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Mary Duffy and Marciano Guerrero's East of Tiffany's short stories


Successful characters who populate the East Side of Manhattan, will touch your heart

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Mary Duffy: a graduate of Mount Holyoke College is a fashionista, columnist, model/spokesperson, motivational speaker, designer, and entrepreneur. She started the first model agency for Plus Sizes and Petites and has written three fashion books and appeared on over 750 TV shows.
Marciano Guerrero: a graduate of Columbia University is a Vietnam veteran, and is retired from business.
Marc and Mary are married and live happily east of Tiffany's with a three-and-a-half pound Shih-Tzu named Pucci.

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Terrified and weary, he awoke from what he thought was the strangest slumber, his delirious mind searching for answers.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Adverbs Ending in “Ly” - Extirpate, Expunge as Sentence Openers

Many writers are fond of using an abundance of adverbs. The reason for this is that instead of searching for a precise verb they reach for a quick weak verb; it follows then that verb then will need to be buttressed by an adverb. If the adverb is of the kind that ends in ‘ly,’ then that is a signal of lazy writing.

Leona closed the door violently.

Because adverbs’ main function is to qualify, support, or buttress the meaning of verbs, it is easier and more convenient to use them (adverbs) rather than to spend time finding the appropriate verb. We can then say that the use and abuse of adverbs may be attributed to gaining expediency at the cost of quality. Notice how a more adequate verb would eliminate the need for the use of the adverb ‘violently’:

Leona slammed the door.

Editors have an eagle eye when it comes to spotting the ‘ly’ nuisances. So don’t risk the embarrassment of having your work returned marked unacceptable because of the use of adverbs. The offenses are even more glaring when the adverbs are doubled up: Leona breathed noisily and wearily. Could be revised to: Leona yawned. Mark Twain wrote in a magazine about what he called ‘this adverb plague”:
I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me … There are subtleties which I cannot master at all,--they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me,--and this adverb plague is one of them.

It is not that adverbs do not mean anything, nor that they do not spice up one’s writing, or that they are hard to master—it is that they add very little and subtract a lot.

Often a writer must use them. But master writers limit their use to an absolute minimum. And when they do have to use an adverb they prefer to qualify or buttress their verbs with adverb substitutes—such as prepositional phrases. Take this example:

Jacqueline Susan wrote brilliantly.

The adverb ‘brilliantly’ (which qualifies the conjugated verb ‘wrote’) may be replaced by the prepositional phrase ‘with brilliance’:

Jacqueline Susan wrote with brilliance.

But what we may consider blasphemous in the temple of writing is the use of adverbs as sentence openers:

Ardently, lucidly, vigorously, humorously and passionately Josh Brogan sang the song-homage to Van Gogh ‘Vincent.’

All that useless concatenation of adverbs could have been avoided by a simple verb:

When it comes to ‘Vincent” no one can out-sing John Brogan.

As horror master writer Stephen King says, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." So, if you consider yourself a serious writer, after you have done your writing for the day, run a program that will automatically remove all adverbs ending in ‘ly.’

You might still end up with many other adverbs, but not the most glaring ones—the ‘ly’ nuisances. To practice what I am preaching let me see what I can find. Ooops! “ … will automatically remove …” Let’s replace ‘remove’ with ‘expunge.’ The result is then that now we don’t need to use ‘automatically’ at all.

Senada Selmani, model

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Professor Guerrero's Blog

Since I retired from business I've been writing every day; I write fiction and essays
The only writing textbook I use is Mary Duffy'sToolbox for Writers


Book Reviews   Accounting   Writing Tips   Personal Finance   Self Help


Hi! I'am Senada Selmani, model, college student, and avid reader. Having read the East of Tiffany's stories several times, I highly recommend the book: they are fast-paced and entertaining. In particular I love the story about Amy Southshore, the actress who became a Hollywood star. I also love Luke and his Mohawk hairstyle! What is it about the East Side of Manhattan?



Mary Duffy and Marciano Guerrero's East of Tiffany's short stories
Each short story contains an ingredient of the formula for success and wealth. All the stories are written using the Mary Duffy's writing method of Sentence Openers
Order your copy from:

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A NOTE FOR THE IMPATIENT:

If you can't wait 3 days to get your hard copy, and wish to read the stories immediately, you may CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE AND DOWNLOAD FOR $5.00. Later you may order you print copy from the vendors listed above.


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