in Editing
Adverbs are not the enemy; stacked modifiers are
Deleting every word ending in -ly will not fix flat prose. The real problem is usually a pile-up of modifiers doing a verb's job.
Few pieces of writing advice are repeated as often as "cut your adverbs". Stephen King made the point memorably in On Writing, and it has since hardened into a rule that some writers apply with a search function. The advice points at something real, but the target is slightly off.
What adverbs do well
Adverbs are ordinary, useful words. "Only", "never", "still", "almost", "already", "perhaps" and "soon" are all adverbs, and prose without them would be stilted and often less accurate. "She almost left" and "She left" describe different events.
Adverbs of manner, the "-ly" words most people mean, can also earn their place. "He answered carefully" can tell us something the verb alone does not: that the care was noticeable, that it meant something. Used sparingly, a well-chosen adverb is precise.
The trouble is not the part of speech. It is what happens when modifiers are used to prop up weak choices elsewhere.
The stacking problem
Consider: "She walked very slowly and quietly across the old, dark, creaky wooden floor." Nothing here is grammatically wrong. But the sentence asks the reader to process six modifiers to picture one simple action, and several of them overlap. "Slowly and quietly" might be one verb: "crept". "Old, dark, creaky wooden" might become "the boards creaked under her". The result is shorter and sharper, and the reader gets the same picture with less effort.
Stacked modifiers tend to appear when a writer is not yet sure what they want to say, and hedges by saying several things at once. They also appear in moments of high emotion, where the writer wants to make sure the reader feels it. Ironically, the pile-up usually dilutes the effect.
Intensifiers in particular
A particular class of modifier deserves suspicion: the intensifier. "Very", "really", "extremely", "incredibly", "totally", "absolutely". These add emphasis but rarely add meaning, and repeated use wears them out. "Very cold" is usually weaker than "freezing" or, better, a detail that shows the cold.
Intensifiers are natural in dialogue, where people use them all the time, and cutting them from speech can make characters sound stiff. In narration, they are worth checking one by one.
A better test than a search
Rather than hunting "-ly", try this. For each modifier, ask what it adds that the noun or verb does not already carry. "Shouted loudly" adds nothing. "Whispered softly" adds nothing. "Smiled sadly" adds something, since smiles are usually happy, and might be worth keeping, or might be better shown through the rest of the scene.
Then look for places where two or more modifiers attach to one word. Ask whether one would do, or whether a stronger noun or verb would do the job of all of them.
Not every sentence needs to be lean. Some writers have a deliberately rich style, and some moments call for accumulation. The aim is not minimalism but control: each modifier present because it was chosen, not because it arrived.