Praise for Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling

From Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Die Again:

“Whether you’re writing your first novel or your

twentieth, this book is a must-have for any novel-
ist. And it’s one of the most readable, entertaining
books on writing out there.”

Laura Abbott, co-owner & managing editor, Amber Quill

Press:

“I’ve read many manuscript submissions that

were near-misses. If those writers had had the
benefit of this book, they’d be published right
now. This is a must-read for the burgeoning story-
teller and serious novelist, and it’s a necessity for
editors who seek to nurture their writing clients.”

Dan Conaway, literary agent, Writer’s House:

“Learn the critical art of ruthless and rigorous

self-editing from a man who understands the art
better than most. His practical, sensible advice
really can help you become a better writer.”

Lou Aronica, editor, publisher, president of The Fiction Studio:

“Writers will learn a great deal from the pages

of this book. Rhamey offers the kind of advice
that could make a huge difference in a writer’s
prospects.”
Mastering the Craft of
Compelling Storytelling
Mastering the Craft of
Compelling Storytelling

Ray Rhamey

Ashland, Oregon
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling © 2014 by Ray
Rhamey. Manufactured in the United States of America. All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including
information storage and retrieval systems without permission
in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may
quote brief passages in a review. Published by FtQ Press, an
imprint of Flogging the Quill LLC, Ashland, Oregon. First
Edition.

ISBN 978-0-9909282-0-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918781

Book cover and interior design by Ray Rhamey

Elegant quill art on title pages by Janis McCallen

Disclosure: much of the content of this book initially appeared

as Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells, 2009, by this
author. The original content has been expanded to deliver even
more help for writers.
This book is dedicated to writers who brave the steep and
never-ending learning curve for writing novels and memoirs,
striving to learn and improve.

It’s a thank-you to the writers I’ve worked with in critique

groups who have helped me with my own writing and
in learning how to coach writers to strengthen story
shortcomings.

And the biggest thank-you goes to my wife, Sarah, who has

been a patient listener for, well, all the important times and
many not so consequential—the companion of my life.
 Contents
From Page to Head, Compellingly 1
Benchmark—a pre-test 8
Writing for effect 11
Adverbs: Good? Bad? Yes. 15
Weed out weak, wasted & wrong words 22
Don’t get me started 28
Do without “without” 34
Watch your as 40
When to tell, how to show 48
Point of view: a slippery slope 53
Head-hopping 61
Story as garden 68
Linger for involving storytelling 72
From there to here, then to now 75
Flashing back 85
Make it experiential to characterize 94
Eliminate filters that distance a reader’s experience 103
Avoid conclusion words 108
Inhabit characters to imagine their experience 112
Use specifics to deliver what you intend 115
Ways to describe a point-of-view character 118
Color narrative to characterize 124
Stagecraft: don’t trip over your imaginings 128
Watch out for the incredibles 132
Overwriting: the attack of killer verbiage 136
Dialogue techniques 141
Tags: a game writers shouldn’t play 142
Cook up some tasty beats 148
Don’t say it with “with” 154
Deliver the sound of dialogue 160
Story as river 164
Start with kitty-cats in action 169
Tension in your first sentence 172
Six vital story ingredients 179
Mastering the first page 193
The inciting incident: story launch pad 195
An engine named desire 199
Five ways to create tension 204
Creating the care factor 213
Create a really good bad guy 221
Haunt characters for stronger storytelling 227
It takes story questions to turn pages 231
Chapter endings 235
You have to go beyond strong writing 239
Workout 1 249
Workout 2 253
Workout 3 258
Workout 4 265
Workout 5 269
Workout 6 273
Workout 7 278
Workout 8 283
Workout 9 287
Workout 10 291
Workout 11 295
About the author 299
Index 304
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 1

From Page to Head, Compellingly

Donald Maass, literary agent representing more than 100 novel-
ists, author, teacher, blogger, analyst, and fiction expert says this
about what’s in Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling:

“Ray makes you think about what you are putting

down on the page.”

That might seem to be de rigueur and of little import, per-

haps even damning with faint praise . . . but when it comes to the
craft of compelling storytelling, it’s what’s on the page—and only
what’s on the page—that gets your story into your readers’ heads.
Maybe.
And even if it does, will they turn the page?
And then keep reading?
There’s the rub.
To achieve a page-turner (in the literal sense; no turning the
page, no reading the book), you have to think about and deal with
many aspects of what you put on the page. I take Don’s assessment
as a high compliment from a pro.
Wait a minute, you might say, I’m a good writer, I have a knack
for prose. Perhaps you’re even published in one way or another.
You put good stuff on the page.
2 Ray Rhamey

As literary agent Kristin Nelson says,

“I think writers assume that good writing is

enough. Well, it’s not.”

Ouch.
On her blog, Agent in the Middle, veteran literary agent Lori
Perkins says this:

“Your novel has to grab me by the first page,

which is why I can reject you on page one.”

Some are even quicker than that. Dan Conaway, an executive

editor turned literary agent at Writers House, says:

“I know most of what I need to know about a

writer’s chops in about a line and a half.”

Again, ouch.
On the editorial side, Chuck Adams, Executive Editor of
Algonquin Books, put it this way:

“You can usually tell after a paragraph—a page,

certainly—whether or not you’re going to get
hooked.”

Okay, you might say, but those are literary agents and editors
who see hundreds of submissions. They’ve got callouses on their
frontal lobes and it takes a bludgeon to hook them, but I’m an
Indie author. I’m going to publish myself, so I don’t need to worry
about what they think. I’ll appeal directly to readers.
Oh, will you? If you think literary agents and editors are
tough, wait until a reader squints at your first page with taking
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 3

money out of their pocket on the line. Sol Stein, publisher-editor-

author-playwright, writes in Stein on Writing of his observations
in a bookstore:

“In the fiction section, the most common pat-

tern was for the browser to read the front flap
of the book’s jacket and then go to page one. No
browser went beyond page three before either
taking the book to the cashier or putting it down
and picking up another to sample.”

I’ll wager you have even less time on Amazon.com or another

online bookseller where you’re one swift click away from goodbye.
What did those bookstore browsers see in the novels they
chose to purchase, and what did they fail to see in the rejects?
Were the rejects missing fulsome description?
Great dialogue?
Fascinating characters?
Deep themes?

Nope. Just one thing.

Story

Bookstore and website browsers of novels and memoirs—and

agents and editors—either see immediate signs of a story they
want to read, or they do not. They either feel compelled to keep
reading, or they do not. As quickly as within a single page.
You do it too, don’t you?
It’s not like when you ask a family member, or a friend, or
even a critique partner to read your new novel—they have to
read your stuff, and their responses are colored by knowing you.
It doesn’t get tough until you’re asking someone to pay for your
4 Ray Rhamey

novel or memoir—a purchase by a reader, an agent spending her

time and reputation by offering your book, or an editor gambling
on the cost to print and market it.
To move your book toward the cash register, to generate a
request by an agent for the full manuscript, or to make it to an
editorial meeting by an acquisitions editor, you need to kick-start
your story, sentence by sentence, on your opening page.
And then you have to keep the pages turning
Are you starting to think about what you’re putting on your
pages?
On my blog, Flogging the Quill, I’ve critiqued first chapters
and prologues submitted by, at this writing, more than 800 aspir-
ing novelists and memoirists. My challenge to these writers is to
craft a first page that compels me to turn the page and read more.
Page-turns by me and many of my readers are few and far between.
I also teach a workshop at writers’ conferences called “Craft-
ing a Killer First Page.” In the workshop we read a first page and
then the class votes on whether or not they would turn the page.
The percentage of “no” votes goes up as they read more and more
pages and see what doesn’t work. One workshopper whose first
page came up at the middle of the class told me later that he
voted against his own work because of what he’d learned by the
time we got to it.
To define “compel:”
com • pel
verb
a. to force
b. to urge irresistibly
But do you really need to compel? Remember what Lori
Perkins said:

“Your novel has to grab me by the first page,

which is why I can reject you on page one.”
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 5

Or, as Donald Maass says in his book, Writing the Breakout

Novel,

“To hold our attention, a novel’s action needs to

compel us to read every word.”

There’s that word again. And when Donald is talking about

a novel’s action, it is your storytelling and only your storytelling
that can deliver the ability for your narrative to compel.
It’s what you put on the page.
So here’s what I’m going to deal with in this book to help you
think about what you’re putting there in ways to make it not only
deliver your story and your characters, but in ways that keep the
reader reading.

Section 1: Wordcraft
We’ll start at the granular level—your word choices and the
ways in which you use them. Just as a painter must master mix-
ing hues to achieve the desired effect, writers need to hone their
ability to mix and order words to write for effect.
Some might think spending time on words is beneath their
level of ability—to that I’ll let bestselling thriller author M.J. Rose
respond with her view of the coaching you’ll encounter:

“It reminds me of important things about fic-

tion writing.”

Or, as author Pete Barber, NanoStrike, says:

“I still skim through ‘Mastering the Craft’ be-

fore I undertake a major edit. It helps to remind
me about the basics—first learned and easiest
forgotten.”
6 Ray Rhamey

You’ll find the wordcraft section useful if you haven’t thought

about how these words can weaken your narrative:
• present participles
• without
• some
• very
• of
• eyes
• started
• with
• as

Section 2: Technique
There are tools of your trade akin to the brushes and palette
knives of a painter.
Storytelling techniques. The “telling/showing” paradigm
demystified; dealing with point of view (POV); transitions;
flashbacks; avoiding overwriting; and more.
Description techniques. I’ll show you how to create de-
scription that not only describes but characterizes—you’ll use
experiential description to do more than snapshot a scene. I’ll
cover describing point-of-view characters without breaking
POV; how filters distance your reader; shooting yourself in
the descriptive foot when it comes to action; how “conclusion”
words fail in description; avoiding the lure of overwriting; and
more. You’ll gain a new insight into adverbs that can enhance
description—adverbs are frequently a no-no, but I’ve found a
use that is definitely a yes-yes.
Dialogue techniques. The use—and non-use—of dialogue
tags; the technique of “beats” to deliver a character’s experi-
ence, action, and character; how to use one of the most reveal-
ing kinds of dialogue, internal monologue; and delivering the
sound of speech.
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 7

Section 3: Story.
Vital story elements; a first-page checklist; strategies and
methods for launching a story; creating tension, characters that
readers connect with, story questions, really good bad guys,
dimension in characters, and more.

Workouts
Finally, you’ll go to work in exercises where you apply the
techniques and insights you’ve gained to real first-page open-
ings created by writers like you who submitted their work to my
blog—I’ll include my notes and the votes I gave them.
8 Ray Rhamey

Benchmark—a pre-test
In the eleven “workouts” at the end of this book, I ask you
to apply the coaching herein to samples sent to me by writers.
Below is one of the examples you’ll be working on, the opening
of a novel sent to me by an Australian writer (note the British
punctuation).
To create a benchmark for changes in how you perceive a
narrative after reading this book, I suggest you read this excerpt
now and decide whether or not you would turn the page.
Then evaluate its strengths and shortcomings, and think about
how you would edit it and/or what comments you would give the
writer to make it stronger. Then carry on. This is what would be
the first sixteen lines on a manuscript’s first page:

‘Michael’s gone!’ Julia screamed into the payphone

outside Flinders Street Train Station.’
‘Calm down, Mrs Stewart. She’ll be with you shortly.’
Julia bristled at the matter-of-factness of the receptionist’s
voice. ‘I don’t care if she’s with the Queen. My husband is
missing. I think I’m losing my mind.’
‘Please hold and I’ll see if I can interrupt.’
Click. Mozart replaced the receptionist’s voice. The
familiar hold music from the past sounded surreal against
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 9

the background tram and traffic noise of the Melbourne

thoroughfare.
A pedestrian bumped into her daughter’s stroller, turn-
ing Shellie to tears.
‘Stop that, you bad girl!’ Julia rolled the stroller under
the phone box, putting her child out of the way of the Friday
afternoon commuters.
Shellie reached out and cried louder.
‘Arrgghh!’ Julia dropped the receiver, picked up the
three year old and settled her on her hip. Shellie quieted,
distracted now by an earring.
Ignoring her, Julia reached for the dangling receiver, and
found silence. ‘Hello? Hello!’ Don’t be gone. I don’t have
any more change.
‘I thought I’d lost you.’ The receptionist’s cheerfulness
was enough to piss off anyone.

Okay, now dive in.

10 Ray Rhamey

Section 1: Wordcraft
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 11

Writing for effect

If you want readers to turn your pages, here’s the effect you
want your writing to have on them—to trigger in them the sights
and sounds and smells and feelings and movement of what’s
happening in the story. Readers don’t want approximations, they
want the story’s reality. They should experience the story, not just
learn about what happens. And by “experience the story” I mean
experience the character’s story.
Memoirist and writing teacher Sheila Bender, A New Theology:
Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, talks about writing a memoir
in such a way that the reader becomes you. I think the thing to
strive for in fiction is for your reader to become the character(s).
I call it writing for effect, the root of compelling storytelling.
It’s your writing craft that empowers your storytelling to sink its
fingers into readers’ imaginations and compel them to want to
know what happens next.
Writing for effect is the core craft principle underlying my
approach to creating an irresistible fiction narrative that immerses
a reader in the experience of the story.
It’s the lens through which I critique narrative in an edit and
strive to view my own writing.
It’s the objective that informs the coaching on storytelling,
dialogue, description, and technique in this book.
12 Ray Rhamey

It’s knowing how to show and when to tell. It’s why adverbs
are often weak writing—and sometimes just the opposite, creators
of nuance and subtlety that evoke a character’s reality.
Writing for effect is the guiding light that can show you the
way to a stronger story, and the searchlight that can illuminate
shortcomings in your manuscript.
Failure to write for effect is why too many writers, especially
beginning authors, do little more than put information on the
page and end up with a report with a plot, not a novel or memoir.
In storytelling, you’re not writing to inform the reader—you
deliver information, of course, but that’s not the purpose—you’re
writing to affect the reader. To craft narrative that creates an effect
in the reader’s mind—the experience of the story.
Basically, it’s all about stimulus/response.
Maybe it’s the psychology major in me, but I can’t help but
think of the stimulus/response paradigm. Pavlov taught dogs to
expect food when he rang a bell, and thereafter the dogs salivated
at the sound of that bell.
The reader provides the response to the words you use, visual-
izing a scene or seeing an action or experiencing a character or, even
better, feeling an emotion. To complicate matters, there’s a reader
element involved that you can’t make go your way—the reader’s
personal knowledge, filters, and baggage. A dog not trained to as-
sociate feeding with a bell won’t salivate at the sound of one. The
word “cat” has a different effect on a cat lover than it does on a cat
hater. You can’t control that, but you can still load your narrative gun
with the best possible ammo. In practice, the workings of stimulus/
response aren’t simple, but they are the keys to writing for effect,
and understanding that can open the door to successful storytelling.
You begin a story with a single stimulus—a word. Here’s
one now:

Vladimir’s
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 13

With the exception of verbs, most words can’t do much by

themselves, so you string words into a sentence that forms a dif-
ferent stimulus.

Vladimir’s blade cut Johnson’s throat, and

Vladimir smiled.

Change the words and the effect is different.

Vladimir’s blade sliced open Johnson’s throat,

and Vladimir smiled.

To my mind, sliced open is far more visually evocative than cut.

Another part of the effect here is to characterize Vladimir—for
some reason, he enjoyed slicing open a man’s throat. And this
sentence raises story questions: Why did he slice the throat, and
why did he smile? Is he a good guy or a bad guy?
All that from just one sentence of nine words.
Although we’re writing for effect and the accumulating stimuli
produce a dramatic portrayal of what’s happening, we haven’t yet
reached the level of delivering the experience of the story. That
experience comes through the character.
Vladimir is the point-of-view character, but this narrative is
objective so far, shallow, a camera’s view. Novels provide a unique
way to create an experience—going deeper to show what’s hap-
pening in a character’s mind.

Vladimir’s blade sliced open Johnson’s throat.

The child-killer toppled, hands clutching his
neck, blood flowing between his fingers. Vladi-
mir watched him writhe and then become still.
The bittersweet taste of vengeance filled Vladimir,
and he smiled.
14 Ray Rhamey

Your sentences accrue and, done well, coalesce into a greater

stimulus—the story. The final result, the effect on your reader,
begins with the word choices you make and how you put them
together.
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 15

Adverbs: Good? Bad? Yes.

Perhaps you’ve heard the view that you shouldn’t use ad-
verbs—bestselling author Elmore Leonard was dead set against
them. Mostly, I agree. You should pitilessly weed out many of
the adverbs that lurk in your manuscript because they are telling
posing as showing.
Here’s a simple-minded example of why adverbs can be the
bane of writing for effect. A story starts with this:

Jimmy walked slowly across the cluttered room.

Simple information. I see, fuzzily, a guy walking. Not very

fast (but I can’t really picture it). There’s stuff in the room (but
who knows what).
The effect? Not much. No clear picture comes to mind. First
thing to do: ditch the verb/adverb combo and choose a verb that
evokes a picture, at the least, and at best characterizes the action.
If, for example, your story is suspense, then how about . . .

Jimmy crept across the cluttered room.

Better. Following are other variations, depending on the

nature of the story:
16 Ray Rhamey

In a fight scene, Jimmy would have lunged across the room.

If Jimmy is a dancer, then he glided.
Make Jimmy a burglar and he skulked.
If Jimmy is in no hurry, then he ambled.
If Jimmy is in a hurry, then he dashed.
If Jimmy has been over-served at a bar, then he weaved.
Or maybe he tottered, or staggered, or lurched, or, my personal
favorite, sloshed.
Each of those verbs evokes a picture of Jimmy’s body moving
in specific ways. They are “visual” verbs that created a specific
effect in your mind.
Stimulus > response.
There’s another bit of lazy writing in the example sentence—
the adjective “cluttered.” It did nothing to create a picture. At the
very least, we should see what the room was cluttered with, e.g.:

Jimmy crept across a room cluttered with

shrunken heads.

Ooooo. See how specificity stirs up story questions? Don’t

you want more? What about the room? Is it dark? Any smells?
Sounds? Is anyone else there? What about characterization? Put
on Jimmy’s skin and . . .

He was glad that the light of his candle

was dim—all those tiny faces staring up at him
were entirely too creepy. He set a foot down
and winced at a crunch. He froze, listening for
sounds of renewed pursuit. But only the scur-
rying of rats troubled the air, musty with the
dust of the dead.
Rats?
Oh, fine.
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 17

Back to adverbs. There’s a reason adverbs rob you of effect.

Adverbs are telling

I believe that adverbs that modify action verbs are merely a
form of telling. They are abstractions of action, pallid substitutes
for the real thing, mere stand-ins for showing. In a sense, they
are “conclusion” words. As a result, they rarely give the reader
much of an experience.
For example, one of my clients wrote,

She grinned mischievously.

The adverb tries to tell us the nature of the grin. Now, the
average reader would probably plug in some sort of vague im-
age of a grin, keep on rolling, and never realize she had been
cheated—but she was. There’s a much more lively and concrete
picture to be created in the reader’s mind. For example:

She grinned, mischief sparking in her eyes.

In the original, because you have to interpret “mischievously”

(what, exactly, is that?) the effect is to evoke an unsure image of
a grin. In the second, you see a face in action: lips curve, you see
a grin, you see eyes, you see playful activity behind those eyes.
All that from four extra words chosen for effect.
Or, hey, what about something like this . . .

She grinned like a fox that had just found the

key to the henhouse.

The example above goes beyond word choice to use a simile

that taps into meaning and characterization greater than a simple
visual.
18 Ray Rhamey

In writing this, I decided to check my manuscripts for adverbs

and soon spotted one posing as description. Here’s the sentence:

She saw Murphy, like a big, round boulder

parting a stream of girly secretaries cramming
in a buzz of noontime shopping—except this
boulder stared blatantly at their bobbing chests
as they passed.

“Stared blatantly?” Definitely another case of making an

adverb try to do the work of real description—it’s telling me the
nature, the effect, of the stare, not showing it. To be fair, this was
from my first novel, written several years ago, on the lower slopes
of my learning curve.
In this case the answer lay, as usual, in the verb. I swapped
out “stared blatantly” for “leered.” Much better, giving a clear
picture with fewer words and adding semantic overtones. While
I was at it, I tightened the sentence a little, too:

She saw Murphy, like a big, round boulder part-

ing a stream of girly secretaries cramming in
a buzz of noontime shopping, leering at their
bobbing chests.

Watch out for adverbs in dialogue tags

Many writers use adverbs to explain dialogue rather than
show how the dialogue is delivered. For example:

“This is my dialogue,” he said hesitantly.

That’s lazy use of an adverb. You could say this . . .

He hesitated, then said, “This is my dialogue.”

Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 19

But that’s not precisely what “said hesitantly” means, is it?

It suggests a hesitation somewhere in the speech. Wouldn’t it be
more effective if we dramatized the hesitation so the reader actu-
ally experiences a pause rather than reads about one?

“This . . .” He swallowed and glanced at her face.

“. . . is my dialogue.”

Go on an adverb hunt in your manuscript and replace them

with the action they only hint at and you’ll be writing for effect.

I discover that not all adverbs are bad guys

When doing my manuscript check, I came upon a pair of
adverbs in one sentence . . .

He found Emmaline to be annoyingly cheerful

but pleasingly proficient.

But these adverbs worked for me. Wait, I thought, how come
they feel right when I’ve preached loud and long to avoid adverbs?
Then I realized that they modified adjectives rather than verbs.
Aha!

Good cholesterol and bad cholesterol

There was a time we were told that all cholesterol was bad.
Then we learned that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.
Well, I changed my position that all adverbs are suspect, if
not bad. I think there are “good” adverbs, story-friendly adverbs
that add just the right flavor to an adjective, enhancing it with a
more complete shade of meaning.
Consider the sentence describing Emmaline. Could I have
achieved what I wanted, which was to give insight into one char-
acter’s feeling and attitudes toward another, without the adverbs?
20 Ray Rhamey

He found Emmaline to be cheerful but proficient.

Nope. I’ve lost how the viewpoint character feels about Em-
maline as annoyingly cheerful and pleasingly proficient—these
two adverbs characterize the point-of-view character as a cur-
mudgeon who is capable of being positive as well. And without
them the “but” has to become “and” because the contrast is lost.
I went on a search for other adverbs and found . . .

Her fair cheeks fetchingly reddened by the cold,

she looked no older than a teenager.

Yep, for me this works. It would have been okay to write . . .

Her fair cheeks reddened by the cold, she looked

no older than a teenager.

. . . and you would have gotten a picture. But take “fetchingly”

out and you lose the point-of-view character’s internal response
to the girl’s coloring. With the addition of the adverb to this ad-
jective, you also get the character’s experience, i.e. his emotional
reaction to the appearance he sees—fetching, attractive.
The pattern I was discovering seemed to be that adverbs are
a positive addition when coupled to adjectives in order to add
a point-of-view character’s nuance to what would otherwise be
simple description. Another instance from the same manuscript:

He loved the Staffordshire blue-and-white rose

pattern, beautifully detailed and botanically
accurate right down to the thorns on the stems.

Take “beautifully” and “botanically” out of that sentence and

I think it loses both meaning and flavor. One more:
Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling 21

She changed her disguise to the queenly dignity

of a white-haired society matron she’d met in
Brussels.

To “show” the quality of her dignity without the adverb would

have required something like this:

She changed her disguise to that of a dignified,

white-haired society matron she’d met in Brus-
sels who’d had the manner of a queen.

Not as effective, is it? “Queenly” adds an element of royalty

and all that goes with it to the woman’s appearance to signal a
great deal to the reader—erect posture, chin up, perhaps an aloof
gaze, a look of being in charge—with just one word.
Here’s an example taken from a client’s manuscript of a good
adverb and bad adverb in the same sentence:

A young waiter with carefully streaked hair

smiled suggestively at her.

For me, the first adverb expands the waiter’s character by giv-
ing a sense of precision and extra care taken in the arrangement
of the streaks, which tells me something about him as well. But
I’d like to see the second adverb replaced with something more
truly pictorial.
When you go hunting for adverbs, it’s when they modify ac-
tion that you should consider looking for a better verb to do the
job, and when they amplify adjectives that you may find adverbs
to be good cholesterol.
Similarly, keep an eye out for instances where an adjective
can be enhanced by an adverb to characterize the point-of-view
character.