Tag Archives: active verb

Mechanics

Verbs with muscle

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By Janga

Breathes there a writer with prose so perfect that she has not been told at least once to “show; don’t tell”? One of the best ways to follow this cardinal rule is to use strong verbs. Weak verbs are generic. They can be used in a wide range of situations. Strong verbs are precise.

walk vs pranceContrary to popular thought, not all action verbs are strong verbs. In the sentence “Ali walked down the road,” “walked” is an action verb. It is also a generic verb. It tells us that Ali is using her feet to advance across a surface and nothing else.

Skilled writers use strong verbs to reveal character and situation. If we change “walked” to a more precise verb, we show our readers Ali’s movements. “Strolled,” “pranced,” and “trudged” are just a few of the choices a writer might use to make Ali’s movement more vivid for the reader. Look at this passage from Judith Ivory’s Black Silk to see how a consummate artist shows a girl moving through a crowd.

The girl jostled her way through gripping hands and recriminations. She elbowed one man and grabbed another by the collar. She wanted to be in their midst. She was scanning the men’s encroaching, remonstrating faces, looking them over as thoroughly as they were trying to turn her about. After a minute of this tussle—the men would not organize themselves for her inspection—she clambered up over the edge of the billiard table, standing on it to look down on them all.

Strong verbs also help writers sidestep the adverb trap. Tessa Dare rightly observed in the “to be” discussion that adverbs used well can make prose more vibrant, but choosing a strong verb allows us to avoid graceless, adverb-heavy prose.

Let’s consider “Ali walked down the road” again. Suppose I have written this sentence as the first in a new chapter. I reread it, and I know that I need more. I recast the sentence: “Ali walked slowly down the road, as if burdened with the weight of the world.” By substituting a strong verb, I can cut a fifteen-word sentence to five words and eliminate a cliché in the process: “Ali trudged down the road.”

I confess that I am an overwriter, so I spend much of my revision time pruning my prose. Experience has taught me that strong verbs foster concise writing. Have/has/had phrases often signal wordiness that can be eliminated with a verb change. For example, if I rewrite “Lucia had had yet another argument with her mother” as “Lucia argued with her mother again,” I have cut the awkward repetition “had had” and exchanged a weak verb for a powerful one. In the original sentence, a strong verb (“argue”) is buried in a nominalization (a noun created from a verb or some other part of speech).

hayden flexesConsider this sentence: “Sari’s words caused Anthony great confusion.” The sentence is grammatically correct. Moreover, its meaning is clear. But how much more vivid and exact is the revised sentence “Sari’s words confused Anthony”? Or even better, “Sari’s words baffled Anthony.”

Some choices are stylistic, and they are intimately connected to the writer’s voice. But whether the style is simple and unadorned, lush and lyrical, or somewhere in between, the writer’s aim is vigorous prose. Cutting the “lard,” to borrow Richard Lanham’s term, and choosing verbs with muscle will move the writer closer to her goal.

About the author
Janga started reading her mother’s romance novels the summer she turned ten and has continued to be an avid reader of romance. Even a Ph. D. in English and years in academia were not enough to diminish her love of the genre. The enthusiasm of aspiring romance writers on the Eloisa James bulletin board refired her dream of writing a romance novel. She is in the process of revising her first mss, The Long Way Home, a contemporary with a Southern accent. She blogs at Romance Vagabonds and Just Janga.

Photo credits—Girl walking/prancing: Sanja Gjenero; Boy flexing: Jordan McCollum

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Mechanics

When to follow the verb rules

There’s a time and a place for everything, naturally, and while I love to talk about flouting stupid rules, most of the rules are actually good advice that’s just a bit . . . misapplied. As Mr Knightley says:

Better be without sense than misapply it as you do.

Right! So, let us understand the so-called rules so that we can apply them correctly, shall we?

Avoid passive voice
This is almost always good advice. Generally speaking, passive voice is awkward. Naturally, there are exceptions to that—sometimes rephrasing the passive into active voice is even more awkward, sometimes we have to conceal the actor, sometimes it’s just not important.

Avoid the past progressive
In general, the past progressive form (was [verb]ing) isn’t the strongest. (How’s that for diplomacy?) There are a few specific reasons to use it—mostly to show an ongoing or interrupted action in the past. Overusing it, though, results in flabby writing.

Avoid the verb “to be”
It’s true that sometimes the verb “to be” can be used to make such evils as the passive voice, the past progressive, and really boring, flat writing. Compare, too:

The stockings were hung by the chimney.
The stockings hung by the chimney.

The first one is passive voice (and The Night Before Christmas, yes?), longer and takes the oomph out a verb. (‘Hang’ isn’t very oomphy in the first place, so let’s try to help it out, eh?)

However, again, “to be” is an important verb that you don’t want to completely excise from your writing—or it’s gonna get really weird.

What other rules do we see that are pretty good advice?

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Mechanics

Debunking a Myth: Avoid the verb “to be.”

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By Janga

Avoid the verb “to be.”

Too often I see that command given as well-intentioned advice to some writer who takes the advice literally and begins revising her prose with the goal of eliminating every pesky is/are/was/were from her prose. I’m fairly certain that the advice giver intends to caution the writer against overuse of the verb “to be” and verbs of passive voice, but the warning lacks clarity. A surprising number of people fail to distinguish between “to be” as a state-of-being verb (Jenny is happy) and “to be” as an auxiliary verb used to turn active voice verbs (Jeremy kissed Jenny) into passive voice (Jenny was kissed by Jeremy).

I take every opportunity to make the distinction and to sound the alarm: “to be” is not the writer’s enemy. Yes, even a quick read of many manuscripts reveals that the author has used “to be” excessively, resulting in passages of heavy, dull prose. Few of us who read contest entries have been spared the awkward, confusing sentences created by passive voice. But linking verbs and passive voice are tools the writer needs. Both have their uses. I’d hate to have a character ask “What name do you claim?” rather than “Who are you?”

Take a look at the following passage from Julia Ross’s historical romance The Seduction:

His hair was tied neatly at the back of his neck, but it rippled at the temples where a more elaborate style had been brushed out. The blond waves framed skin with the fashionable pallor of London, enhanced by a small patch high on one cheekbone. Arrogance was reflected in every line of his body, enhanced, not hidden, by the full-skirted riding coat, the tall boots, the fall of white linen at his throat.

A town gentleman, dressed for the country.

His moment of surprised admiration had been masked quickly enough, but it had been there. She had suffered from it all her life. It was the way men always looked at her, as if she were fruit, and ripe, and ready for plucking. Even after she suppressed her moment of panic, it still filled her with fury.

Ross uses four passive voice verbs (“was tied,” “had been brushed out,” “was reflected,” and “had been masked”) and three linking verbs (“had been,” “was,” and “were”) in this brief selection. We can rewrite Ross’s sentences to eliminate the “problem” verbs.

Someone had tied his hair neatly at the back of his neck, but it rippled at the temples where a more elaborate style had been brushed out. The blond waves framed skin with the fashionable pallor of London, enhanced by a small patch high on one cheekbone. Every line of his body reflected arrogance, enhanced, not hidden, by the full-skirted riding coat, the tall boots, the fall of white linen at his throat.

A town gentleman, dressed for the country.

He had masked his moment of surprised admiration quickly enough, but she had seen it there. She had suffered from it all her life. Men always looked at her that way, looked at her like fruit, and ripe, and ready for plucking. Even after she suppressed her moment of panic, it still filled her with fury.

But look at what is lost in the change. First, the rhythm of the prose changes, as does the voice. Moreover, meaning is altered in subtle ways. Does the reader care who ties his hair? I don’t think so, but there is “someone” in a position of strong emphasis. The arrogance of the character is key, but the revision buries the quality in the sentence. And the force of the heroine’s being the object of male gazes is muted in the rewrite.

Ross is a gifted stylist, and she knows how to use action verbs when she needs them. Note this passage from the same chapter as the first selection—every verb but one expresses action:

Her fingers felt clumsy and heavy as she unbuttoned the front of his waistcoat, then opened his shirt at the neck. The strong skin of his throat gleamed smooth and white in the mottled light. She noticed the perfect shape of his jaw at the strangely vulnerable junction where it curved up into his ear and felt a small surge of discomfort, as if she were a young farm girl winked at by a gentleman.

Try this exercise with a writer whose style you admire. My guess is that you will discover the writer uses her full arsenal of verbs.

About the author
Janga started reading her mother’s romance novels the summer she turned ten and has continued to be an avid reader of romance. Even a Ph. D. in English and years in academia were not enough to diminish her love of the genre. The enthusiasm of aspiring romance writers on the Eloisa James bulletin board refired her dream of writing a romance novel. She is in the process of revising her first mss, The Long Way Home, a contemporary with a Southern accent. She blogs at Romance Vagabonds and Just Janga.

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