Whenever you see a~lyword in your writing, ask yourself whether you need it. If you delete an adverb and the sentence weakens, try finding a stronger expression. Use carefully selected adverbs to add meaning and stress, create a more natural tone or a pleasurable rhythm. When in doubt, de...
“It made me feel sprung upon,” is a sentence near the beginning of Amor Towles’Rules of Civility, a New York novel of the late 1930s, and it’s New York I wish was outside my window, like it was every day for the first fifteen years of this century. I’m re-readingRules, c...
“When I’m writing, I’m more conscious of the sound, actually, than the meaning. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it.”Phillip Pullman When reading a piece of fiction that feels effortless, it has goodflow, or...