Mincing your verbs? How to bring writing to life
Here’s a hack for a dull text: Pay attention to your verbs! These four tips and a quick exercise will inspire you.
Dear Climate Culinarians,
This is an extra edition - about writing! After thinking so much about deserts and lack of water in the past few issues, I worry that my writing may become dry, too. It has happened before. I somehow sank inspiring facts in a sea of letters. Grey from the outside, drab within.
Every time that happens, a text dies.
But words don’t really die, do they? I sometimes suspect they skulk in my mind: undead, dull, biding their time to haunt me. Could a dance party of vibrant words fend off those zombies?
Yes! That’s this newsletter’s topic: How I start a dance party in my mind – and hopefully yours, too.
4 tips for vivid verbs
In a perfect world, writers would simply ban trite language from their minds. In reality, dullness keeps lurking there, at least for me. Even after learning from of dozens of magazine editors’ feedback and publishing four books. Experience couldn’t chase the zombies off. What does help me: zooming in. Focusing on one detail. Like verbs. After all, verbs are the most action you can get in a sentence.
Start here: In your draft, highlight all the verbs. Admire the ones that sing. And get your tools ready for the others.
Turn passive voice into active voice
Make a sentence answer the question “Who did what?” – rather than “What was done to whom?”. This way, you literally let your readers in on the action. Let’s say you wrote “20 deer were killed over the weekend”. The active version is: Hunters killed 20 deer this weekend. Oh, wait, that’s not what you meant? It should be: Drivers ran into deer this weekend, killing 20? Aha! An active voice adds clarity, too. Mission accomplished. Errr, I mean: We did it!
Detect repetition
Is this verb once again the best fit? If yes, great. If not, get to work. When you’re writing about food, you’ll probably find a lot of “eat” in your first draft. That’s fine. It’s a draft, after all. But food goes down in all kinds of ways: Do people gobble in this paragraph, and nibble over there? Do they dine, munch, snack? Wolf down, devour, savor, taste? Chew, gnaw on, or polish off their meal? Note the nuances and use the power of verbs: With just one word, you set a scene. But please choose your verbs with intention. Nobody wants to watch a writer vomit a thesaurus. Good thing that’s impossible IRL!
Polish dull verbs
Beyond repetitions, scrutinize the rest of your verbs. Read them aloud: Does anything feel dull, complicated, or trite? For instance, you may find a lot of “there is” or other uses of “be”. Fish a stronger verb out of the word soup in your brain. Beware of zombies!
Expand your vocabulary
Every once in a while, tickle your readers: Surprise them with a lesser-used verb like bamboozle, jettison, ransack, winnow. Embrace verbs that speak to the senses by invoking sounds, feelings, looks (buzz, stomp, loom). Why? These verbs engage your readers. And I hope that’s the point of your text.
Quick exercise: Now you do it!
Edit this sentence: “This has become an issue of grave concern.”
Your task in detail:
Find a short, engaging verb to say this.
If you can’t complete the sentence, insert an X for the missing information.
(for instance, you don’t know what issue they are writing about here).Create at least three variations!
Now, instead of Xs, invent an object (the actual issue). And how about a subject (who is concerned?)? Does this information inspire different verbs?
Get lost … in a good way
Go on a quest: Find remote places where vivid verbs may hide. Start with the most obvious space: other writers’ works. But stay away from whatever you usually read. Discover the funniest verb in a picture book. Analyze climate poetry. Read romance and fill your head with verbs like bewitch and serenade.
Then move on to even more exotic places: Listen to protest songs. Scowl at the instructions for your tax forms (but of course you know what “reconcile advance payments” is supposed to mean!).Can you still find a great verb? Mull over the New York Times’ Connections, slay at the weird and violent scrabble variation Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey, or expand your niche vocabulary with Sweardle.
What are the coolest verbs you found?
If you like these writing exercises, you’ll get more from me whenever there is a fifth Thursday in a month. Which will happen again in January.
What’s next? We’re heading into November, which brings a new monthly topic. And holiday season, too. Don’t expect any gift lists here. The next newsletter will get cozy, though, in the sense of … nope, you gotta wait and read.
Read, eat, repeat!
Petrina
Climate Culinarians provides food for thought, plus the occasional recipe (and, as you see: writing tips, if there’s a fifth Thursday in a month). I’m Petrina Engelke, journalist and book coach. I help readers discover links between yummy food and global warming - with a focus on solutions and actions we can take. Read more about this newsletter & me here.