Description
Hey everyone . I hope your March was wonderful and Easter eggcellent .
I hope you laughed and cried and ate far too much chocolate . Because today, I bring you another challenge we've never seen before.
Avoid the Adverb April is exactly as it sounds. We will be using a fantastic adverb finder website to annihilate the adverbs in our pieces. Why? Because we can.
As most of us know, adverbs are verb descriptors, and they allow you to convey how an act was performed. Many prose critics argue that too many adverbs (and adjectives for that matter) can clutter and over-embellish a story. They urge beginning and intermediate writers to use adverbs sparingly. In the place of overusing adverbs, they recommend stronger nouns and verbs to allow for punchier and more specific descriptions.
E.g. "The tiny brown bird flew gently across the room" if condensed this can become
"The sparrow fluttered across the room" without losing any meaning or imagery. I am aware that I condensed both adjectives and adverbs but you get the gist.
I thought it could be fun to personally analyse how often we each utilize this specific form of speech and thus this challenge was born.
For the purpose of this exercise, we will be removing and rewriting out all adverbs in our pieces. This isn't a war on descriptors, but an excuse to understand how we write and how we can use stronger verbs instead.
Here is how this will roll:
1. Write a piece with minimum wordcount of 600 words.
2. Copy and paste it into the adverb finder provided here: Adverb Detector
3. Rewrite to eliminate adverbs found.
4. Post it!
5. Link this journal in the author's comments and submit it to our Avoid the Adverb folder .
6. Revel in your awesome.
Avoid the Adverb runs from 12am GMT April 1st to 12am GMT May 1st
Comments: 33
TheLibertatem [2016-04-04 01:05:00 +0000 UTC]
Bonus points for using Bugs Bunny gif's
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psycocat [2016-04-02 04:53:48 +0000 UTC]
That site actually made me feel better about my writing. I know, maybe not what you intended, but I threw some of my previous works in there and it highlighted some adverbs, but may of them were words like on, about, and not, which were not always either used as adverbs or were used properly (for example "not" as in "he is not happy"). I think I need to bookmark that page though so I can check my writing in the future.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
psycocat In reply to kiwi-damnation [2016-04-02 09:37:22 +0000 UTC]
I've got such a long list of prompts to finish I might try to write something new for this, but I'm also trying to do NaPoWriMo so we'll see.
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psycocat In reply to kiwi-damnation [2016-04-18 09:55:27 +0000 UTC]
oh gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. If you don't mind and you have time, could you give me some feedback/critique on the story? Thanks
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TheMaidenInBlack [2016-04-02 01:38:05 +0000 UTC]
I love the gifs you chose. That fat unicorn is the absolute best. :')
PS: yeah, it's a horse. But maybe it's just a unicorn in disguise...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
OneWithTheStars [2016-04-01 13:39:19 +0000 UTC]
This should be interesting; forces you to explore the language better to find the subtle differences between similar words to evoke those differences.
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MagicalJoey [2016-04-01 12:02:32 +0000 UTC]
BUNNEH!
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