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John Thompson's avatar

When I was younger I was cross re: Johnson’s freedom of language, because like all the writers I enjoyed, he seemed to break rules left and right. I had a sense that there existed some threshold beyond which liability became asset. The obvious suspicion was that the line was “getting published”, and that the way one got published despite a disregard for rules was through the co-sign of MFA programs, which proved you were actually serious enough to break them.

Anyway, eventually you learn that hardly anyone’s going to read you in any case, so you might as well just go where the work takes you, and use the shapes it insists upon. If I write something as good as “his face was shining and suffering”, it won’t really matter if it gets published or not. Better to rush into language unapologetically.

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Wendy's avatar

I'm also team "adverbs can be useful, actually". For example, "“I love you,” he said, trembling, red in the face" isn't as clear to me as "I love you," he said angrily". I suppose within a great context it could be clear that the emotion is anger but as a standalone, trembling and red in the face could also be signs of embarrassment or shyness too.

We use words to help us tell the story we want to tell, in the way we want to tell it, so the readers will understand. Why get so categorical about one part of speech and take a tool out of the toolbox?

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