The Road to Hell Is Paved with Adverbs

Why Cutting “-ly” Words Strengthens Your Prose (And When to Keep Them)

Few pieces of writing advice have been repeated as often—or as passionately—as Stephen King’s condemnation of adverbs. In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King declares: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.” He compares them to dandelions: “If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day... fifty the day after that... and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions.”

King isn’t alone. Elmore Leonard included “never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’” in his famous ten rules for writing. Ernest Hemingway stripped his prose of them almost entirely. The consensus among craft teachers is clear: most adverbs are symptoms of weak writing. But why? And what should you do instead?

The problem with adverbs—particularly the “-ly” words like quickly, angrily, sadly, nervously—is that they usually signal a weak verb. Consider the sentence: “He walked quickly to the door.” The adverb “quickly” is propping up a generic verb. Replace both with a stronger verb—“He strode to the door” or “He hurried to the door”—and the sentence becomes tighter and more vivid. The reader doesn’t just understand the speed; they see it.

King explains this as a matter of confidence: “With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.” The adverb becomes a crutch—a sign that the writer didn’t trust the verb to do its job. Or didn’t find the right verb in the first place.

This connects to a principle we’ve explored before: showing versus telling. When you write “she said angrily,” you’re telling the reader about the emotion. When you write “she slammed the phone down,” you’re showing it. The action does the work. The reader infers the anger without being instructed to see it.

The fix, during revision, is mechanical. Search your manuscript for “ly ” (with a space after it) to find most adverbs. For each one, ask two questions. First: is there a stronger verb that captures both the action and the manner? “Walked quickly” becomes “hurried.” “Pulled hard” becomes “yanked.” “Said quietly” becomes “murmured.” Second: does the context already make the adverb redundant? If a character has just received devastating news and you write “she cried sadly,” the adverb adds nothing—we already know the crying is sad.

Dialogue tags are where adverbs cause the most damage. King is especially firm on this point: “I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions... and not even then, if you can avoid it.” The reason is that dialogue tags should be invisible. “Said” disappears; “said nervously” doesn’t. And if your dialogue requires an adverb to convey its tone, that’s often a sign the dialogue itself needs work.

Here’s an example from Fictionary. Compare these three versions:

“Hayley walked angrily to the door.”

“Hayley stormed to the door.”

“Hayley stormed to the door and slammed it behind her.”

The first version tells. The second shows. The third amplifies. Each revision cuts the adverb and gains impact.

All of this might sound like an absolute rule: never use adverbs. But it’s not. Even King admits that “no laws are absolute in fiction.” The point is to use adverbs intentionally rather than reflexively. Sometimes, no single verb captures exactly what you mean. “Laughed uproariously” might be the right choice when “guffawed” or “snickered” would distort the tone. Sometimes the rhythm of a sentence benefits from that extra syllable. Sometimes a character’s voice calls for the adverb as part of their idiolect.

Darcy Pattison, children’s book author and writing instructor, puts it this way on her craft blog: “Modifiers like adjectives and adverbs should only be used after you have used the most specific verb possible.” That’s the key principle. The adverb should be a deliberate choice, not a placeholder for the verb you couldn’t find.

So here’s the revision practice: highlight every adverb in a chapter. For each one, try rewriting the sentence with a stronger verb. Read both versions aloud. If the adverb-free version is tighter and just as clear, cut the adverb. If the adverb is doing something the verb alone can’t—adding nuance, rhythm, or voice—keep it. Eliminating adverbs entirely is not the goal, but making sure each adverb that survives has earned its place.

King’s dandelion metaphor is useful here. One or two adverbs in a chapter can be charming. A dozen become a weed problem. And once you start noticing them, you’ll find them everywhere—in your own drafts and in the published work you read. The writers you admire most, if you look closely, use them sparingly. That’s not a coincidence.