Weekend Writing Craft: Do you vary elegantly? Or, a phone is a phone

In middle school, most people learn that repetition in writing is bad. Instead of using the same word over and over, you should make use of some good, old-fashioned synonyms, right? Right!

Or...is it?

What elegant variation is

It wasn't until I was doing my MA in creative writing that I discovered the evils of elegant variation--referring to something lots of different ways in the same scene. For example:

Weekend Writing Craft: What's wrong with adverbs?

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." – Stephen King

"If you see an adverb, kill it." – Mark Twain

  
If you've taken a fiction writing class, you've heard about how despicable adverbs are. Words that end in ly? Ugh. You don't want them in your story. But what is it about these describing words that's so awful?

What adverbs do
Adverbs are words that describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Often they end in ly, as with terribly, horrendously, shyly, nearly, or remarkably. Sometimes they don't, as with very, rather, or even.

Why they've got a bad rap
People dislike adverbs in fiction writing for a couple of reasons:

1. There's usually a better way to say it.
Mark Twain called adverbs "the tool of the lazy writer." That's because adverbs are a shortcut. They normally accompany an ordinary verb that the writer decides doesn't tell enough about the scene. For example:

Weekend Writing Craft: Show and tell

If you've taken any creative writing classes or read any fiction writing books, chances are you've come across the number one rule of writing (well, maybe it comes just after "writers write"): "show, don't tell."

But what exactly does "show, don't tell," mean, and more importantly, why does it matter?

What it means
Every novel alternates between two types of writing: scenes, which show you what is happening to the characters in real time, and narrative summary, which summarizes what's happened to the characters, or sums up general character traits. Scenes are cinematic, engaging the reader, putting him or her into the action of the story. Narrative summary gives necessary information to keep the story going. Scenes have dialogue and action where narrative summary is one step removed, telling us what happened without engaging us with the characters (Browne and King, 7).