{"id":3,"date":"2007-01-21T16:47:51","date_gmt":"2007-01-21T23:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/2007\/01\/21\/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-adverbs\/"},"modified":"2007-04-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-22T19:00:00","slug":"the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-adverbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/2007\/01\/21\/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-adverbs\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Road to Hell is Paved With Adverbs”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The road to hell is paved with adverbs.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Stephen King, On Writing<\/em><\/p>\n

In part, I subscribe to Mr. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory. In his book on writing (coincidentally titled On Writing<\/em>) Stephen King goes on to say that he believes that if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done your job as a writer, that job being to tell your story truthfully and with clarity, then adverbs become superfluous. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying that I entirely agree with this theory, or that all other writer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s should abide by Mr. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s standards. I have, however, read his book on writing approximately four times as well as a number of his other works, and find him to be, in no uncertain terms, a genius.<\/p>\n

One of the things I noticed while reading The Glass Key<\/em> was the use of adverbs and adjectives. For the purpose of this blog however, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re jus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 gonna be talin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbout adverbs. Now, I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read many, if any, other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hard-boiled\u00e2\u20ac\u009d detective novels but I believe that I can safely assume that they would also go along with this trend of bountiful adverbs. Please, if any others of you out there have read more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hard-boiled\u00e2\u20ac\u009d detective novels let me know if I am hot or cold.<\/p>\n

The usage of adverbs got me to thinking; exactly what is their purpose in this novel (other than to modify verbs, obviously)? Is there a reason that whenever a person does something the exact mode of their doing it needs to be described to us, the reader? Does it matter to us if Ned Beaumont \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcslammed the door loudly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or if he \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcspoke solemnly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122? If this were any other book of fiction, I might say no, adverbs are in fact useless. The Glass Key<\/em>, however, is not just any other book of fiction. This is a book in which we are never once allowed inside the head of the characters. We are only allowed to see what we would be able to see if we were there. Occasionally we are given the advantage of seeing Ned Beaumont alone, or seeing him in a position that the common looker-on would not be able to bear witness to. But we are never allowed inside of his head. Everything, it seems, is an act. People position their faces into carefully thought-out expressions, are identified only by physical appearances, even the simple movement of sitting down in a chair is described to us as if we were reading stage directions.<\/p>\n

Due to the fact that we are not invited into the book, other than to be another casual looker-on, adverbs give us a better sense of precisely what is going on. With the overly descriptive, often stage direction-like, accounts given to us by Hammett we can better understand what exactly is going on, and how he wants us to perceive things. Adverbs, in this case, are somewhat of a necessity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The road to hell is paved with adverbs.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Stephen King, On Writing In part, I subscribe to Mr. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory. In his book on writing (coincidentally titled On Writing) Stephen King goes on to say that he believes that if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done your job as a writer, that job being to tell your story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-glass-key"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/lscot7ow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}