BookRix

Keep Writing. Do and share with the world the charming side of the religion you admire.

thanks.

I tend to see them as verbal special effects. The best way to explain this is to look at the difference between movies of the last century and those of today. During the early days of cinema, special effects were the realm of the foley artist - producing the background sounds, like thunder, made by manipulating a large sheet of thin metal. Soon, we got into science fiction films, but stop-action, toy space ships hung by often visible wires, people in rubber monster suits... but the viewer's imagination was still an active part of the movie-going experience. And then came Star Wars, and little by little we were made to use less and less of our imaginations. Now, we barely need to engage our brains at all when we watch a movie.

Adverbs. The cautious and tasteful use of an adverb here and there indicates respect for the reader's imagination. A good writer rarely needs them because the behavior of the characters and the action in the scene activates the reader's internal movie screen. We know, for instance, that the mom in the story loves the child, so when she smiles, the corner of her eyes crinkling, at the antics of her offspring, we don't need to say she "looked lovingly" at him or her. It's obvious and therefore assumed. Too many adverbs say the writer believes the reader has no imagination and must have every nuance explained via the adverb. In this way, the over-use of them is like the excessive special effects that enable the mind to coast through, having all the work done for it. Perhaps this is why so many of today's readers have no problem with five adverbs in a ten-word sentence.

Trends are reflected in all aspects of our lives. We've grown lazy as a society. We have machines and devices that do our work, computers that do our research and calculations, realistic video games that control our morals, special effects that handle the imagination (the list goes on), and adverbs that do the thinking for us.

So are adverbs unnecessary altogether? Of course not. Here and there they may even be vital, like when they're used for emphasis. But are we really so stupid that we can't figure out how a character in a story may feel without being hammered with an adverb before every action word?

I hope not.

Not to mention a complete absence of formatting. What professional book is written in one paragraph from start to finish? Or doesn't differentiate between speakers in the dialogue parts? For that matter, what good book is nothing more than whining and seeking revenge from the first line to the last with no real plot, no story arc, no satisfying resolution? If my eyes start to bleed before I get to the end of the first page, I close the book and don't even bother to comment, since there is so much wrong, any kind of meaningful response would be tantamount to a deep edit.

Bleh.

Many are just written for fun. What amazes me most is that some people are able to read them and understand them.

I try, I really do, to read the stories but it's hard. Only a few manage to capture me till the end and they're those who have a sort of plot. I regard many of the books from the young generation as a sort of diary, to express their feeling more than anything.

However, I'll keep on wondering if at school they use the same format they use here.

Hard to say. They don't even teach cursive writing anymore, so who knows if they teach other stuff related to good writing. What's more likely, though, is that because of the current "snowflake" culture and "helicopter parenting," the kids who have melt-downs when they're asked to do anything other than text on their devices, are given a pat on the head, a coloring book, and told not to worry about it. Kids raised in families that are more into teaching responsibility, though, are the ones who are actually learning.

Ha, here they teach cursive writing for a year but the kids never use it again. We parents grumble that they should remove it, it's useless :). No one is ever satisfied.

In today's tech world there are really only two practical uses for cursive: a personal signature, and the way it improves right/left brain function during a child's early school years in terms of coordination and increased learning ability.