somethingstupid

You remember that story I wrote about, the third one from my class? Of course not, but to make a short story even shorter, it was a page and maybe a half, about a guy who listens to punk records with his friend in Berkeley and then moves to Fresno and people there don't like punk but then he meets a guy who he thinks is a skinhead but turns out to be straightedge and listens to Fugazi and then the guy wanders off into a fog and the reader sits and wonders what the hell they just read.

Anyway, in the comments in class, a peculiar thing happened. First off, this one chick, who's quite vocal in general declared that she liked the short story, but - I cannot stress my puzzlement enough - she doesn't like the adverbs.

Really. Adverbs. She'd mentioned this before, but I guess it just didn't hit home until the second time. She doesn't like adverbs. I believe the exact phrase was "I hate adverbs." Her explanation was that dialogue should stand by itself; an adverb is distracting. Really, you should just being writing "he said" and "he said coldly" because the reader should be able to figure out the intonation.

The teacher has yet to tell her to shut the fuck up, which is also puzzling to me. I mean, I know we can offer whatever criticism we feel like, but really...dialogue that conveys its tone entirely literally would be pretty bloody awful to read. And is she going to be offering this criticism all semester?

Whatever. Next writing assignment, I'm doing actual characters. There were none in the last story to speak of, so I'd rather do a dialogue driven, character heavy piece.

It's either going to be that or a series of trick or treaters on Halloween written in a style that will be an attempt to rip off Kelly Link, whose book of short stories you should read if you have not. And you probably have not, so do it. Neil Gaiman thinks she's "the best short story writer in any genre or none." I don't know if that's true, but she's really amazing.