I am doing a lot of reading as I am working on my first novel, and just finished reading On Writing (I loved it.)
I picked up an old (1957) book of Philip K Dick's last week and decided to dive into it tonight. I adored Ubik, and A Scanner Darkly, so I wasn't sure why I was finding this one so hard to read. Then all at once it dawned on me that this early Dick book was RIDDLED with adverbs, including a staggering number of them in dialog attribution. I'm not sure if I ever would have figured it out if not for the advice in On Writing, but there it was, glaring off the page at me.
I got out a pen and underlined all of them for a while, I counted 58 in 9 pages.
I can't read any more of this book. It's ruined for me. Which is why you're a bastard, Mr. King. But I'm also really thankful that you made me aware of how insidious this habit is, and how irritating.
Anyone else seeing this everywhere now??
I picked up an old (1957) book of Philip K Dick's last week and decided to dive into it tonight. I adored Ubik, and A Scanner Darkly, so I wasn't sure why I was finding this one so hard to read. Then all at once it dawned on me that this early Dick book was RIDDLED with adverbs, including a staggering number of them in dialog attribution. I'm not sure if I ever would have figured it out if not for the advice in On Writing, but there it was, glaring off the page at me.
I got out a pen and underlined all of them for a while, I counted 58 in 9 pages.
I can't read any more of this book. It's ruined for me. Which is why you're a bastard, Mr. King. But I'm also really thankful that you made me aware of how insidious this habit is, and how irritating.
Anyone else seeing this everywhere now??