By Erin Ensinger
Most mornings I take a three mile run. Sometimes the same old run day after day gets boring, so I speed my pace to a dash, dart, sprint, or canter. Or I slow to a saunter, amble, or stroll. Depending on the strenuousness of my exertion, I reward my efforts by sipping, savoring, swigging, or slurping a refreshing beverage.
See how much variety verbs add to our lives? And precision, too. I don’t need a string of adverbs to describe my antics. Instead of “slowly, wearily, and gratefully sitting down” I can simply “collapse” in the nearest chair. I can even choose a verb that sounds exactly like the action I describe. Read this list out loud and you’ll see what I mean: poke, sputter, flutter, crash, click, drizzle, twinkle.
Now we don’t want to go overboard in our enthusiasm for verbs. Too much “cavorting” or “gallivanting” can get downright silly and exhaust our readers. Sometimes a simple word like “run” more accurately describes an action. But with such vibrant shades of color in our palettes, why do we settle for the mundane when we could paint murals in our readers’ minds?
Nothing deadens writing faster than to be verbs. You may remember chanting the list in grammar class (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) while heeding your teacher’s strict injunctions to memorize them but never use them. Why bother keeping these treacherous infiltrators in our language?
We writers tend to enjoy the comfort of rules. Writing feels like such a mysterious process we breathe a sigh of relief when someone lays down a clear law for us. But remember the letter of the law kills. We need to be thoughtful writers, not mindless rule followers. When we understand the why behind the rules, we make better writing decisions.
Consider the verb “is.” I think of “is” like a giant equal sign. “God is love.” If we try to replace “is” with “God exudes love” or “God demonstrates love,” we weaken the equation between God and love.
Jack Hart, author of Word Craft, says to be verbs define our world. But Hart also urges, “Don’t define the world; describe it in motion.” Would you rather write a dictionary or plunge your readers into a breathtaking experience?
A thesaurus proves a good friend to help you trade to be verbs for action verbs. But sometimes you need to change your entire sentence structure. Let me show you four kinds of modifiers (descriptive words or phrases) that eliminate to be verbs like magic.
I took these examples from Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, a middle grade novel about a Danish family resisting the Nazis during World War II. I want you to see that these modifiers are simple enough for middle school readers, the level for which we aim in ABH books.
Example 1: Appositive Phrase
- “One of the soldiers, the taller one, moved toward her.”
An appositive renames or describes the subject. Lowry could have written, “The soldier that moved toward her was the taller one.” Instead, she avoided “was” by tucking the description into a neat little phrase between the subject “soldiers” and the action verb “moved.”
Example 2: Participial Phrase
- “Here and there stars appeared, dotting the sky among thin clouds.”
Participial phrases begin with an –ing verb, in this case “dotting.” Instead of saying, “Stars were dotting the sky,” Lowry avoids “were” and simply attaches “dotting the sky” at the end of the sentence.
Example 3: Out-of-order Adjectives
- “Motionless, silent… Mama listened.”
We typically see adjectives either directly before the noun (the motionless, silent, woman) or following the noun and a to be verb like this: “Mama was motionless and silent.” Instead, Lowry sets the adjectives apart from the noun with commas, focusing our attention on these descriptive details.
Example 4: Absolute Phrase
- “Two large dogs strained at taut leashes, their eyes glittering, their lips curled.”
The phrase “their eyes glittering” only needs “were” to form a complete sentence. The same holds true for “their lips (were) curled.” But why add “were” when you can do just fine without it? Again, setting these phrases apart from the main sentence with commas highlights the descriptive details.
Our ABH book-in-progress, Set Free, shows us these four kinds of modifiers.
- Appositive: Daniel told the story of Jesus, a friend of sinners.
- Participial Phrase: The morning sun peeked over the ridge of hills beyond the maize fields, casting a golden glow across the red earth.
- Out-of-Order Adjectives: The man’s face, well-grooved but peaceful, bore the dirt of his long journey.
- Absolute Phrase: Kofi leaned forward, his heart thumping.
Keep watch for the ways good writers use active verbs and avoid tired, trite ones. Scrutinize your own writing and ruthlessly eliminate any to be verbs serving no good purpose. Determine to breathe life, precision, and descriptive detail into every word you write.