It’s mostly on Stephen King’s advice not to use –ly adverbs in his book On Writing, which for a lot of writers is the book on writing. But lots of other writers—Toni Morrison, Chuck ...

And anything by Elmore Leonard, who “indoctrinated me on not using adverbs.” James tells his ... A History of Ancient Rome.” His writing process? “Writers don’t have a process.

Consider, for instance, the use of adverbs ending with “–ly” (e.g., ponderously, snarkily). From high-school grammar teachers to writing gurus, the advice is to eschew the use of these words.

Consider two sentences, one with an adverb and the other an active verb: “He closed the door firmly.” “He slammed the door.” If you’re Stephen King, you like the second and hate the first.

The surprising result was that the “good” selection had relatively more verbs and adverbs, and the “bad” writing, relatively more nouns and adjectives. Why would good writers use more verbs?

Write your recount in the first person because ... This is called chronological order. Use adverbs such as: Firstly, next, then and finally. Using descriptive words will make it seem like your ...