Verbs Tell Stories
A Story is Characters Doing things To other Characters. A character can be a person, an animal, a thing, or even an idea. Things become characters when they Do things, and doing things requires Verbs.
Active, transitive verbs tell stories. Passive, intransitive verbs describes things, but remember that they do not tell stories. Linking verbs and their subject complements do virtually nothing. The single most important “rule of thumb” you can ever learn as a writer is simply this: “Every sentence should tell a story.” Like all good rules, it’s okay to break this one now and then, IF you have a Good Reason. But weak sentences are the single most common reason readers get bored and wander off to watch Lost instead of reading your book.
One reason writers tend to write weak sentences is because no one tells them they’re doing it. In English, we have only two tenses, Past and Present. Constructed tenses, like the so-called Present Progressive, aren’t really tenses. Present Progressive is the worst of all constructed tenses, because it’s really only a linking (“to be”) verb plus a subject complement, in the form of a participle.
A participle is a verb with an -ing ending. It is not a verb, it is an adjective. The sentence,
Sarah was running.
is not a story, it’s a description. Running is just an adjective that complements the subject, Sarah, via a linking verb. You can add some interest to a participle by giving it a direct object:
Sarah was running errands.
but remember—it’s still just a subject complement.
So what’s the big deal? It’s all too easy to fill up page after page of nothing but linking verbs and passive verbs and intransitive passive verbs. Especially if you don’t realize you’re doing it. Let’s take an example from a typical short story first paragraph:
The oldest building on Main Street was leaning over the sidewalk. For years, it had been leaning further and further over the sidewalk. It was dangerous to walk in front of it, yet everyone in town had been getting used to it for as long as it had been leaning. There was no real telling when it might come tumbling down, maybe on someone’s unsuspecting head.
Ho hum. Not only are there no proper nouns, there isn’t one single active, transitive verb. Worse, the building isn’t really a character, just a thing, passively subject to the whims of Nature’s laws. Worst of all, the paragraph employs that most useless of all sentences, the “It was . . .” abomination. Isn’t that okay, though, especially when we and the readers know we’re just describing things as an introduction, before the actual story begins? Maybe we could get away with this paragraph, but just because some retired NFL superstars get away with murder doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. Let’s see what active, transitive verbs can do for this paragraph:
The Allerman Building, the oldest on Main Street, strained every nail and joist and stud pushing itself out over the sidewalk. It leaned for so long that the Zimmerman twins, walking their dog Toto to the park, took no notice of the tragedy shadowing their every step. Not even Blind Bob the prophet could foresee the day when the Allerman Building, empty, patient, relentless, finally defeated the petty commercial intentions of its makers and wreaked its revenge on the town’s most innocent or most guilty, each alike daily trusting Luck and risking All.
Nobel worthy? Maybe not. But at least the building has a name and a story. It actively strains three direct objects. Leaned is intransitive, but at least the rest of the paragraph strongly suggests an object for its leaning, the Zimmerman twins, Toto, and the entire rest of the town, in a way that a specific direct object might fail to convey. The participle walking, used here to modify both the twins and the verb took, takes a direct object within its phrase, making it into an active, transitive verb rather than just a plain old adjective. Of course, took takes a direct object, the subject of the next subordinate clause notice takes a direct object, and the participle shadowing takes a direct object, too. One that portends an interesting turn of events down the road—that all-important foreshadowing that hooks the reader’s interest. The worthless pronoun no one is replaced by another character, who foresees events like, well, the event foreshadowed in the parapgraph, although one of the things now foreshadowed is his failure to see—hello, Tragedy! The direct object of foresee, the subordinate clause about “the day,” contains two active, transitive verbs, each of which again foreshadows the coming tragedy. Lastly, as lame as that final, tacked-on subordinate clause may be, at least the two participles trusting and risking take direct objects.
This paragraph makes a character out of a building, a character who even appears to have motives and desires, whether “real” buildings do so or not. When it falls, it won’t just be a terrible accident, it will be a Tragic murder/suicide. The paragraph does so by using active, transitive verbs and avoiding weak, intransitive verbs and subject complements. This paragraph also makes the potential victims of Tragedy, including the Zimmerman twins and their little dog, active participants in their own impending doom—they choose to trust and to risk. Gosh, I wonder what will happen next?
Active, transitive verbs tell stories. Passive, intransitive verbs describes things, but remember that they do not tell stories. Linking verbs and their subject complements do virtually nothing. The single most important “rule of thumb” you can ever learn as a writer is simply this: “Every sentence should tell a story.” Like all good rules, it’s okay to break this one now and then, IF you have a Good Reason. But weak sentences are the single most common reason readers get bored and wander off to watch Lost instead of reading your book.
One reason writers tend to write weak sentences is because no one tells them they’re doing it. In English, we have only two tenses, Past and Present. Constructed tenses, like the so-called Present Progressive, aren’t really tenses. Present Progressive is the worst of all constructed tenses, because it’s really only a linking (“to be”) verb plus a subject complement, in the form of a participle.
A participle is a verb with an -ing ending. It is not a verb, it is an adjective. The sentence,
Sarah was running.
is not a story, it’s a description. Running is just an adjective that complements the subject, Sarah, via a linking verb. You can add some interest to a participle by giving it a direct object:
Sarah was running errands.
but remember—it’s still just a subject complement.
So what’s the big deal? It’s all too easy to fill up page after page of nothing but linking verbs and passive verbs and intransitive passive verbs. Especially if you don’t realize you’re doing it. Let’s take an example from a typical short story first paragraph:
The oldest building on Main Street was leaning over the sidewalk. For years, it had been leaning further and further over the sidewalk. It was dangerous to walk in front of it, yet everyone in town had been getting used to it for as long as it had been leaning. There was no real telling when it might come tumbling down, maybe on someone’s unsuspecting head.
Ho hum. Not only are there no proper nouns, there isn’t one single active, transitive verb. Worse, the building isn’t really a character, just a thing, passively subject to the whims of Nature’s laws. Worst of all, the paragraph employs that most useless of all sentences, the “It was . . .” abomination. Isn’t that okay, though, especially when we and the readers know we’re just describing things as an introduction, before the actual story begins? Maybe we could get away with this paragraph, but just because some retired NFL superstars get away with murder doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. Let’s see what active, transitive verbs can do for this paragraph:
The Allerman Building, the oldest on Main Street, strained every nail and joist and stud pushing itself out over the sidewalk. It leaned for so long that the Zimmerman twins, walking their dog Toto to the park, took no notice of the tragedy shadowing their every step. Not even Blind Bob the prophet could foresee the day when the Allerman Building, empty, patient, relentless, finally defeated the petty commercial intentions of its makers and wreaked its revenge on the town’s most innocent or most guilty, each alike daily trusting Luck and risking All.
Nobel worthy? Maybe not. But at least the building has a name and a story. It actively strains three direct objects. Leaned is intransitive, but at least the rest of the paragraph strongly suggests an object for its leaning, the Zimmerman twins, Toto, and the entire rest of the town, in a way that a specific direct object might fail to convey. The participle walking, used here to modify both the twins and the verb took, takes a direct object within its phrase, making it into an active, transitive verb rather than just a plain old adjective. Of course, took takes a direct object, the subject of the next subordinate clause notice takes a direct object, and the participle shadowing takes a direct object, too. One that portends an interesting turn of events down the road—that all-important foreshadowing that hooks the reader’s interest. The worthless pronoun no one is replaced by another character, who foresees events like, well, the event foreshadowed in the parapgraph, although one of the things now foreshadowed is his failure to see—hello, Tragedy! The direct object of foresee, the subordinate clause about “the day,” contains two active, transitive verbs, each of which again foreshadows the coming tragedy. Lastly, as lame as that final, tacked-on subordinate clause may be, at least the two participles trusting and risking take direct objects.
This paragraph makes a character out of a building, a character who even appears to have motives and desires, whether “real” buildings do so or not. When it falls, it won’t just be a terrible accident, it will be a Tragic murder/suicide. The paragraph does so by using active, transitive verbs and avoiding weak, intransitive verbs and subject complements. This paragraph also makes the potential victims of Tragedy, including the Zimmerman twins and their little dog, active participants in their own impending doom—they choose to trust and to risk. Gosh, I wonder what will happen next?
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