Am I guilty of bad 'as' writing?
I am trying to use more action tags to supplement the 'He said. He asked.' dialog tags. But, now I have read several blogs suggesting although 'said' is invisible and can be sprinkled as liberally as desired, the same thing can't be stated about 'as'. Apparently use of 'as' is the sign of a weak or amateur writer. I guess the conjunction function of 'as' has a numerical limit. Weak writing seems to be similar to porn,'you know it when you see it'. At what point does 'as' become a distraction in fictional novel writing?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-feel-about-using-the-word-as-when-writing-fictional-novels
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/overloading-while/
https://www.proofreadnow.com/blog/bid/35986/While-Don-t-Overuse-It
https://jenspenden.com/2015/08/12/jens-editing-tips-kiss-your-ass-goodbye/
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2 answers
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Weak writing is never in the individual word choices. This is the biggest trap in all of writing. Strong writing says interesting things. Weak writing says boring things. Strong writing comes from writers who understand what makes writing interesting. (It's not more explosions.) Weak writing comes from writers who don't understand what makes writing interesting. Fixating on questions like whether or not you should use 'as' as a conjunction, or what kind of dialog tags you should use, is just keeping you from learning how to make writing interesting.
What makes writing interesting is what you say about the subject matter, and the way you focus the reader's attention on what is important about the subject matter. Focus on that. The rest will come to you with time.
With reference to @what's answer, here is how Picasso drew eyes:
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Don't listen to them
There are very few rules to writing and good writers know how to break them. Someone saying 'don't use as much' is totally wrong. They just are. In your prose, 'as' will be used exactly when it is needed. It is very hard to overuse a word which is very common in the English language.
As the day passed, Robert slowly became more tired.
You can't write that without as. Here's another example of a sentence with as:
Just as I was ensnared, the lights turned off.
Obviously these sentences are missing flair and brilliance, but they are not wrong sentences. They could be used in writing without problem. What you can see in their articles is that 'as' is completely bad.
This is what I believe you should think:
An amateur writer uses a single connective, like as, whereas an excellent writer uses a huge range of connectives.
Conclusion
Don't listen to the articles. They've probably never written a book. Write what you want and how you want.
If you're only using 'as' that's bad. Be sure to use a range of conjunctions/connectives.
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