I'm rereading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and one thing I notice Gaiman does a lot is use adverbs after dialogue. Big no-no, right? Or, if he doesn't use adverbs, he's highly descriptive about what his characters mean.
She looked at him rather sadly, like a mother trying to explain to an infant that, yes, this flame was hot too. All flames were hot. Trust her, please. "Come on," she said.
I don't like being this descriptive. It feels clunky. If it was me, I'd have just written, "She sighed," and been done with it.
A sigh can mean a lot of things. You can sigh wistfully, sigh angrily, sigh because you're in love, sigh because you're depressed, sigh because the bus is late. Maybe this is actually what takes too long--when the reader has to stop and guess what you mean. (J. K. Rowling was criticized for using too many -ly tags, but the people who criticized her were mostly, you know. Critics.)
Now, as I write, I'm conflicted. Which adverbs slow things down, and which ones bring the reader closer to the character?
