"The temperature is going down," he said coolly.

[muse_misery]

So I noticed this morning while writing I was relying a bit too heavily on adverbial dialogue tags. I don't know why this suddenly occurred to me; I am pretty sure I have always done.

My Q is this: Am I being neurotic? Do you guys ever have trouble reading something due to overuse of lines like "Get out," she said menacingly, or, "Don't do that!"

Comments

[drcjsnider]

I do the exact same thing. I am not completely cutting it out of my story writing, but I am trying to use 'said' or no just a statement followed by description.

[pokeystar]

My beta chucked my last story back at me and told me to cut the adverbs.

I spent two hours ctrl F-ing the "ly"s and replacing them.

I say just go with the flow while you're writing it, and then ctrl-F afterwards.

Repeat after me: paranoia is not for the writing phase, it is for the edit phase.

[muse_misery]

haha. um. does your beta miraculously have some extra free-time? 'cause I so need that inmahlife.

But you are so right. The problem is, I have this pride-issue where I try to be my own editor. I am realizing that this is such a bad idea.