He waved, awkwardly - how to control adverbs in fiction writing with a little help from screenwriting
He waved awkwardly / He waved.
How would you act out an awkward wave?
Maybe we can drop ourselves into a relatable situation to aid our imagination: you’re on the high street, in the distance someone waves. At you? It definitely seems so. Do you know them? Maybe…maybe not. They’re still waving? Do you wave back? Ah there it is. Your hand goes into the air and waves back, until you realise they weren’t waving at you.
Or let's imagine that particular wave a guy might give at a woman from across a bar - a little toodles, a little finger flourish. In modern vernacular it’s enough to induce the ‘ick’ for the person receiving the wave.
Suffice to say, everyone has experienced different levels awkwardness. These levels are determined by who is giving and receiving, and how the action is communicated pertaining to collective and personal tolerances which are breached or accepted.
But it’s this little modifier, ‘awkwardly’, the adverb or an adverbial phrase, which contributes to our understanding of how a verb is performed. Adverbs provide us with more information about a scene, however, these semmingly innocent appendages have caused a lot of friction in the writing world.
On one team, we have Stephen King who, if he had the power, would unleash a plague upon all adverbs, dramatically (oops how did you get there?) slimming down the Oxford Dictionary. The other side would be coached by none other than J.K.Rowling who, if she also had the power, would invent adverbs just to attach them to verbs like petals.
What's with this battle? The biggest issue with adverbs is, as a writer, what you intend the reader to imagine vs the freedom to let them imagine. For narrative writing, the author has space to explore style, form, tone, pace and syntax, and adverbs have a performative role in expressing the situation with more accuracy than a sole verb. In screenwriting though, you don’t have that privilege (we’ll get to this later).
So, what would happen if we omit adverbs and let the verb do its stuff?
He waved
You’re right, it doesn’t say anything about how he waved, just that it happened. The key here is for the construction of proper contextualisation and well-placed, crafted dialogue or description. Readers are able to transcribe the carefully selected words on the page into a visual without the aid of an actual visual. The verb will tell the reader what happened, the adverb will paint that verb.
Let’s take the examples below and switch up the adverbs:
‘As Maia got to the corner of the Richmond Street, she turned back and blew Marco a kiss. He waved.’
He waved softly
He waved passionately
He waved indiferently
He waved half-heartedly
He waved quickly
It’s clear from these examples that we can understand from Marco’s position how he approached the situation. Softly is very different to half-heartedly, and it would be safe to assume that most of us could tell the difference between how these adverbs would play out in reality. Adverbs make the action deliberate, distinctive and without debate.
But is it necessary? Do we need to know he waved passionately if the narrative has already constructed him as an overly-enthusiastic guy who spills his ardor, almost to the point of embarrassment? (As if a passionate wave on his behalf would magically make her love him more.) What does a passionate wave look like?
Some writers are cautious that limiting their use of adverbs will make their writing too simple, bland and have an impact on their professional opinion about themselves. Some have the misunderstanding that the more adverbs used, the more eloquent and complex the writing is, thus giving the writer credit for linguistic control and breadth. In fact, a paragraph littered with adverbs is litter (it's a strong opinion, but why not when adverbs already cause such a stir). When I’m editing fiction, I make sure that the author knows that I will omit any adverbs that are redundant and add little to the narrative. Sometimes this causes disagreements - it’s a contentious opinion, but the more adverbs a writer uses, their writing becomes more amateurish.
The malleability of sentences means we don’t have to settle for the most obvious way of attending to detail. Don’t hold the hand of the reader too much. Give the reader liberty to imagine.
Consider a sentence which originally had an adverb, but you omitted. Would the reader’s experience of that sentence be ruined, enhanced or indifferent? They would never have known that an adverb sat like a spare part in the sentence, especially if the exposition succinctly conveyed the ‘how’ without the use of an adverb. Linguistic control is knowing when you can take something out for the good of the sentence and story.
So maybe we can learn something from screenwriting when writing fiction?
For caution over conflating narrative verse with screenwriting (or instructional/functional writing), I’ll demonstrate how screenwriting can help, but is not the same as writing fiction.
The other day I was editing a screenplay, and the script’s scene descriptions and parentheses were full of our lurking friends. The function of a screenplay is different to a novel; the dialogue and description is for the purpose of transposing words into a physical manifestation. This is where some novice screenwriters feel adverbs do the job: because it’s about describing how the action is done.
Directors hate adverbs. Actors, on the most part, hate them too. Why? Because it limits the scope of how that scene, word or look is portrayed and tells the production team how an action should be done before it’s even been rehearsed. An actor will try hard to interpret how a line might be said ‘attentively’, or ‘carefully’, which overall might lead to over-acting.
Let's have a look at an example of this below:
(Stage script formatting used not screenplay formatting)
Ted cautiously walks into the doorway of the kitchen. Sarah sits at the table, weeping softly. The creak of the door alerts Sarah. She looks up swiftly to see Ted peering around the doorway. He waves awkwardly.
SARAH: (angrily) You have a nerve to show your face after what you’ve done.
TED: (calmly) Sarah, babe, honey…
SARAH: (viciously) Don’t ever, ever call me those names again!
She quickly picks up her mug from the table and throws it at Ted who artfully side steps the flying mug.
It's a bit of an exaggeration, but believe me when I say I’ve edited screenplays with all sorts of adverbs attached to the most trivial of lines. Imagine this scenario was in a novel. Would it be necessary to use these adverbs? We can already sense the atmosphere in the kitchen and the tension has been constructed through context and discourse. An artful side step sounds a little comic, so imagine an actor attempting to ‘artfully side step’ a mug while also having to portray the seriousness of the unfolding drama. Here it pays to be natural and economical with words. At the end of the day, a script is meant to be lifted from the page. It's (mostly) meant to show, not tell. But what we can learn is that the absence of adverbs doesn't necessarily mean a less engaging or, less effective description.
In fact, the clarity of simple verbiage opens up a story to nuance as we're not fed what to imagine. This is why one screenplay directed by one person, while the exact same script is directed by another director, could produce totally different interpretations of the text, and therefore a totally different movie.
Here it is again without the adverbs:
Ted walks into the kitchen. Sarah sits at the table, weeping softly. The creak of the door alerts Sarah. She looks up to see Ted peering around the doorway.
SARAH: You have a nerve to show your face after what you’ve done.
TED: Sarah, babe, honey…
SARAH: Don’t ever, ever call me those names again!
She picks up her mug from the table and throws it at Ted who steps to the side as the mug hits the door.
When it comes to using adverbs in fiction, treat them like a well-prepared tea. Too much sugar and it’ll ruin the delicate taste and fragrance. Adverbs are useful when you want to display how something is done accurately and cannot be explained in any other way. Even in this article I've (sparingly) used adverbs, and I’ve edited some sentences which I felt didn’t need them. So, when it comes to editing your work, if you notice a bunch of adverbs, do the screenplay test. Omit them. Ask yourself ‘does this scene or description still make sense? Does it take anything away from it?’
It’s a dash of salt here, a sprinkle of pepper there. If an adverb adds something to the narrative then try it out, keep it in, change its form, then take it out, test it. Give the mind, and the relatable human experience room to fit its own interpretation to action.
