Adverbs in Fiction: Which to Cut and Which to Keep

Adverbs are not bad in fiction. A few kinds are weak: the ones that repeat what the verb already says ("whispered quietly"), the ones propping up a vague verb ("walked slowly"), and the ones stuck to dialogue tags. Those are worth cutting. Adverbs that change meaning, set time, or carry a narrator's voice usually stay.

There is no fixed limit. The counts that exist suggest published novels run at roughly one -ly adverb per 100 words, with the lean stylists a little under and bestsellers a little over. Treat that as a reason to look, not a rule to obey.

StoryWith AI is our own product, so weigh what we say about it accordingly.

Key takeaways

• Cut redundant adverbs first. If the verb already means it, the adverb is padding: "sprinted quickly," "shouted loudly," "whispered quietly."
• Swap verb plus adverb for a stronger verb when one exists: "walked slowly" can become "shuffled," "crept" or "trudged," each saying something different.
• Watch dialogue tags. "She said angrily" usually tells what the line should show.
• Keep adverbs that change meaning, sentence adverbs that frame a thought, time and frequency words, and adverbs that belong to a character's voice.
• Published numbers are modest. Ben Blatt's counts put Hemingway at 80 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words, under 1%.
• Counting tools are blunt. Most count words ending in "-ly," which catches "family" and misses "fast" and "soon."

Are adverbs really bad in fiction?

The reputation comes largely from Stephen King. Melissa Gouty at LiteratureLust quotes him from On Writing: "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops." She also quotes his comparison of adverbs to dandelions: "If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique." The trouble, in his telling, is that one becomes fifty. (Source: Melissa Gouty, "The Data-Backed Case for Ditching Adverbs", dated 14 August 2020, updated 22 October 2020.)

That is an argument about habit, not about the part of speech. Even the tools that flag adverbs stop short of banning them. Readable's help page says: "We don't have such a strong view as we appreciate they can be an asset to your writing in certain situations." It adds that it highlights them "so that you can exercise caution and make sure you're not using an excessive amount of them." (Readable, "How many adverbs is too many?", page shows "Updated on: 07/04/2020"; read on 2 November 2026.)

Working novelists say the same. In a post at The Kill Zone, Clare Langley-Hawthorne notes that "sometimes not using an adverb actually makes the prose sound more awkward." A commenter on the same post, Mike Tuggle, puts it plainly: "As with most writing rules, cutting adverbs isn't absolute." (The Kill Zone, "To Adverb or Not to Adverb?", dated 19 July 2021.)

So the honest answer is: adverbs are a symptom worth checking, because a cluster of them often means the verbs are doing too little.

How many adverbs is too many?

Nobody publishes a correct number, but Ben Blatt counted. His book Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve measured -ly adverbs per 10,000 words across classics, bestsellers and fan fiction. Two pages we opened report his figures.

Tyler Cowen's post at Marginal Revolution lists them as: "Hemingway: 80 Twain: 81 Melville: 126 Austen: 128 J.K. Rowling: 140 E L James: 155." (Marginal Revolution, "Number of -ly adverbs per 10,000 words", dated 17 May 2017.)

An excerpt from the book at Literary Hub adds more. Blatt writes that Toni Morrison's "adverb rate of 76 edges out Hemingway's 80." The same excerpt gives 115 for the average of the 300-plus number-one bestsellers he studied, 114 for the median of the 100 most recent literary award winners, and 154 for the median fan-fiction author. (Ben Blatt, excerpt at Literary Hub, dated 17 March 2017.)

Here are those figures as percentages, since most tools report a percentage. The arithmetic is simple: divide by 10,000 and multiply by 100, which is the same as dividing by 100.

The whole range is narrow, under one percentage point from Morrison to E L James. And Austen sits above the bestseller average, a reminder that a low count is not what makes a book last.

Gouty turns the numbers into a target: "If you aim for 6 (or fewer) adverbs per 1,000 words, you'll be in the same range as Nobel Laureates in Literature." That is her benchmark, not Blatt's, and it is a target for a whole book, not for every page.

One caution on comparing your own count. The Literary Hub excerpt does not explain whether Blatt counted every word ending in "-ly" or filtered out words such as "only" and "family." It points readers to the book for method. So compare your number to his loosely.

Which adverbs should you cut, and which should you keep?

The table below sorts adverbs by the job they do. The job, not the "-ly," decides whether one stays.

ProWritingAid's guide puts the first rule simply: "First, eliminate redundant adverbs that are unnecessary and repeat what the verb means." For emotion it suggests the same swap as the manner row: "If you want to emphasize her joy, try a stronger verb." (ProWritingAid, "How and When to Use Adverbs", dated 10 October 2022.)

What about adverbs on dialogue tags?

"She said angrily" is the classic case. If the line is angry, the adverb repeats it. If the line is not angry, the adverb is covering for dialogue that does not yet do its job. Either way, the fix is usually in the line itself, or in a beat of action beside it.

The same habit shows up as fancy tag verbs ("she hissed," "he chortled"). We cover tags in full, including when "said" is enough, in our guide to said bookisms.

Do adverbs matter for voice?

Yes. A first-person narrator who says "frankly" and "honestly" every few pages is telling you something about herself. A teenager who says "literally" is in character. Cutting those for a cleaner count can flatten the voice you worked to build.

The test: if the adverb would survive in the character's mouth, it can stay in their narration.

What do adverb counters actually count?

Most counters, including ours, work on spelling rather than grammar. They count words ending in "-ly." That shortcut has two kinds of error.

It counts words that are not adverbs: "family," "lovely," "holy," "reply." "Early" is sometimes an adverb ("she left early") and sometimes an adjective ("the early train"). A family-reunion scene scores high whatever the prose is like.

It misses adverbs that do not end in "-ly." "Fast," "soon," "often," "very," "still," "never" and "well" are all adverbs, and none of them are counted. Readable's help page makes the same point about its own definition: "Adverbs are not only words that end in 'ly'," it says, and it names "always" and "never" as temporal adverbs.

So a count is a rough pointer to passages worth reading again. It is not a measure of quality, and it is not comparable across tools unless you know how each one counts.

How do you revise adverbs in a draft?

Work in passes, and keep each pass narrow.

1. Find the clusters. Read the flagged passage, not the total. Three adverbs in two sentences matter more than a scene average.
2. Strike the redundant ones. Read each "-ly" word against its verb. If the verb already means it, delete it and reread.
3. Upgrade weak verbs. For each "verb plus manner adverb," ask whether one verb does both jobs.
4. Check the tags. Move emotion from the tag into the line or into a gesture.
5. Protect the keepers. Leave time words, meaning-changing adverbs and voice.
6. Read it aloud. Langley-Hawthorne's warning applies here: some sentences get worse without the adverb. Put those back.

If you are working through a whole draft, this sits naturally in the line-editing stage of a self-editing checklist, alongside a pass for filter words, which have a similar fix.

A worked example: before and after

A hypothetical example, invented for this guide.

Before (48 words):

Mara walked slowly to the door and knocked softly. "Who is it?" a voice asked suspiciously. "It's only me," she whispered quietly. The door opened instantly, and her brother stared at her blankly. Clearly, he had not expected family this early. She smiled nervously and stepped carefully inside.

Words ending in "-ly": slowly, softly, suspiciously, only, quietly, instantly, blankly, Clearly, family, early, nervously, carefully. That is 12 of 48 words.

12 ÷ 48 = 0.25, so 25%.

After (41 words):

Mara crept to the door and tapped twice. "Who is it?" "It's only me," she whispered. The door swung open at once, and her brother stared. Clearly, he had not expected family this early. She smiled too wide and edged inside.

Words ending in "-ly": only, Clearly, family, early. That is 4 of 41 words.

4 ÷ 41 = 0.0976, so about 9.8%.

What changed, and why:

• "Walked slowly" became "crept," and "knocked softly" became "tapped twice." One verb now does each job.
• "Whispered quietly" lost its redundant adverb.
• "Asked suspiciously" went: the bare question, with no tag, reads as wary enough here.
• "Opened instantly" became "swung open at once." "At once" is still an adverb phrase. A counter will not see it.
• "Smiled nervously" became "smiled too wide," which shows the nerves instead of naming them.
• "Clearly" stayed, because it is Mara's judgement on her brother. "Early" stayed, because it is time information. "Only" stayed, because it changes the line's meaning.
• "Family" stayed, because it is a noun. It was never an adverb.

Notice that the after version still scores almost 10%, well above Blatt's book-length figures. That is the counting problem in miniature. One of the four counted words is a noun, the other three are keepers, and the short paragraph magnifies every word. Meanwhile "twice," "at once" and "inside" are adverbs the count missed entirely.

Where StoryWith AI fits

On the Write page, StoryWith AI measures the open scene in your browser, with no AI model, so these checks use no AI actions and are not limited to a paid plan. Among its numbers for the scene is an adverb percentage.

That percentage works the way described above: it counts every word ending in "-ly" against the scene's total words. So "family," "only" and "early" count, and "soon," "often," "very" and "fast" do not. Individual "-ly" words are highlighted only when they make up more than 5% of the scene's words, and the passage is flagged as "Adverb-heavy passage" with a show-don't-tell hint. Clicking a flag jumps to it in the text.

Alongside that, it separately flags as a hedge or weak verb "very," "really," "quite," "just," "kind of" and "sort of" followed by a word, which catches many intensifiers the "-ly" count misses. It also shows words, sentences, sentence lengths, Flesch reading ease and grade, and dialogue percentage. The adverb, passive, weak-verb and repeated-opening checks run only for English; for other languages they are switched off and say so.

It is the wrong tool if you want a grammar-aware adverb count, one that knows "family" is a noun and "fast" is an adverb, or a per-book comparison with Blatt's figures. It also cannot tell a redundant adverb from a voice adverb: that judgement stays with you.

Plan details are on the pricing page. StoryWith AI runs on the web and Android, and manuscripts are not used to train AI models.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Are adverbs bad in fiction?

No. Some adverbs are weak, especially ones that repeat the verb ("whispered quietly"), prop up a vague verb ("walked slowly"), or explain a line of dialogue ("said angrily"). Adverbs that change a verb's meaning, mark time, or belong to a character's voice usually earn their place. The advice to cut them is about habit and clusters, not a ban.

How many adverbs per 1,000 words is normal in a novel?

Ben Blatt's counts, as reported by Marginal Revolution and Literary Hub, put Hemingway at 80 and Toni Morrison at 76 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words, which is about 8 per 1,000. Number-one bestsellers averaged 115 per 10,000, about 11 to 12 per 1,000. Those are whole-book averages; a single scene can run higher without anything being wrong.

Which adverbs should I cut first?

Start with redundant adverbs, where the verb already carries the meaning: "sprinted quickly," "shouted loudly," "completely finished." Then look at manner adverbs attached to vague verbs, and replace the pair with one precise verb when one exists. Then check dialogue tags. Leave time and frequency adverbs alone.

What is a sentence adverb, and should I keep it?

A sentence adverb comments on a whole statement rather than one verb: "clearly," "apparently," "honestly," "unfortunately." In fiction it often carries the narrator's or character's judgement, so it is part of the voice. Keep it when it says something about who is thinking. Cut it when it only pads the start of a sentence.

Why does my adverb checker flag words like "family"?

Most adverb counters look for words ending in "-ly" rather than parsing grammar. "Family," "lovely," "holy" and "reply" end in "-ly," so they are counted even though they are not adverbs. The same shortcut misses real adverbs such as "fast," "soon," "often" and "very." Read the flagged words rather than trusting the percentage.