Does the adverb go before or after the verb? Unless it changes the meaning, it doesn’t matter. Go with the one that sounds best. Putting the adverb first can change the emphasis of the sentence to the adverb.

Go boldly where no man has gone before.

Boldly go where no man has gone before.

Same meaning, different emphasis.

It is acceptable to occasionally split infinitives.

It is occasionally acceptable to split infinitives.

The first one is the split infinitive, in case you were wondering, because the adverb comes between the two-word verb phrase ‘to split’.

So the next time someone tells you, “Never use an adverb,” remind them that ‘never’ is an adverb and they just used one.

I have an early reader that was published in 2003 and is still in print. I didn’t sell all rights to it. Can I now resubmit it as a short story to a magazine? - Elizabeth, Michigan