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Pro tip: my writing group leader banned adverbs for 2 weeks and I hated it until week 3
I joined a small writing group at the library in Boise back in January, and our leader Carol made us do a sprint where we could not use a single adverb for 14 days. I thought it was the dumbest rule ever and complained about it in my journal that whole first week. By week 3 I was writing a prompt about a fisherman and caught myself reaching for 'slowly' four times, then rewrote the whole scene with just action. Cutting those -ly words forced me to show things with movement instead of telling the reader how to feel. Has anyone else tried a constraint like this on a prompt, and did it stick after the exercise ended?
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fiona_scott445d ago
Wait, Carol banned adverbs for TWO WEEKS and you kept going past that? I would've been counting down the days like a prisoner. My sister tried something like this with a short story and made it three days before she caved and wrote "walked quietly" like five times in one page. The fisherman thing gets me though. Four times reaching for "slowly" and then you just rewrote the whole scene with movement. That is wild. So did the no adverb rule actually stick once the two weeks ended, or did you go back to sprinkling them in?
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