“He walked quickly across the room.”
A reader understands that sentence fine, but the writer ducked a decision. Stride, hurry, rush and scurry each give the reader a different image and a different read on the character’s psychology and stakes, and “walked quickly” skips the choice between them. For more, see 1,000 Strong Verbs for Fiction Writers.
That’s the core principle of strong verb usage in fiction: the verb should be strong enough that the adverb isn’t needed. Every adverb bolted onto a verb is covering for a verb that wasn’t specific enough. I’m hard on adverbs, harder than a lot of editors, because of what a manuscript full of them does to a reader. The prose goes soft, every scene sounds like every other scene, and the writer never finds out why nobody finished the book.
Stephen King said the road to hell is paved with adverbs.
I’m hard on adverbs, harder than a lot of editors, because of what a manuscript full of them does to a reader.
Elmore Leonard’s writing rules include never using a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue and never using an adverb to modify “said.” Hemingway built an entire style around trusting strong verbs and spare prose to convey emotional weight without modification. These writers understood that the verb makes the image. Get the verb right and the sentence takes care of itself.
What Is the Adverb Test?
Every time you attach an adverb to a verb, you’re compensating for a verb that wasn’t specific enough.Share on X
Search your manuscript for words ending in “-ly.” Count them. If the number is high, you have a verb problem disguised as an adverb habit. For more, see plot devices and metaphors in writing.
For each adverb you find, ask one question: can the verb do this work alone?
“She said angrily” becomes “she snapped” or “she snarled.” Different verbs, different images, different character psychology. A character who snaps is reacting impulsively. A character who snarls is threatening. The adverb “angrily” erases that distinction by slapping a generic label over a decision that should have been specific.
“He looked at her sadly” becomes “he studied her” or “he watched her” or “he searched her face.” Each replacement carries a different emotional charge. “Sadly” tells the reader what to feel. The specific verb lets the reader feel it through the image.
“She opened the door slowly” often works fine as “she opened the door.” Context conveys pace. If she’s entering a dark room after hearing a noise, the reader already imagines her moving carefully. The adverb adds nothing the scene hasn’t already provided.
Remove the adverb and test the sentence. If nothing is lost, the adverb was clutter. (See also the fillers, intensifiers and padded phrases worth cutting.) If something is lost, go find a better verb. Putting the adverb back is the lazy fix, and I’d rather a writer spend ten minutes hunting for the right verb than give the reader a sentence that shrugs.
Watch: Strong Verbs: How to Edit Your Writing to Get Rid of Weak Verbs, selfpublishingcom
How do dialogue tags affect reader trust?
Adverbs on dialogue tags are the most common symptom of verb weakness in fiction, and they reveal something important about the writer’s relationship with their reader: distrust.
“I love you,” she said passionately. “I love you too,” he replied sincerely. “We’ll be together forever,” she promised earnestly.
Every line gets an adverb. Every adverb tells the reader how to interpret dialogue that should interpret itself. The words do their job, then the adverb shows up to do the same job again, badly. The AI-Enhanced Awful Writing Handbook covers this pattern in depth. The psychology behind it is simple: the writer worries that the reader won’t understand the emotion, so they label it. What if the reader doesn’t realize the character is angry? Better add “angrily.” What if the tone isn’t clear? Better specify “sarcastically.” The adverb feels like insurance against misunderstanding.
But it teaches readers not to trust the prose. If the writer labels every emotion, readers stop doing the interpretive work that creates engagement.
They wait for the writer to tell them what to feel instead of feeling it from the scene. The adverb that was supposed to clarify disconnects the reader from the experience.
Elmore Leonard’s dialogue works because the tags disappear. Characters speak, and the reader hears them. “You didn’t tell me he was Black,” Mickey said. “He’s not,” Louis said. No adverbs. No expressive tags. The dialogue carries everything.
If your dialogue needs an adverb to be understood, fix the dialogue. I tell writers this all the time, and it’s the note they push back on hardest, because rewriting a line is more work than tacking on a word like angrily.
Before and After
Weak verbs plus modifiers versus strong verbs alone. The difference isn’t subtle.
“She moved quickly through the crowd, trying to get away from him.” What does “moved quickly” look like? Is she shoving people aside? Weaving between them? Running? The sentence communicates the idea but not the image.
One strong verb says it in a single word. Counts are the phrases shown.
“She threaded through the crowd, shoulders angled, eyes fixed on the exit.” Now the reader sees the movement. “Threaded” implies precision and urgency. The physical details replace the adverb and produce a specific picture instead of a generic one.
“He hit the table angrily.” This tells the reader about anger. It doesn’t create it.
“He slammed his fist on the table.” Now the reader hears the sound, sees the force, feels the loss of control. “Slammed” carries the anger without anyone needing to name it.
“The rain fell heavily on the roof.” Functional. Forgettable.
“Rain hammered the roof.” Three fewer words. Twice the impact. “Hammered” gives the rain weight, violence, and sound that “fell heavily” only gestures at.
“She looked at the letter nervously.” The reader is told about nervousness and sees nothing.
“Her eyes swept the first line, stopped, returned to the beginning.” Now the reader watches the nervousness happen through behavior. The verb choices create the emotional state instead of labeling it.
How Do Verbs Reveal Character?
Strong verb choice creates vivid images, and I care even more that it reveals psychology. How a character performs an action tells the reader who they are, and a writer who settles for walked and looked is throwing away the cheapest characterization there is.
A character who strides into a room isn’t the same character who slips into it. A character who devours a meal isn’t the same character who picks at it. A character who seizes an opportunity isn’t the same character who considers one. The verb is doing characterization work that would otherwise require paragraphs of explanation.
This connects to the showing-versus-telling principle covered in the AI-Enhanced Novel Handbook. Telling the reader “Marcus was a cautious person” is flat.
Showing Marcus testing a chair before sitting in it, checking the lock twice before leaving, and reading every line of a contract before signing lets the reader conclude that Marcus is cautious from his behavior. The verbs (testing, checking, reading) carry the characterization.
My AI-Enhanced Deep Character Handbook covers how psychological patterns produce consistent behavior. Strong verb choice is how those patterns become visible on the page. A character whose core wound involves control doesn’t “look at” documents. They scrutinize them. They audit them. They inventory them. The verb reflects the psychology.
The AI Problem
AI-generated prose uses adverbs constantly because AI wants to be explicit about emotional tone.
It labels every piece of dialogue and modifies every action. I use AI every day as an assistant, and this is exactly why I do the writing myself. If you’re using it as a writing tool, this is the single most important pattern to push back on.
The Awful Writing Handbook covers AI-specific verb problems in detail.
The fix is simple in concept and tedious in practice: for every adverb AI generates, find the verb that includes the adverb’s meaning. “Walked quickly” becomes “hurried.” “Said angrily” becomes “snapped.” “Looked nervously” becomes “glanced.” Then evaluate whether even the replacement verb is necessary, or whether the scene’s context already communicates everything the verb and adverb were trying to say.
AI also defaults to weak verbs paired with prepositional phrases where a single strong verb would do more. “Made her way across” becomes “crossed.” “Came to a realization” becomes “realized.” “Let out a sigh” becomes “sighed.” Every weak construction is a missed opportunity for a verb that carries its own weight.
My take
Every adverb is a verb you didn’t bother to find. Walked quickly is hurried, and said angrily is snapped. AI loads drafts with adverbs and weak phrases like made her way across. Treat every one it hands you as a flag. Go through your draft and replace each adverb with a verb that does its job. Then ask whether the scene needs the verb at all.
How do you replace weak verbs with strong ones?
During revision, run the “-ly” search. Flag every adverb. For each one, make a decision: can a stronger verb replace this combination? Does the context already carry the information? Is this one of the rare cases where the adverb adds something no other construction could?
Most of the time, the answer is a stronger verb. Sometimes the answer is deletion. Occasionally the adverb deserves its place. “She agreed reluctantly” might be necessary if her agreement otherwise reads as willing. But make that a considered exception.
| What you find | Decision | Example from the post |
|---|---|---|
| A stronger verb holds the adverb’s meaning | Replace the pair with that verb | “Said angrily” becomes “snapped” |
| Context already carries the information | Delete the adverb | “She opened the door slowly” works as “she opened the door” |
| Dialogue needs an adverb to be understood | Fix the dialogue itself | Let the words carry the emotion, as Elmore Leonard does |
| Weak verb plus a prepositional phrase | Collapse it into one strong verb | “Made her way across” becomes “crossed” |
| The adverb adds something nothing else could | Keep it as a considered exception | “She agreed reluctantly” when agreement would read as willing |
Aim for zero lazy adverbs, meaning the ones that exist because the writer never made a verb choice.
A few adverbs deserve their place, and chasing zero across the board is a silly exercise. Every adverb that survives revision should be there because you decided it belonged. A manuscript that leans on them tells an agent or an editor on page one that the writer stopped working too early, and they’ll stop reading just as early.
There’s also the AI-Enhanced Awful Writing Handbook, which covers adverb addiction, overcrowded action sentences, said-bookisms, and other verb-related problems with before-and-after examples and AI-specific fixes. The AI-Enhanced Showing and Telling Handbook covers how strong verb choice connects to the broader craft of dramatizing instead of explaining.
If you’re working on fiction and want coaching on prose-level craft, schedule a session.
Strong verbs are one of the tools of showing. Show Don’t Tell explains the advice everyone gives and nobody explains, across twenty-one chapters of before and after examples.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Stephen King on Writing, Fear, and the Atrocity of Adverbs, The Marginalian
- Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Good Writing, The Christian Science Monitor
From the review library: Action Writers Phrase Book.
