Again, Sam, great memes. I especially laughed at the writing advice from a teacher vs. the young kid's advice nowadays. The leader of my 1st writing group had a bee in her bonnet about not using adverbs. She had swallowed whole the gospel according to some writer she admired. But then . . . she'd urge us over and over to write tight! LOL!
Adverbs describe in a SINGLE word what it otherwise takes several to describe. Can't have it both ways, honey.
I also don't prescribe to Stephen King's hard-and-fast rule about only using "said" as a speech tag. It trips me up every time when it's really a reply or a question and leaves a drip, drip, drip in my brain of repetition.
BUT, the key is balance, not overdoing either one or going over the top (she espoused passionately). ;-)
Again, Sam, great memes. I especially laughed at the writing advice from a teacher vs. the young kid's advice nowadays. The leader of my 1st writing group had a bee in her bonnet about not using adverbs. She had swallowed whole the gospel according to some writer she admired. But then . . . she'd urge us over and over to write tight! LOL!
Adverbs describe in a SINGLE word what it otherwise takes several to describe. Can't have it both ways, honey.
I also don't prescribe to Stephen King's hard-and-fast rule about only using "said" as a speech tag. It trips me up every time when it's really a reply or a question and leaves a drip, drip, drip in my brain of repetition.
BUT, the key is balance, not overdoing either one or going over the top (she espoused passionately). ;-)
I'm finding that writing is a lot like software structure and database normalization:
- There ARE best practices.
- You MUST learn them.
- Because ONLY THEN will you know enough to understand when it is appropriate to break them.
And break them, you will.