Ashlinn, how right you are. Fitzgerald was put on this earth to show all of us mere mortals that how not to do it is just how to do it. I guess the point is that none of his wonderful adverbs is the kind of automatic tag that CW teachers try to get you to excise; each one earns its keep by doing something important and valuable in the prose.

Larissa, many thanks. I'm not sure how serious your question is, but I doubt if Clare has a view on adverbs. I'm not sure I have a blanket one, beyond them being a trap for the unwary. A propos the deal, it's made all the difference in the world to me, but I'm not sure it's glamorous enough for the Bookseller. Plus Headline are being very cagey about what information they give out when - I'd like to think that it's because they're carefully orchestrating publicity, but it's more likely to be because Frankfurt is looming! (one thing I do remember from my days in the trade is that Frankfurt for publishers is like Christmas for an eight year old. They are incapable of thinking about anything except in relation to that date, for about three months either side!) They only formally accepted it about ten days ago, and it's only recently been scheduled. I'm not even sure if they've quite settled the publication date!

Emma

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Gatsby coming up again! He seems to polarise people. It seems either he's way up at the top of your list, or you don't get him at all!

Hi Emma, yes my question was serious. I'm not an insider, and fiction publishing seems to be a highly subjective business, so I'm trying to find out as much as possible about the tastes of agents to target the ones most likely to enjoy my work. However, despite studying their websites, I still feel like I'm shooting in the dark.

Anyway, thanks for your reply. I wish you the best of luck in Frankfurt and hope that you'll be cracking open the Sekt (save the champagne for home and keep the locals happy!).

Larissa.

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Incidentally, I hadn't realised that The Bookseller was considered to be glamorous and thought that all deals were reported there. I have a lot to learn!

I suspect nobody - not even the insiders - knows how the industry works! Like any trade based on creativity, they're all looking for something but they don't know what it is, which makes it impossible for them to tell you what they want.

I heard Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown speak at the Society of Authors AGM on Wednesday, and off the top of my head, I remember him making the following points: Curtis Brown get 3,000 MS a year adressed to the agency in general, and it's amazing how people don't do their homework - such as addressing things to 'Dear Mr Brown'! In addition he gets about 5 MS a DAY personally and assumes that other agents get about the same. He can't remember when they took on someone from the general pile. They're slightly more likely to take someone on who's approached an agent personally, not because the personal approach works better, but because the people who've done their homework are more likely to be people with all the other qualities they're looking for as well. A page or so of everything is read, and about 8-10% are good enough to be read fully. But not surprisingly, it takes them a while to get round to everybody.

He said that despite the load of dealing with this stuff, he disapproved immensely of agencies who don't take unsolicited submissions, since without publishers who take unsolocited submissions either, where else is the author to go? He did feel that the growth of the editing consultancies was a positive thing, and that it really was worth it for an aspirant author to get a report, or even invest in having a full edit.

Interestingly, Ion Trewin of Orion made the point that once upon a time publishers would publish a not-very-good first book or two by a promising author, knowing later ones would be better. He didn't feel that it was necessarily a good thing, and maybe it was better (or certainly no worse) for the long-term interests of the author that these days those books would remain unpublished, and the 'first' book would actually be the author's fullfilling-its-promise third book.

Most of the AGM was taken up with great debate about Google and Amazon inside-the-book and Wottakers, and if I get round to it I'll start a thread on that.

Emma

Talking of adverbs; I've just uploaded a piece where I seem to use a lot of them... be good to know if you think any are unnecessary or about ones that work particularly well. (Weird how the writing just doesn't seem the same when pulled out of context, isn't it?)

That sounds interesting, Sammy. I'd like to have a look.

Emma

On the subject of adverbs - I'm reading a recent Booker winner and there's LOADS of them - he said surprisingly

Emma,

Thanks for that, there’s one or two bits of very important information in your post.

As for the adverb debate. My writing is a veritable desert where adverbs are concerned and I keep my speech attribution to an absolute minimum, and recently I received some very favourable feedback from an agent.

Grinder

Traveller - surprisingly, or surprisedly?

Grinder - yes, I think and hope that I also start from the position of no adverbs and minimal speech attributions, and elaborate only where it's essential.

Got curious and have just looked at a fairly standard page of my prose - mixed dialogue, non-violent action and description, double spaced, 11pt. There are 10 separate speeches with 3 attributions between them. And one adverb.

Emma

I've been thinking quite a bit about this adverb business since this discussion began. I think I would make a distinction between adverbs that describe concretely how the action is conducted such as 'he walked slowly' or 'she said quietly' and those adverbs that are interpretive of the action rather than descriptive like 'poignantly' 'recklessly' 'pathetically', even 'angrily'. IMO, the problem with using these last kind of adverbs is that they confine the reader into a particular judgement of the action and doesn't involve them by allowing them to make their own minds up. One person's poignant might be another's pathetic. I think that excessive use of these kind of adverbs (or adjectives) could imply a certain lack of respect by the writer for the reader's intelligence.

For some adverbs it's not so clear-cut such as 'cheerfully'(I think you could argue that this might be a description of the actual way something is said) and maybe the decision of whether to use them depends on how many other clues are around for the reader and how important it is to get that point across. Depending on the context, it might be fine, even necessary, to say "No thanks," she said cheerfully. but over the top to say "On a lovely day like this, how could I refuse?" she said cheerfully.

Ashlinn: the sound of nails being hit firmly on the head!

I agree with you that something like, 'he threw it carefully,' is a good use of an adverb. And sometimes the voice, or simply the texture of the prose, demands something plain, like 'he drove fast': monosyllabic, simple, direct - not 'he whizzed/zoomed/bucketed/speeded/careered'.

And yes, if I come across '...he said, understandably' I always think first, does it mean he spoke clearly? or that his motives for saying it were comprehensible? If it's 'he said, unkindly', then was it that his tone of voice was unkind, or that he wanted what he said to be unkind, or that he didn't but the hearer took it as unkind? And then if it isn't from a known character's PoV, I think, 'who says it's understandable, anyway? The narrator? the author? And as you say, I feel bossed - as if I'm being told how to interpret this moment.

My platonic ideal of narrative is one where the reader's never told what to think, simply that the story - what happened - is laid before them. This needn't preclude a character-narrator (it's late, can't think of the proper term). In fact, I think it's easier to get closer to my ideal with one, because as the writer you can't tell the reader what to think, only to convey to them what your narrator thought.

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Ashlinn - on the other hand, how about 'On a lovely day like this, how could I refuse?' she said, bitterly.

Still actually has the drawbacks of the interpretative-type adverb I was dissing, but there is a use for them, when the adverb runs counter to the normal interpretation of the action.

Emma,

Never say never. My feeling is that it depends on the context. If I have a feeling that the reader is finding the scene a little bit obscure or having difficulty 'reading' the character, then I might throw in an adverb (even an interpretative one) just to give an extra signpost but it would have to be a well-considered decision.

Ashlinn

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BTW, I hope they were fingernails. The alternative could be painful.

BTW, I hope they were fingernails. The alternative could be painful.

Just shows what trouble you can get into with the passive mood! It's the nails' heads I meant.

Yes, I take the point. Maybe at the top of all these threads that are about technique we should have the virtual equivalent of a cross-stitch motto which says 'Never say never. Rules are made to be broken, once you know what you're doing and why.'

Emma