Actually, really, certainly, clearly

[Rob_Royale]

These lovely yet annoying little adverbs are commonly used in our everyday speech. Clearly, we really do use them quite a lot. Actually though, they certainly aren't necessary. And I don't have to tell you guys, our grammar checkers tell us to boot them every time.

Do you use them at all in your work? We all know by now about Mr. King's road to hell and how it's paved. But really, how do you use them? The only place I happily use them is in dialogue because I think it should mirror how we speak.

But what about first-person POV? Should or shouldn't that feel like someone is speaking to us? Should that mirror how we speak? In FP, I do my best not to use them, though sometimes it just fits. The only place I don't use them at all is in third-person POV.

Thoughts?

 

[mildlyaroused]

My poison is the word "only."

A quick scan of my manuscript shows one "only" every 3ish pages.

Everything is only something: something happens only two days later, he only stares in response, she'd dressed only for the indoors, a smile lasts only the duration of their visit...

Now it looks (really) silly.

Only.

O-n-l-y.

Edit: I'll add that I use "just" even more than "only" (every 2 pages), often to mean almost the same thing. But "just" is also more common in dialogue for me.

 

[TheRedChamber]

As you say, they tend to get highlighted a lot by style checkers. When I do that pass, I tend to have maybe a fifty-fifty chance of removing them. Sometimes, I think, yeah, that's a bit redundant, others I tend to keep them because they actually add a little nuance to the sentence.

(That last sentence, I'm actually torn on and looking if the 'actually' makes a difference. It's borderline, but I think so)
(That last last sentence though, I think it has to go)

 

[Bamagan]

Adverbs are the serifs on the plain Tahoma of writing.

 

[ronde]

"Actually" is probably the word I hate the most, because I've heard it so much in presentations. "We actually studied...", is what I normally hear when the speaker is talking about what a group did. "Actually" is used in this context as a filler when the true meaning of the sentence is, "instead of what we would normally do, we did this." I always have to ask myself why would imply you've done something spectacular when what you did is what you're really supposed to be doing? It's like you had some overwhelming revelation that you should do something different than what your job description says you should be doing.

 

[HordHolm]

They exist for a reason.

 

[SimonDoom]

I freely use these words in dialogue, because that's how people ACTUALLY talk.

If a character has a tendency to exaggerate, for instance, then they might use the word "very" a lot. Donald Trump uses the word "very" all the time in his speech. "NAFTA was a very bad deal. Very, very bad." The word "very" is a speech habit with him, and the use of the word "very" in a character's speech may tell you something about that character.

A tentative character will tend to qualify every thing they say. Young people often do that as well. So adverbs/adverb phrases like "pretty," "sort of," "actually," "fairly" and the like can be useful.

In narrative their use should be cut back, unless you want your narrative to sound like it's coming from a character and the character would talk that way. This is especially true in first person POV, or third person POV in a free indirect or close style. E.g.,

"Roger was pretty fed up with Julia. Actually, he was very fed up. It had been eight days since they'd had sex, and Roger's balls were turning a bright shade of purple. Clearly, she was mad about something."

The use of qualifiers in this passage makes it sound more like the narrative is a running dialogue inside Roger's head. It has a casual feel that tracks the way some people would talk.

I inadvertently include way too many of these words in my first drafts and my grammar tools are always telling me to get rid of them. I do depending on the situation.

 

[alohadave]

Grammarly hates that I use 'really' so much in dialog.

 

[Trionyx]

I have a list of some twenty words I tend to overuse. Once I finish the story, I use a search function to find these words. They are removed or changed where appropriate. ‘Actually’ and ‘really’ are on the list but I certainly don’t use clearly often.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

'clearly' as in 'he was clearly annoyed by the request' is something I overuse in my drafts. But there's not a lot of alternatives, so there's a fair few that stay. Of course I could write guys who are better at using their actual words, but that wouldn't be as realistic...

 

[yowser]

There's nothing 'wrong' with adverbs, they certainly deserve a place in the writer's tool kit. But often they are lazy shortcuts to what could be a more interesting narrative. (I agree with Simon that in dialog they can have a different role and can exhibit characterisation in wonderful ways.) As a reader I grow weary with their 'overuse.'

My suggestion is every time your run into an '-ly' adverb, think if you could have written that particular instance differently.

My personal and specific peeve, woefully common here for many stories, is 'passionately.' (Privately, I think maybe you should be allowed one usage of that word per five pages, even that might be excessive).

'They kissed passionately.'

Wouldn't it be better to describe what was going that that made it 'passionate?' Draw me a picture, take a moment for another phrase that let's me 'see' that quality rather than be 'told.'

Make adverbs your sparse and effective friends, not your army of sycophants.

 

[KeithD]

My writing style is conversational. Do we use adverbs conversationally? I think so. So, I don't sweat the adverb "thing" too much.

 

[samhasstories]

I use them because they come through naturally as I'm forming the words, the same reason they're used so often in conversation. They're a good thing to keep an eye out for in revision, but if my tone is conversational - as often it is in erotica - then I'll leave some in there for the sake of voice.

Cutting unnecessary adverbs is one of those good tricks for writers learning their craft. They may as well follow it to the letter and cut them all. But once you have some confidence about what you're trying to do, this rule can be bent and broken.

 

[StillStunned]

Actually, I really think sometimes they're clearly superfluous, but other times they certainly aren't.

 

[countdowntolov3]

So, I popped on here expecting to defend 'actually'. I was going to say that adverbs are not always bad, it's just a good practice to question them. And I was going to say that adverbs like 'actually' and 'clearly' are different than adverbs like 'happily' or 'moodily' because they convey a complex sort of context around expectedness that is often important but hard to type out otherwise.

That being said, I took a look at my most recent story (5 lit pages) and here are all the non-dialogue 'actually's.

I'd long passed the point of fighting it, actually learned to embrace it within the private corners of my mind.

Why did actually talking on the phone make me so nervous?

[She] didn't float the coffee above my legs, where a spill might have actually sent me to the hospital.

I doubted any of them were what she actually had in mind.

What I'd thought was indecision had actually been me looking for permission.

I think the last one is doing a job that is best done by an adverb. The others, they could be removed without real impact. Probably they should have been -- in the spirit of brevity. But, in some places, I kinda like how they flow.

So what have I learned? Nothing, actually.

 

[Bazzle]

we would go mad putting it in the characters phraseology but "You know" is said over and over again by many peeps.

 

[alohadave]

we would go mad putting it in the characters phraseology but "You know" is said over and over again by many peeps.

Uhmm, uhhh, mmmm, ahhh, and all other speaking pauses are best used sparingly, if at all.

I edited the audio for a presentation at my club, and until you do are listening to a recording, you don't realize how many of those that people use, and how repetitive they are.

Your mind filters it out when you are hearing it in person and you don't remember them unless it's prominent. I had an instructor in college, and he didn't exactly stutter, but his uhms and ahhs were very distracting to listen to while he lectured. It's been 30 years and I can still hear how he spoke.

 

[samhasstories]

Uhmm, uhhh, mmmm, ahhh, and all other speaking pauses are best used sparingly, if at all.

I edited the audio for a presentation at my club, and until you do are listening to a recording, you don't realize how many of those that people use, and how repetitive they are.

Your mind filters it out when you are hearing it in person and you don't remember them unless it's prominent. I had an instructor in college, and he didn't exactly stutter, but his uhms and ahhs were very distracting to listen to while he lectured. It's been 30 years and I can still hear how he spoke.

I agree with the sparingly part, but used judiciously I think the occasional verbal tic can help the dialog feel real. They shouldn't pepper every sentence like they often do in real conversation, but they can be effective when you're trying to show a character's hesitation, or the awkwardness of a conversation. In that sense they can stand in for some of those much-maligned adverbs.

 

[MrPixel]

I really need to thank you for highlighting this really bad issue in my writing. It's really serious, so I really need to review the use of "really" 'cause it's really all over the place. I really appreciate the mention of the problem, really I do. Really.

Seriously... okay, semi-seriously... I did a scan for "really" in one story I thought was ready to go, discovering that it was so overused in dialog that it almost amounted to a verbal tic, similar to the "like" supposedly characteristic (trope? stereotype?) of certain young women. I am now working on fixing it.

Really.

 

[TadOverdon]

I use them in dialogue but attempt to do so sparingly - enough to get the flavor of informal, emphatic speech across without being too repetitive. And I try to minimize their use in narration.

I have similar concerns with common words such as "think" or "just." And I have to search and eliminate "I means..."

I mean, I just really think a little of that goes a long way...


A friend complained to me that he wants an off switch for Grammarly's flagging "own" as unnecessary. He says it's pretty necessary to writing group sex.

 

[LadyLibido]

Oh I use them, all the time, lol. I am very prone to over-using 'Just'. When I go through my second or third re-read of my piece I try to cut them down so that they're less repetitive, but sometimes they can still be a lot though I try not to fret over it. I post everything I write for free, if I were publishing, that'd be another matter. I'll keep them in dialog because people, like myself, do talk like that. The dialog can be flawed, that's the normal natural thing, but I try to make the Prose a little more formal.

 

[NoviceAspen]

I came here to see if anyone else was talking about this, and decided to add to this thread since it is relatively recent instead of stating my own.

I just used Grammarly for the first time and had no idea how much I was over-using the words ‘really’ and ‘actually.’ I think I removed 75% of them after putting it through that checker.

The times I left them it was because I wanted to distinguish between two similar or conflicting things. For example, I think we’re in a hotel, but could we actually be in someone’s home? Or I wanted to sleep, but what I really needed to do was pee.

 

[TheLobster]

I mean, really? They are all totally essential. Actually, I do not how you'd even come to a conclusion they aren't! It's perfectly possible to construct a narrative using virtually only those adverbs, as clearly shown here:

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

These lovely yet annoying little adverbs are commonly used in our everyday speech. Clearly, we really do use them quite a lot. Actually though, they certainly aren't necessary. And I don't have to tell you guys, our grammar checkers tell us to boot them every time.

Do you use them at all in your work? We all know by now about Mr. King's road to hell and how it's paved. But really, how do you use them? The only place I happily use them is in dialogue because I think it should mirror how we speak.

But what about first-person POV? Should or shouldn't that feel like someone is speaking to us? Should that mirror how we speak? In FP, I do my best not to use them, though sometimes it just fits. The only place I don't use them at all is in third-person POV.

Thoughts?

I actually use them in dialog because, well, we really use them when we talk, and they are certainly part of the vernacular. Clearly, they have a purpose.

 

[THBGato]

Actually, people from Hereford in the UK actually use actually as punctuation, actually. Actually, they can't actually begin or end a sentence without the word actually.

(I went to school with a guy from Hereford who genuinely spoke like that. We all took the piss out of him mercilessly for it.)