Tag Archives: adverbs

August 29, 2022 · 6:00 am

Verbs and the Nouns that love them #amwriting

This week we are continuing the discussion of verbs and how they shape the narrative. Last week I mentioned that I use verbs when creating a character, seeking out the action words each character embodies. Those words illuminate the gut reactions of each character and how they will act and react in each situation.

Verbs there is no try Now that I have identified who most of my characters are, I am designing the structure of the plot. I need to use actions and events to show the story, but I also must bring out the backstory for my two MCs. I have to shed light on the friction and the attraction and force them together in situations they don’t want to be in. I also have to show them as individuals, independent of each other. As I work on the plot, the verbs that each character embodies will come to me.

Sentences are a marriage of words. A noun is one partner, and the verb is the other. The union of noun and verb will produce offspring—sentences. Modifiers are the in-laws, necessary but meddlesome. They often try to take over and guide the children against the parents’ wishes.

So, to minimize the damage done by intrusive modifiers, we rely on strong verbs and allow the modifiers to have their say only when necessary.

So why are verbs so crucial in shaping the tone and atmosphere of a narrative?

Think about this sentence: Nelson walked away.

We have three words indicating someone has departed, but they don’t show his mood.

Nelson is a person (noun). He performs an action (verb).

That action affects both Nelson and his objective: leaving. Away is an adverb (modifier) denoting distance from a particular person, place, or thing. It modifies the verb, giving Nelson a direction in which to go.

Walk We can write it several different ways still using only three words, and all of them would indicate that Nelson has left the scene. Each time we substitute a synonym for the word walked, we change the atmosphere of that scene.

Nelson sauntered away. (He departed in a carefree, leisurely manner.)

Nelson strode away. (He walked decisively in a particular direction.)

Nelson stomped away. (Nelson left the scene in a bad mood.)

Nelson ambled away. (He walked slowly.)

Nelson slogged away. (He departed but had to work at it.)

Nelson slipped away. (Nelson departed, but sneakily.)

This is why it’s so important to have a good thesaurus on hand—I want my words to say what I envision. If I choose the correct verbs, my sentences will express my ideas with fewer modifiers.

Many verbs cannot impact a character or object directly. These are called intransitive verbs. They are just as important as transitive verbs because they show a mood or condition, a state of being, or a reflex (instinctive response).

Consider the word “mope.” Mope is an intransitive verb that means dejected and apathetic. It’s an action word that is going nowhere.

Nelson moped. (He was dejected and apathetic.)

We can have our character in a bad mood, but with many nuances that might say what we mean in a more particular way.

Nelson pouted. (He was whiney.)

Nelson languished. (He did nothing and stagnated.)

Nelson sulked. (He was angry and self-pitying.)

Nelson fretted. (He was in a neurotic mood.)

Some intransitive verbs in the family of “mope” are more robust and carry greater force:

Nelson brooded. (He was in a dark mood, obsessing.)

Nelson agonized. (He couldn’t stop thinking about it, suffering.)

When we add a strong intransitive verb to a powerful transitive verb, we have action and mood:

Nelson strode away, brooding. (He left the scene, and someone will suffer.)

transitive verb damon suede quote The above examples are basic, a bald telling of actions and moods. They are the core of the paragraph, the central idea. When we strip away the surrounding words, we can see how the variations of a primary verb can change the reader’s perception of an action scene.

Every year, I write the first draft of a novel in November, starting the actual writing on November 1^st.

I always begin with an idea for a plot. Usually, I can’t actually visualize how it works until I see who the protagonists are. So, I jot down the premise and start from there. I choose to create a plot with my cast of characters having their primary characteristics in place.

I hope the conflicts and roadblocks will appear to arise organically as if that is what would happen to those people. Up to the end, my MCs must feel uncertain about the outcome. They must fear that failure looms but can’t give up. They must have a well of determination to draw upon.

I must do a certain amount of prep work if I hope to have a coherent plot and believable situations on November 1st. I do this gradually, working on it whenever I’m at a standstill on the current work in progress.

Everyone has hiccups in life, things that take over temporarily and make creative thinking a bit tough. But my work moves ahead because I can always do the technical stuff like plotting and worldbuilding, even when I can’t figure out how to say what I mean.

Previous posts on this subject:

Verbs and Character Creation

Books I own and recommend for further research:

The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles (Volume 1) (Writers Helping Writers Series Book 8) by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

Activate: a thesaurus of actions & tactics for dynamic genre fiction by Damon Suede.

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December 13, 2017 · 6:00 am

Context and adverbs #amwriting

New writers embarking on the journey of learning the craft are bombarded with rules:

~Show, don’t tell,

~Simplify, simplify,

~Don’t write long sentences

~Avoid abstraction

~Don’t use big words.

These are necessary rules, but can be taken to an extreme. The most important rules are

~Trust yourself, and

~Trust your reader.

~Write what you want to read.

Whether you are self-editing or editing for another writer, it’s important to understand balance. Editing is a job that requires delicacy and dedication. It’s far too easy for a ham-fisted editor to remove the joy, the life, the author’s voice from a piece.

As writers, we all want to be accepted and have others like our work, but we owe it to ourselves to write from the heart.

Chuck Wendig, in his post The Danger of Writing Advice from Industry Professionals, says,

And so the advice really should be, don’t use adverbs or adjectives when they sound awkward, or when they fail to tell us something that we need to know.

We know that certain words and phrases don’t add to the narrative and only serve to increase the wordiness. Used too freely, they separate the reader from the experience.

For me, especially in my first draft, these words are like tics–they fall out of my fingers and into my keyboard randomly, and out of my voluntary control. I don’t self-edit as I go because at that point I’m just trying to get the story down. The second and third drafts are where I shape my grammar and phrasing.

All of my three current manuscripts are genre fiction. This means I must write active prose, so I don’t want to use words with no power behind them. However, I will not blindly remove every ‘ly’ word, because that would be ridiculous.

Consider adverbs, words that are sometimes reviled and banned by writing groups armed with a little dangerous knowledge. Descriptors frequently end with the letters ‘ly.’ I do a global search for these letters and a list will pop up in my left margin. My manuscript will become a mass of words with yellow highlighted “ly’s.” It’s a daunting task, but I look at each instance and see how they fit into that context. If they weaken the narrative, I change or remove them.

When it comes to adverbs, many times simply removing them strengthens the prose. If they are necessary, I leave them. As Chuck Wendig said, words like “later,” or “everywhere,” or “never” or “alone” are also adverbs.

Personally, I don’t see myself reading a book written with no adverbs whatsoever.

I seek out adverbs, descriptors, qualifiers, and other “weed words,” look at how they are placed in the context of the sentence, and decide if they will stay or go. Many will go, but some must stay.

Sometimes I feel married to a certain passage, but if it doesn’t add to the story, it must go to the outtakes file, my tears notwithstanding.

Before I bother a professional editor with my work, I want to make the process as smooth as possible. I seek out the words I would flag as an editor, making what is called a “global search.”

Caution: if you are hasty or impatient a global search can be dangerous and can mess up an otherwise good manuscript. Be aware: This is a boring, time-consuming task.

You can’t take shortcuts. If you get hasty and choose to “Replace All” you run the risk of making a gigantic mess of your work.

The word ‘very’ comes in for a lot of abuse in writing groups and writers’ chat rooms. Suppose you decide to simply eliminate every instance of the word “very” because you have discovered you overuse it. You open the navigation pane and the advanced search dialog box. In the ‘Replace With’ box you don’t key anything, thinking this will eliminate the problem.

Before you click ‘replace all’ consider three common words that have the letters v-e-r-y in their makeup:

Every
Everyone
Everything

Deleting every instance of ‘very’ could mess things up on an incredibly large scale.

If you have decided something is a ‘weed word,’ examine the context. Have you used the word “actually” in a conversation? If so, you may want to keep it, as dialogue must sound natural, and people use that word in conversation. If you have used it in the narrative to describe an object, it’s probably not needed.

Context is everything. Take the time to look at each example of the offending words and change them individually. You have already spent a year or more writing that novel, so why wouldn’t you take a few days to do the job right.

It’s unfortunate, but there is no speedy way to do this. Every aspect of getting your book ready for the reading public must be done with the human eye, patience, and attention to detail.

As I have mentioned before, editing programs are out there, some free, and some for an annual fee. Your word processing program has spell check which can help or hinder you. Grammarly is an editing program I use for checking my own work, but the problem is, these programs are unable to see the context of the work they are analyzing:

“The tea was cool and sweet, quenching her thirst.”
Grammarly suggested replacing quenching with quenched.I have no idea why.

Context is defined as the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect.

A person with a limited knowledge of grammar will not benefit from relying on Grammarly or any other editing program for advice. This is because these programs operate by finite rules and will often strongly suggest you insert an unneeded article or change a word to one that is clearly not the right one for that situation. New writers should invest in the Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, and learn how grammar works.

Currently, at this stage in our technology, understanding context is solely a human function. Because context is so important, I am wary of relying on these editing programs for anything other than alerting you to possible comma and spelling malfunctions.

I don’t mind taking the time to visit each problem and resolve them one at a time. I see this as part of my job, just what an author does to make sure her work is finished to the best of her ability.

Credits and Attributions:

The Danger of Writing Advice from Industry Professionals, by Chuck Wendig, Terribleminds, The Ramble, http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2017/12/12/the-danger-of-writing-advice-from-industry-professionals/ ©2017. Accessed 12 Dec 2017.

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November 23, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: creating lean but descriptive prose

Some work is written so starkly it may as well be a phone-book. This tells me that author X has really taken to heart the much-bandied, amateurish idea of no adverbs and adjectives, ever.

That concept is flawed.

It is true that when we carve away unneeded modifiers, we move from telling the story to showing it, which is the goal of every author. But the key here is the word ‘unneeded.’

Some modification of your verbs and nouns is necessary, or you have a ‘Dick and Jane” novel.

See Jane. See Jane run.

Even if the concept for the plot has some merit, a stark, completely bare-bones approach won’t make it worth reading. The idea behind the novel might intrigue me, and I could be curious as to where the author is going with the idea. But despite being curious, if I don’t enjoy reading the narrative I won’t finish it.

We all know fluffed-up prose (A.K.A. ‘purple’ prose) is daunting and hides the action, but don’t let a knee-jerk reaction to a bad beta-read by an armchair critic make you go the route of completely eliminating modifiers and descriptors. A well-written narrative is sparing with descriptors and modifiers, this is true—but modifiers and descriptors do exist within every good narrative and are there for a reason.

Sometimes a thought requires a little description: An old man carries his groceries home in a snowstorm, fearing he will slip and fall. This idea could be told several ways, and here are two, off the top of my head, one less wordy than the other. Both use modifiers and descriptors:

Snow fell softly. Holding a bag of groceries, he gazed at the stairs leading from the walk to the front door, fearing a layer of ice lurked beneath the pristine whiteness.

He gazed at the icy stairs leading from the un-shoveled walk to the front door, his bag of groceries growing heavier.

diagram courtesy www.english-grammar-revolution.com

diagram courtesy http://www.english-grammar-revolution.com

There is a reason that descriptors and modifiers exist in the English language. They add flavor, spicing up a flat wall of words. Just like salt in the soup, too much is too much and too little is not enough. We are looking for that happy medium where the prose flows in such a way that the reader forgets they are reading and lives the story.

I read a lot of work that begins with a great concept, but has no substance. If only the author had been had been brave enough to tell a good story these novels could have been great. Instead I was given a laundry list of characters acting and reacting to events with no passion or emotion.

It could have meant something to me as a reader, but it didn’t.

Good prose requires choosing words that convey your ideas in the least amount of space. Modifiers and descriptors do that for us, but need to be chosen carefully, and used only when nothing else will do.

If you are writing a novel you want the reader to live your story and react to the ideas and emotions that you are conveying instead of stumbling over limpid pools of velvet blue eyes or falling flatly into skeletal accounts of boredom. It’s our task to find the middle ground that exists between purple prose and lack of soul.

We want to get the reader immersed in the story, and make them forget the real world for a short time. As a reader, I love it when that happens.

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May 12, 2014 · 10:03 am

The road to perdition

I just attempted to read a book. I say ‘attempted.’ It may have been based on an intriguing idea, and there might have been wonderful characters, but I wouldn’t know, because after three pages of reading, I had to set that travesty aside. Every sentence began with a GERUND.

Now I know how this happens. New authors who spend a lot of time in writing forums and writing groups, and who have had their work trashed by the group guru as being passive might see using gerunds as a way to generate action in their narrative.

But Mama, what’s a gerund? Is it like a dachshund?

No dear, gerunds are not like dachshunds, although both are insidious minions of evil that manage to work their way into … where was I? Oh yes, gerunds.

ger·und

ˈjerənd

noun

a form that is derived from a verb but that functions as a noun, in English ending in -ing, e.g., asking in do you mind my asking you

SO a gerund is a verb is a noun that acts like a verb that acts like a noun.

Now that I have cleared that up, what is it really? A gerund is not like a normal noun because a gerund can take a direct object (just like a verb can).

Basically, they are ING words—DOING words that when you combine them with possessive words such as his, my, him and their, can become nouns.

Writing – He is writing. (it’s a verb) I like his writing. (it’s a noun)

Running – The dogs were running. (verb) The child’s running through the house aggravated me. (noun)

BUT wait—gerunds can also be participles?–oh, those cross-dressing fiends!

Participle phrases always function as adjectives, adding description to the sentence without resorting to that most heinous of writing-group crimes, the dreaded ‘ly’ words ( Satan, get thee away from me):

The child running across the lawn hopes you have brought him a present.

Running across the lawn modifies the noun child.

I could get really technical here and talk infinitives and prepositions–but we just want to get to the writing do-and-don’t part. Do use them when they are necessary, and don’t use too many. Remember it’s all about balance. Your narrative is like a ship and words are ballast–get too much on one side and suddenly your ship is at the bottom of Lake Erie.

Gerund phrases and present participle phrases are easy to confuse because they both begin with an ing word. The difference is that a gerund phrase will always function as a noun while a present participle phrase describes another word in the sentence.

SO how are ING words properly used when writing narrative? In my opinion, they should only rarely be used to begin phrases. Confusion abounds when we are too free with them, as they ruin the flow of the narrative for the casual reader.

When you are writing the first draft, none of this matters, because all that matters at that point is getting the story out of your head and onto the paper. HOWEVER, when you are working on the second draft of your manuscript, keep this in mind:

Adding excessive words to your narrative will result in a passive narrative. Using gerunds to begin your phrases will not turn a passive voice into an active voice. Instead, you must trim out the unnecessary words, because using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps them from becoming too complicated or wordy.

Relying on gerunds to create active phrases and avoid accusations of the dreaded passive writing is taking the road to perdition my friends, because just like any other grammatical crutch, gerunds are the devil when used improperly.

>>>—<<<

And on a different note–Last Monday I posted on My Writing Process — and today, Stephen Swartz and Shaun Allan have posted their blogs detailing their own writing processes:

Stephen Swartz can be found at Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire

Shaun Allan can be found at Flip and Catch

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