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I had not understood that there was such a no-no concerning adverbs in English

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I cannot recall the last book I read that had no adverbs in it. I think that general advice to delete adverbs is too dogmatic and simplistic.

For example, nearest book to hand--China Mieville, "Perdido Street Station", prologue, 3rd para (i.e. right there in the first 13): "Behind me the man tugs uneasily at his rudder ..." Immediately we know we're on some kind of water craft, there's a man steering it in addition to the POV character, and he's uneasy. On the first page of this novel there are just three adverbs--not many, so China has used them sparingly; but delete all adverbs, he has not.

IIRC (and sorry, I cannot find a decent reference on-line, can anyone provide one?) the advice for fiction writers is something like this: When you revise your story, consider whether each adverb is necessary; perhaps action or dialogue would better express the idea, or perhaps it should be deleted because it's redundant.

For example:

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Grant played guitar dreadfully, but I loved listening to him anyway, because of the passion he put into his playing.

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Deleting the adverb destroys the meaning:

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Grant played guitar, but I loved listening to him anyway, because of the passion he put into his playing.

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Rewriting to avoid the adverb doesn't add anything:

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Grant played guitar. It sounded dreadful but I loved ...

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In this case I'd leave the adverb--unless actually describing the dreadful sound added significantly to the scene. If the writer is more interested in Grant and his passion, a fuller description of the dreadful sound might be distracting for the reader and the adverb more concise.

In the first 13 of "The Undine" in F&F4SS, I'm not sure that "drifting lazily" is the same as just drifting. "Drifting lazily" implies a relaxed life-style. If the salmon is merely drifting, it could be dead.

"Just touching the surface" is hardly different from "just barely touching" it, so I agree, I'd delete that adverb.

He ran quickly across the square.

Should be:

He sprinted across the square.

The suggestion being that you should find the correct verb that encapsulates the action.

The example you give about the guitar stands as the 'to play the guitar' can't easily be replaced with any other verb. Therefore you need to modify it with an adverb to differentiate between good and bad playing.

Thanks for the guidance from King.

But what about adjectives? How come they don't get the same treatment?

This is the advice I USED to hear (and it makes a lot more sense): Write with nouns and verbs. A strong verb is always better than a weak, general verb strengthened or enhanced by an adverb, and likewise for nouns and adjectives. But that doesn't mean to get rid of adverbs and adjectives. It means don't use two words where one will do as well.

James Maxey suggests putting the emphasis on nouns, by the way. His advice is: If you select the nouns from your story, and read only them, you should be able to get a general idea of what's happening. If you can't, you need to beef up your nouns. If you can, you probably don't need too many adjectives OR adverbs. But I've never tried it myself.

Well . . . what the heck. Here's the nouns from the first three paragraphs of my first novel. (Isn't it fun being spontaneous?) I'm not including pronouns--don't know whether those are allowed or not, so I'll play it safe. But I'm leaving in periods and paragraphs. (If I slip up and fail to delete a non-noun, someone let me know and I'll correct it as soon as possible.) I'm putting an asterisk (*) on words that look like verbs but really are nouns as used, so you know those aren't slip-ups.

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Heldrick knife strokes use*.

window. cupola house Heldrick neighborhood. Clouds sky drops* rain morning. group youngsters ball lot street. boy others jackets air chill* August calendar.

danger locals tabs surroundings boy van morning side block street. boys house youngster tales terror. Heldrick stories: Heldrick soup. ears basement. yard house night feet.

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So maybe we ought to be a lot more concerned about strong nouns and cutting down on adjectives than about strong verbs and trimming the adverbs?

The mixed crowd stood cheeringly, some urging TaleSwapper on gleefully, the others screaming their heartfelt cries for rickfisher. Who would win?

The smoke cleared. The crowd gasped: Both ardent opponents had been knocked-out completely.

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...and Would be lost his marbles. Very.

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Shouldn't that be: "...and Would be lost his marbles. Verily."?

Regarding adverbs, and adjectives: use them in moderation, like strong spice in cooking. It's the over-use of them that makes the verbal meal distasteful. Verily.

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...and Would be lost his marbles. Very.

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Instead of "He nervously looked out the window." You can say, "He popped his knuckles and chewed his lip as he looked out the window."

I tend to use adverbs when I'm getting lazy––when I start to drift into "telling" instead of "showing."

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TaleSpinner knows me well-enough to know this was a bit of grammar humor and not a personal attack.

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Yes indeedy. I read it adjectivally and happily found it was no more adverbial than it absolutely needed to amusingly be.

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Write with nouns and verbs.

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Good advice, rickfisher.

Oddly, it reminds me of a software engineering technique for understanding what a customer wants the program to do.

Take the requirements specification and underline the nouns. Those are the "things" about which your program needs to remember data. (Objects or classes, in technical terms.)

Then underline the verbs, to understand what you have to do with the data--how it needs to be processed. (Functions, technically.)

The adverbs and adjectives are often waffle, sometimes useful addditional information that fleshes out what's wanted.

In fiction the nouns and verbs tell us who's doing what to whom.

Adverbs and adjectives largely add detail. When they're well chosen it's good, often essential detail and using an adverb or adjective doesn't disturb or distract from the flow of the story. Badly chosen and as Jamie says, the writer's getting lazy and denying the reader either a profoundly expressive verb, or some colourful action or dialogue.

Cheers,
Pat

For example, consider "He played the guitar dreadfully" against "He played the guitar." In that second one, you have no idea how well he plays it, but you assume good automatically until a future sentence says otherwise. "Dreadfully" tells us that he isn't playing well at all.

Conversely, "ran quickly" doesn't make any sense. Running is, by its nature, a fast action; "quickly" being thrown in there just makes it redundant. Since the adverb is already implied by the verb, there's no need for it. The problem that I've noticed is that many writers use adverbs to emphasize an already stated action, while instead they should be using it to point out something that wouldn't come up otherwise.

Also, perhaps adverbs should be left to first-person and limited third-person narrators, since they seem to often be very opinionistic (word?). Omniscient and neutral narrators should avoid them whenever possible, if not altogether.

My point is it is better to use a verb that encapsulates the action rather than the verb plus adverb combo that takes two words to do it.