Although I agree with King’s advice in general, I wouldn’t take it to extremes. I think adverbs are problematic for two reasons:
1. They often tell instead of show.
2. They often violate “omit needless words”.

Take “often” in the above two sentences. That’s an adverb, but it would be hard to excise. I can’t omit it, because then the statements would be wrong: sometimes they don’t violate either rule. (“Sometimes” is another adverb!) Any paraphrase of the word “often” would make the text verbose to avoid an adverb, which is silly. “Vigorous writing is concise,” says Strunk & White.

I could, of course, rephrase with something like “They might tell instead of show”, but then I am still accomplishing nothing but replacing the adverb with something else. It doesn’t improve the text.

Adverbs are not problems. Adverbs are symptoms. They say, “Hey, you might want to take a closer look to make sure this is the best way to say this.” They are often right. But if you think a passage without an adverb is better because it avoids an adverb, you are fooling yourself: either you are ignoring the underlying problem, or there is no underlying problem.

Compare “he smiled menacingly” and “he had a menacing smile”. The second one may not leap out at you as much as the first since it doesn’t have an adverb, but it says the same thing. If the first is a problem, so is the second. The adverb only leaps out at you because you’ve trained yourself to hate adverbs. That’s not to say that “he smiled menacingly” can’t be improved upon, but rather the problem isn’t the adverb.

In the Klosterman passage — which I agree does overuse adverbs, but I don’t think it’s horrible for it — you highlighted the word “jointly”. It is, after all, an adverb. But I think it is the least egregious adverb in the text, because it adds information, not just color: it means the two churches combined their efforts, rather than petitioning separately. (“Separately” is another unavoidable adverb.) You could argue that, say, “joined forces to petition” is better than “jointly petitioned”, but in some contexts this might sound overdramatic (but perhaps not in the Klosterman example).

I also believe that character dialogue can get away with using more adverbs, because, well, people use them. It makes dialogue sound more natural, and I think sometimes the weakening effect of the adverbs is desirable. A character saying “I really don’t think that’s a good idea” sounds less blunt than if he said “I don’t think that’s a good idea”, even though he’s emphasizing how good it isn’t.

By the way, I think adverbs are at their best when they actually contradict the word or phrase they modify. My favorite example is from Douglas Adams: “Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.” The sentence would lose so much if you removed the word “patiently”.

- Kef

When it comes to something as creative and expressive as fiction writing, sweeping generalizations shouldn’t be applied as doctrine. Adverbs can make or break a composition, but there’s no rule as to how many or when they should be used.

I prefer to write beautifully.

I wasn’t planning on taking on this attempt at fiction anyway, but now I’m definitely staying away.

Crap. I threw an adverb in there. It’s infectious.

His sentence structure is repetitious! In fact in dialog, all his characters tend to repeat themselves. It’s a bit on the annoying side.

You are so right on the tell vs. show. That’s what this is. It feels really rookie fiction-y to me — the kind of stuff that I workshop in class all the time.