: 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

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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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