Use Adverbs Sparingly

All adverbs, save temporal ones—quickly, suddenly, immediately, etc.—are unnecessary, and the mark of a distracted writer, which is to say a weak writer. They admit that the necessary work was not done earlier; they exist then as a patch job, a bang-on modifier, telling the reader how to feel rather than exploring, in a partnership of equity with the writer, the territories of the emotion and its circumstances. They’re quite often a very bad thing.

RICK BASS