Kinda harsh, isn’t it?
Oh, I don’t know. “Kinda” sucks the blood right out of “harsh,” don’t you think?
I wanna play!
“Smirking, he drew his scimitar.”
On another note, L.M. Montgomery has some well placed rants about the use of italics. I never really understood until I read a short story by a young author. The words she emphasized were never the ones I would have and it was awkward. She italicized many words…I still can’t quite believe how annoying it is to read.
That’s a tad true. Rather insightful of you.
Mighty nice of you to say so! 
(forgot the smiley in my previous post :smack: )
Smiley? What smiley? It’s somewhat missing.
No absolute ban on adverbs (or anything else in writing) is going to make sense, of course. Twain’s advice quoted above is to the point: If you’re not sure, get rid of it.
Adverbs and adjectives are perfectly useful now and then, but they become distracting when overused. In general, if your nouns and verbs frequently need modifiers, you’re using the wrong nouns and verbs.
I just got drove home from a bookstore and was listening to one of the Harry Potter books on tape, and this thread came to mind, because damn, she does use a lot of adverbs. They really stick out when I started listening for them. But…I didn’t mind them at all. In fact, I rather liked them. 
I also did a quick look at something I recently wrote, and found that I used quite a few adverbs myself. :( Guess that makes me a poor listener AND writer.
Side question: are adverbs that modify adjectives quite as objectionable as ones that modify verbs? I ask because those are the type that I most often use, based on the writing sample I looked at – phrases such as “he was virtually unknown,” etc. How would you rewrite that? Just strike the “virtually”?
“Leer smeared across his beard, he slipped scimitar from sheath.”
“Is that a scimitar in your scabbard, or are you just eyeing me lustfully?” she asked, smiley. 
A sinister smile grew on his lips as his saber slid forth from its sheath and sliced through the air with the sound of so many snakes.
I was with you until the ‘sound of so many snakes’ part. 
He gripped the sword at the part where you’re supposed to put your hand and moved his arm outward, bringing the weapon into view. His lips twitched in an upward motion as he thrust his right arm upward, releasing the weapon. His left arm moved, and his left hand wrapped around the part where you’re supposed to grab the sword. He repeated the motion as he took one step and then another in a forward motion.
Or maybe I’d just type
He smirked and drew his scimitar from its sheath, tossing it from hand to hand as he advanced.
and be done with it.
Or perhaps:
"He smirked and drew his scimitar from its sheath, tossing it menacingly from hand to hand as he advanced…etc.
I looves me some adverbs, myself.
Go figure.
His cerebellum sent signals along motor nerve pathways that caused muscles in his forearm to contract, which in turn caused his digits to close tightly around the elaborately jeweled hilt of his archaic Middle Eastern cavalry weapon… ah, hell with it.
Swords were drawn by men, unplurally.
Before I had a picture of the landscape and understood why it was creepy; after I had no idea even what the passage was about. We’ve gone from silent, furtive locals to a bunch of chatty folk telling the narrator to stop, I guess, since their directions made him hesitate.
I take the advice from On Writing with a grain of salt. King rants endlessly about passive voice, but perhaps the most important single sentence is in passive voice: when he sees the van bearing down on him, his thought is something like “I’m going to be hit by a bus.”
Besides, Pratchett uses adverbs, so they can’t be all bad. 
I am confused by suggestions not to use adjectives, by the way, because they’re what things are. “Show don’t tell,” but how do I do that? Instead of a blue sky, I’ve got to write that the light refracting in the atmosphere directed electromagnetic waves, which had wavelengths measuring 475 nm, to my eyes.
Been writing software user manuals lately?
Keep in mind, however, that the most famous of 800-page-novel writers, Tolstoy, is also one of the most efficient. He wrote 800-page novels because he had 800 pages of things that needed to be said.
Zinsser is one of the bigger proponents of this style – and I completely agree with him in regards to journalism or other factual writing. (http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sources/zinsser.htm).
I don’t agree with him in terms of story telling, however.
My example follows:
I’ve grabbed a random paragraph from my favorite prose author (Ray Bradbury) and intend to Zinsser it. FWIW, I have randomly opened “The Martian Chronicles” and found the opening paragraph to “October 2002: The Shore”
My edit:
Men spread like waves over the surface of Mars. Each wave was stronger than the one before it. The first wave of men knew spaces, coldness and being alone. There was no fat on them, because they had been hardened by their lives. They were leathery and ready to touch anything. Mars couldn’t hurt them because they came from plains and prairies as open and empty as the Martian fields. With their arrival, things became less empty and others found courage to follow. They created homes that lit the way for others.
Now the problem with my example and my rewrite is a definite lack of adverbs. However, when discussing simplifying prose, it does work. Naturally, Bradbury is a more gifted writer than I am. But I wanted to simplify the prose as someone like Zinsser would advise.
As some have stated here, limited use of adverbs and adjectives are the way to go.