“It was irritating to read all those adverbs.”

The first time I ever read Champ and Nessie was on 6/19/2014. (Wow!) The first draft of Champ and Nessie was 24 pages of unformatted text, 5486 words. Check out my post on The Journey Begins, for the backstory on what took me so long. My first for real editorial read was 4/11/2019. On that day, I cut 10 pages of redundant text and over used adverbs and transformed C&N to a 14 page manuscript. How, you ask? I omitted every single adverb, and most of the imagery that Author Zebulan Frayne had used.

Adverbs will KILL your story, get rid of them. This is a famous tip backed by Mark Twain and Ernest Hemmingway, so its safe to say, this is a no brainer when it comes to editing your book. One of the things that will make any writer stand out as an amature is too many adverbs. As a writer the last thing we want to do is appear amateurish. Especially, if you are a independent writer, the pressure is worse than ever.

With a background in editing, it comes natural for me to spot a “filler word”. But in case you don’t know exactly what to look for, check out our Writing Resource, Filler Words reference sheet to help you omit some of those unnecessary adverbs.

Print out your manuscript, or storyboard and go grab a red pen. Red line all the adverbs and re-read your story, see what makes sense to edit and what you need to keep. In the end, I bet you have a more concise text that is tightend up and clean.

To get an idea of how your manuscript is coming along, click on our Children’s Book Length Guideline and make sure your word count is on track for your age group and category.