Stop Abusing These Words

Earn your STUDENT-Athlete status with better creative and critical writing.

Communicate better with stronger verbs and fewer adverbs. Stephen King informs abuse of adverbs in his seminal work, On Writing. Read On Writing and assimilate the messages. 

MVB has produced an abundance of talent both in the classroom and on the court. Academic excellence pays you. Education elevates the value of "human capital."

Strike these words from our vocabulary, especially "low value" words - really, very, nice, and thing.

Damn a player with faint praise? She does really, very, nice things on the court. You don't want those labels.  

Earn praiseworthy descriptions:

• She serves with the skill of a Samurai archer. 
• She attacks like Cerberus at the gates of Hades. 
• Getting a serve past her presents a challenge greater than slipping the sun past a rooster. 
• Defeating her block reminded us of eating soup with a fork. 
• Her indefatigable will rivaled that of James Cameron's "Terminator."

Elite preparation requires work and specificity. Nora Roberts wrote, "Butt in the chair, hands on the keyboard,” and the related line, “I can fix a bad page, but I can’t fix a blank one.”

Lagniappe. Five top messages from "On Writing" via AI

1. Read a lot. Write a lot. There is no substitute.

King is blunt: if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.

Reading builds:

• Vocabulary

• Rhythm

• Story sense

• The internal “quality bar” you measure yourself against

Writing daily builds fluency, not inspiration. This is reps over motivation.

Coaching translation: You don’t “feel your way” into skill. You accumulate it.

2. Talent is cheap. Discipline is rare.

King doesn’t romanticize writing as genius. He frames it as skilled labor done consistently.

His personal rule:

• 1,000 words a day, minimum

• Door closed → draft phase

• Door open → revision phase

The magic isn’t talent—it’s showing up even when the work feels flat.

Excellence is a habit, not a spark.

3. Kill adverbs. Choose strong verbs.

King’s most famous technical lesson: clarity beats decoration.

Adverbs often:

• Signal weak verbs

• Mask indecision

• Dilute voice

“He ran quickly” → weak
“He sprinted” → precise

This is about trusting the sentence.

If the action is clear, the reader doesn’t need help.

(Coaches could replace “adverbs” with empty praise or over-coaching.)

4. First drafts are supposed to be bad.

King defends the ugly first draft. He even gives you permission to write badly—on purpose.

Why?

• Drafting is discovery

• Revision is improvement

• You can’t fix what you haven’t made

He calls the first draft “writing with the door closed.”

You can’t revise a blank page.

This lesson alone frees people to actually produce work.

5. Write the truth as you understand it.

King insists that good writing comes from:

• Emotional honesty

• Personal conviction

• Willingness to be uncomfortable

Don't write to impress. Instead, write what you believe, clearly and directly.

The job isn’t to be safe. The job is to be honest.

Readers (and players) can sense authenticity instantly.

Bottom line (King would like this):

Writing isn’t mystical.
It’s craft + discipline + courage.