Authors: ADverbs often SUBTRACT from your writing- numbers 6-10

Consider the following five sentences. Adverbs are highlighted in yellow.

6.        “Move it, buddy. You’re blocking the hallway,” he said irritably.

7.        I guess I wasn’t truly invisible to the crowd.

8.        “I think we’re lost,” he said worriedly.

9.        The oxygen level in the cabin was dropping. She searched frantically for another canister to install.

10.    The car gave a jolt and I was nearly thrown against the window.

Sentences like those above are common in the works of novice writers. 

Unfortunately, they are common in the works of writers who edit less [vigorously] than they should.

Why is that? Does the sentence above need [vigorously] to convey the thought?

I do often insert adverbs—intentionally and unintentionally—in my first drafts. When I do my first edit, I re-write scenes where the only way a reader might know that something was said “excitedly” is through the use of that term. Your story should draw your readers into the minds and moods of your characters.

From time to time during the next two months, I’ll revisit this topic. More than one book I’ve been asked to review has been mired in the pit of excessive adverbs. I lost interest in the stories because there were

• many times when I was told what I already knew or felt.
• other times when the adverb didn’t match what I felt about that scene in the story.

The five sentences above are reprised below. Following each sentence is an explanation of why the highlighted adverb isn’t needed. I've added a feature to these five: a Possible rewrite. 

Enjoy.

“Move it, buddy. You’re blocking the hallway,” he said irritably.

It’s possible to say those two sentences without being irritated at the time of the utterance. It is not probable. The scene in which this dialog appears must take the reader inside the head of the “he” who is speaking. If what comes before this paragraph does not convey the irritation of the speaker, putting “irritably” in won’t do it either [BTW. A Google search returned NO results for the word irritably. That's reason in itself to leave it out!]. Rewrite the scene. Leave the reader wondering how the speaker managed to speak to and not shove the offending hallway blocker.

Possible rewrite: “Move it, buddy. You’re blocking the hallway.” The words trailed the scowling man like the wake of an ocean liner as he shoved his way through the people waiting for the elevator.

I guess I wasn’t truly invisible to the crowd.

I’m trying to imagine a “cloak of false invisibility.” It isn’t working. Invisibility is a toggle switch. Either you ARE invisible or you AREN’T invisible. In this situation, the crowd could see this point.

Possible rewrite: I looked up and was shocked to see at least one hundred pairs of eyes staring at me.

“I think we’re lost,” he said worriedly.

Being lost isn’t the end of the world. It might not even be traumatic for some. For most people, being lost is not something to rejoice over. Being lost implies you knew where you were—and where you wanted to go. Because you’re lost

Some people will wonder where you are.

Other people will think you’ve snubbed them.

I point my finger at how well the scene is set. If the scene is written well, worry will be the reader’s state of mind.

Possible rewrite: I looked at my watch and then the gas gauge before I announced, “We’re late, we’re almost out of gas, and I don’t have a clue where we are.”

The oxygen level in the cabin was dropping. She searched frantically for another canister to install.

I’m in an airplane. I listened to the flight attendant’s safety monolog. I know that it’s not good to be unable to breathe in an airplane. If I’m gasping for air and searching for an oxygen canister, frantically doesn’t come close to describing the way I feel.

Possible rewrite: She inhaled deeper. It didn’t do any good. People around her were blue. Others were unconscious. It was all she could do to keep from screaming as she searched for another canister to install.

The car gave a jolt and I was nearly thrown against the window.

So, you came this close ßà to flying out the window before you didn’t? Were you thrown at the window and the thrower missed the mark?

Think about the movement you are describing. I pitched baseball for over ten years. I never nearly threw a baseball to the catcher. One way to commit a balk in baseball is to feign a throw to a base and not throw the ball. Balking isn’t the same as nearly throwing.

Possible rewrite: The car gave a jolt. If it hadn’t been for my seatbelt, I’d have been thrown against the window. I decided a sore shoulder and chest together weren’t as bad as a broken nose.

Give yourself a shot at rewriting one or more of these. 

• First, think of the situation.
• Then write without an adverb. 

Remember:

If your stories don’t draw your readers in, adding adverbs subtracts from even more from those stories.

Next time we’ll look at at least these four adverbly overstuffed examples.

       11.     The prisoner’s hands were clamped tightly to the bars of his cell.

       12.    The bicyclist peddled carefully across the slightly bumpy road.

       13.    The teacher looked sharply at her students.

       14.    He laughed cheerily and looked at his watch.

Next Author’s Blog: Reading to Live . . . longer!

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Almanac. Musings on One-Lane, Two-Way Tapers

If you are looking for the Almanac on Semester Grading, you'll have to come back next week. What follows is more appropriate for summer. Semester grades are at least an "August" topic.

Also, I'll be reposting all the "Grading over time" posts in sequence on consecutive weeks beginning 8/28/17... just in time for "back to school."

Encourage a teacher you know to give them a read.

While driving the other morning, I experienced a traffic break known as a "One-Lane, Two-Way Taper.” [It took me a long time to find that term.] A huge truckload of drywall was being downloaded at a construction site. The truck took half the width of the street.

A worker at the hood end of the truck held a sign with “SLOW” on one side and “STOP” on the other. STOP was facing me.

He was peering intently toward the rear of the truck where an associate held a similar sign. Cars were edging past the truck at low speed. I’m guessing that the SLOW side of that side was facing oncoming traffic.

When the last car in the queue passed the sign holder at the rear of the truck, he flipped his sign around. “My” sign holder did not move.

Once the final car cleared my sign holder, he looked at me and flipped his sign from STOP to SLOW. We exchanged friendly waves as I inched forward.

On the return trip, the setup was the same. The event was not.

As I approached the STOP sign, a black coupe pulled around me and zipped up to the sign and its holder. The holder came very close to smacking the car with his sign when the driver attempted to pass—while a car was coming from the other direction.

The sign holder moved along the side of the car until he could flash STOP in front of the windshield.

When SLOW appeared, the sedan did more than inch or creep past the drywall truck. As I passed the sign holder, I shook my head. He shook his and shrugged. A voice from the sidewalk made a derogatory comment about the driver.

I continued home.

When I was growing up, my family drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana at least every-other summer. This was before air-conditioning in cars, so we usually left San Diego about 10:00 p.m. to “get through the desert before it gets hot.”

The desert we were trying to foil stretches from the eastern side of the Laguna Mountains to at least the Texas border. Leaving at night from San Diego saved us about six hours of heat.

I illustrate the ineffectiveness of this practice, I remember waiting five hours in Grants, New Mexico, for the only gas station to open. We ended up paying an exorbitant price for two tires. The heat of the asphalt melted the glue that held the recapped rubber tread on two of our tires. That gas station was the only source of tires until Albuquerque.

We traveled Route 66. We stayed in motels with separate cabins in the shape of teepees. We ate at places named EAT. We visited “The Thing,” and “The Meteor Crater” in Arizona and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

Right vintage for the car. We always had Chevy stationwagons.

Our motels always had a swimming pool.

During the second half of our four-day drive, we went through country where winter weather was an issue. Most road repair and construction in those areas was done in the summer. We experienced some l-o-n-g One-Way, Two-Lane traffic breaks similar to the one described above.

In the days before cell phones, I remember my dad turning off the car and telling us to get out and stretch our legs. He leaned against the front fender and talked to the sign-holder for several minutes.

When the last car allowed to travel our direction reached our sign holder, the driver of that car handed the sign holder a red rag. Our sign holder kept the rag until there was a “natural break” in the line of cars he’d stopped. The driver of the last car he allowed through returned the rag to the other sign holder and reversed the flow of traffic.

My high school linebacker coach, Bob Bass (brother of Tom, a former Chargers coach), told us of a summer job he had in college. He was a flagman on a road construction crew. His job was to stand at the beginning of a line of pylons and wave a precautionary red flag. He waved the flag in an arc that indicated to the drivers that they were to keep outside the pylons.

• One day, he was doing his job. Things were going well . . . until one car didn’t move over when the driver first saw the flag. No matter how hard my now desperate coach waved his flag, the car didn’t swerve. In fact, he had to dive off the road into a patch of stinging nettles to avoid being hit by the car.
• After he recovered his senses, he handed the flag to his boss and walked over five miles back to the closest phone booth. He never even picked up his final paycheck.
• He learned later when another summer employee brought him his check what happened after he dove into the nettles.
• That day the crew had been sandblasting temporary lane lines off the now finished roadway. When the car blew past my coach and continued on, it ran over a dozen pylons. As it passed the man working the sandblaster, he strafed the side of the car as it passed.
• The driver didn’t file a complaint, even though the driver’s side of his car was bare metal when he got home.

Next Almanac. I'm not sure right now. We'll be surprised together.

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Authors, et. al. Why nominate my book for publication through kindlescout?

Current iteration of the "full cover" for when the book becomes "Patterns on Pages."

Nearly two years ago, I learned about the kindlescout program. It was just what I was looking for.

If you don’t know about this Amazon program, this is from https://kindlescout.amazon.com/agreement. The highlights are mine.

You give:

·  An opportunity to consider your book for publication during a 45-day exclusivity period, starting as soon as you submit to Kindle Scout. You also give us the right to display an excerpt of your manuscript, your name and photo, and other materials you submit to us on the Kindle Scout site and distribute your work in order to solicit feedback.

·  If your book is selected for publication by Kindle Press, we'll have the exclusive worldwide right to publish it in eBook and audio formats, in all languages, for a term beginning on the selection date and auto-renewing every five years. If you do not earn at least $25,000 during any 5-year term, you'll have six months after the end of that 5-year period in which you can choose to stop publishing with us and request your rights back.

You get:

·  An opportunity to get paid for your writing. We're looking for never-before-published books of about 50,000 words or more. If we select your book for publication, you will be entitled to a $1,500 advance and royalties on net revenues at a rate of 50% for eBooks, 25% for audio editions and 20% for translations.

·  If your book is selected for publication by Kindle Press and you later want to stop publishing with us, you'll be able to get your rights back in a variety of circumstances.

Unfortunately, I did not have a book ready for publication at that time.

Today, I have a book ready for publication. It's not just "another" book.

Patterns on Pages – Secrets of the Sequenced Symbols – Traveler’s HOT L – Volume 4 is a story about disaster, aliens, curious young people, great teachers, more aliens, and books. BTW, Thomas Jefferson makes a cameo appearance.

• The book is well-written. Solid plot, novel approach, edited appropriately, and proofed by many eyes. 
• The story is compelling. Disaster strikes Earth. Humanity teeters on extinction. Aliens recruit two illiterates from the far future and two teachers from the present day. Together, future humans, teachers, and aliens . . .  You really didn't think I was going to give away the ending, did you? 
• The characters are relatable and consistent. 
• Readers from middle schoolers to seniors in life will enjoy it. If it was a movie, it would be "Rated G." Well, by the time Hollywood finished, it would probably be PG-13 for the way they'd computer enhance the disaster scenes.
• It's a quality story that doesn't include profanity, suggestive dialog or situations, or inappropriate gratuitous violence.
• It's a book worthy of publication. 

Until September 10, 2017, Patterns on Pages is in the 45-day exclusive period mentioned above. That time period ends on September 9th.

Part of the selection process is garnering “nominations” of your book. No one but the author (and Amazon) knows how many page views a book gets. Even the author doesn't know the actual number of nominations.

I’d hoped for 50-100 nominations per day. For days 1-3, Patterns garnered a total of 127 page views.

Below expectations.

If you were a student or colleague of mine—and possibly if we’ve been friends for any length of time--you know I like controlled situations. I’m not a control freak. Some of you are rolling your eyes at that sentence, but it’s true. I like to be in control, but I can survive—for awhile—in situations that afford me less than my optimum control level.

If you were a student of mine, you remember times when what I said, or what we did seemed unrelated to any science at all. That may have seemed out of control.

It wasn’t.

When I first started teaching, there were many half-hour long TV shows. After the opening credits, there was a commercial break, 12-14 minutes of the show, a commercial break, 12-14 minutes of the show, and closing credits.

It was soon clear that the attention spans of my students were 12-14 minutes long. I might be able to push to twenty minutes on occasion, but students performed better when breaks more closely aligned with TV schedules.

I might tell a story or joke. I might do some “voice” to emphasize a point. There were other tricks, but those were my top two. After the “commercial,” “the show” resumed. Just like on TV.

I know for a fact that I had students who paid attention to the science I taught because they didn’t want to miss a witticism. They learned science while waiting for stories and jokes. 

Oh, yeah, and I got to do what I love in a way that helped students learn and enjoy every year.

What’s that got to do with kindlescout?

I’m glad you asked.

I have no control over whether this book is chosen by Amazon.
I had all the control over the book: Title. Cover. Manuscript.

Once I submitted the book, control passed to Amazon . . .

AND YOU!

Ultimately, you—the reader/nominator—have at least as much control as the author in this process.

My book hasn’t got a prayer of earning one of Amazon’s publication slots unless people nominate it.

Bottom line:

I need your help.

Writing that sentence was one of the most difficult writing I've ever done. 

I haven't given control away often.
I give control to you.

I’ve authored or co-authored 11 published books. I’ve invested thousands of dollars in those books. My royalties are not thousands of dollars. This is an opportunity to balance the ledger. 

More importantly, it's an opportunity for you to have a say in the kind of books that are published.

Since Patterns is Volume 4 in the Traveler’s HOT L series, there is potential for readers to read the predecessors to see what they missed. Since the original Traveler’s HOT L was

I’m hoping they do check out my other books.

If you’ve already nominated Patterns, bless you. If you’re going to nominate Pattens, bless you. If you haven’t decided, please nominate Patterns.

It’s easy to nominate. 

You must have an Amazon account to nominate.

Follow the steps below after logging in at https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3QPD53W23JLRT

TO GET YOUR NOMINATION TO SHOW UP IN #4 ABOVE

Click the turquoise  box!

 THANK YOU! 

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Email me at: crd.author@gmail.com