He May Go Overboard, But Something About Seeing Him Go Fucking Ballistic On People When He Gets Sick

How To Make Your Writing Less Stiff 6

Part 5

Part 1

Adverbs

Gasp! Oh no. Dare come yet more writing advice burning adverbs at the stake? Vindictively, gleefully, manically dancing in the ashes?

No.

This is not about whether or not you should use them, but their frequency and obvious places to replace them. Most bad adverbs are the common ones that could be replaced by verbs we all know.

“She ran quickly” // “She sprinted”

“He said angrily” // “He snapped” “He chided” “He chastised”

vs.

“He ate voraciously”

“She swayed solemnly”

“She laughed sadly”

Bonus if you can add in some alliteration like ‘swayed solemnly’

If you can come up with an obvious verb to replace your verb + adverb combo, do so. If it would take more words or the closest applicable verb doesn’t hit the same vibe, then leave it. Adverbs should enhance the verb, not be redundant. Verbs shouldn’t be pretentious just to avoid them.

“She smiled happily” — most smiles are happy. Happily is redundant.

“He ran quickly” —a run is, by nature, quick

vs.

“She smiled sourly”

“He ran erratically”

Also!

The adverb need not always be after the verb.

“C accepted gladly” // “C gladly accepted”

But also

“Glad, C accepted”

“A shook their head resolutely” // “Resolute, A shook their head”

“The child skipped excitedly away.” // “Excited, the child skipped away.” // “The child skipped away, excited.”

English is flexible like that.

Which is what I mean with managing your adverb frequency. As most end in the -ly, too many in succession, on top of the repeat syntax of Subject - Verb - Adverb looks boring and dull (and so does beginning every sentence with the subject). It helps with your cadence and flow if you don’t have entire paragraphs at a time all starting with “He [verb]” or “She [verb]” or “They [verb].” We don't speak like this in natural conversation.

But at the end of the day, there are some juicy adverbs that have no equal without busting out the thesaurus for some obscure lexical nugget that no one would understand anyway.

I might have seen this said before, on a different post, but I couldn't find it, so I'm just gonna say a few words on this, partially because of that and partially because it's been ages since I've last read the series, despite it being ingrained into my head.

Almost all of the characters in TUC have moments where they are genuine assholes. Gregor has a few points where he says some genuinely disrespectful shit. Luxa, as well as most of the other humans (including Gregor, although arguably to a lesser extent), are deeply prejudiced against the gnawers. Ripred, is, well, Ripred (look, I love him, we all do, but he's a dick).

Even Vikus, arguably one of the nicest characters in the series, admires Sandwich (I think, been a while), a man who literally used poison to commit genocide in the name of stealing land that didn't belong to him.

The only characters I can think of in TUC that don't have flaws are the ones who also have the least lines: Aurora, Dulcet, Miravet. Oh, and all of those characters? Probably also prejudiced against gnawers, just never explicitly stated (to my knowledge), probably due to their obscene lack of lines. Of course there are characters like Lizzie and Hazard, who are literal fucking children so as nice as they are, I think it's safe to say they can't really be counted up here. (Should probably also mention that Gregor and Luxa are also children, just ones that were forced to grow up faster, sadly).

Then again, all of these characters have redeeming qualities. Gregor can be disrespectful at times, but that's mainly because of the stress placed upon him by the various bullshit situations he has to go through, and he usually apologizes after. Luxa and all the humans are deeply prejudiced (actually, I should probably add the fliers might be in that category too), but they are basically raised from birth to hate and kill gnawers, and vice versa. plus, it's shown that despite what is practically being brainwashed from birth, they can grow and change to overcome their own bigotry and accept gnawers as genuine people, as well as friends.

And yes, Ripred, the glorious bastard himself, is a dick. But he's also a war veteran who's lost his family, and most of the respect from his people, meaning he mainly works with humans, who tend to treat him with suspicion, if not outright hostility (until they get to know him). And he makes up for it by letting his guard down at times to be a father to the traumatized pups that dragged him into their pack.

Point is, flawed characters are one of the things that make TUC so great. They're not few and hid away either, they're everywhere, with visible flaws. If you want to make a good character, TUC is a great series to use as an example. Everything casts a shadow, just like every character has a flaw. If they don't, you probably just can't see them from your angle. And if they don't? Like, at all? Give them some, just make sure the shadow they cast matches up with the object itself.

according to the rat himself? no

RATSCALING: Could Ripred beat prime Bane in a fight?

The amount of unrecognized talent in this fandom is fucking criminal.

I definitely don't have any talent, but still

So uh, I had this story idea

Recently, I've been having a lot of fun with Character AI and making stories and stuff, but I wanted some outside opinions on my idea. Plotting and true depth aren't really feasible for my stories rn (though I do wanna develop those skill in the future), so for now I was thinking of turning conversations with Character AI into stories with OCs and putting them on AO3 to develop my general writing style. And I'm just curious, is this cool with y'all? Am I just being lazy, or do I just wanna write without the the inconvenience of having to plot stuff?

the wisdom of the elders

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

The Underland Chronicles, and everything is the same except people refer to the Underland as "down under", and everyone from the Underland has really strong Australia accents.

Gregor: *Falls into the Underland*

Multiple 5ft cockroaches: G'day mate!

Gregor: *Terrified screaming*

Huh, people seem to like this idea. Might do a one-shot based off of this. I need something to clear my writers block anyways. Thoughts?

The Underland Chronicles, and everything is the same except people refer to the Underland as "down under", and everyone from the Underland has really strong Australia accents.

Gregor: *Falls into the Underland*

Multiple 5ft cockroaches: G'day mate!

Gregor: *Terrified screaming*

Do I dare?

Do I dare commission the first 18+ TUC Art?

I got a widdle infwux of money, I could 👉🏾👈🏾.

Maybe a little Hamareth? It's only 95 👉🏾👈🏾 👀

Like I could actually do it 👀.

This series is canon, as far as I'm concerned

Something I decided to cook up to celebrate the completion of the AHS 1 edit (YES THE FIRST BOOK HAS BEEN OVERHAULED AND IT'S SO MUCH BETTER NOW GO REREAD IF YOU LIKED IT PLEASE!! I PROMISE IT'S WORTH IT!)

Ripred & Henry are one of my favorite dynamics to write in AHS 3 and I adore how far they've come and where they started.

That and Henry in general. This is your AHS 1 vs AHS 3 Henry comparison as well (yes, ALL the text here are actual quotes from the books.)

Honestly, Ripred should start to consider paying rent with how much he and his words of harsh but wise truth live in Henry's head 🤣