Quick Answer to a Quick Question

Anon in the comments asks,

Where do you come down on the whole "as though..." was/were thing? As though she were the adult here, as though she was the adult. If I were sick, if I was sick. I see was a lot in books--is that acceptable?

This is a species of the conditional, and it creates a lot of confusion because colloquial English and standard English have two different rules. So this gives us a good opportunity to discuss the difference between the two different grammar standards, and how fiction writers should handle them.

First, the standard rule can be a little complicated, but your example is the conditional expressed in the subjunctive. So, the ordinary way of structuring a conditional sentence is in two parts:

If condition, then result.


"If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you some art (a Picasso or a Garfunkel)."


That line is from the Barenaked Ladies hit from a few years back, "If I Had a Million Dollars,"  a/k/a Exhibit A in the long list of evidence proving that the conditional is alive and well in the English language. Bet you can all think of other examples, once you think about it. Look for the word "if" -- If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning.

If the asserted condition in the first part of the sentence is contrary to fact, then we have to play some games with the verb tenses to signal the untruthful or hypothetical nature of the statement. Compare:

If I had enough cash, I would buy dinner.
to
If I have enough cash, I am buying (or will buy) dinner.

You know almost intuitively that in the second statement, the speaker might actually pick up the tab, but in the first, it's just not going to happen. Right? And the clues are in the verb tenses. If the main clause (the result) includes would/could/will/might or similar tentative conjugations, and if the dependent clause (the condition) is stepped back in time from the present moment of the sentence, then we know we're dealing with something contrary to fact.

There are some little hitches in the rule. For example, if the verb in the condition is "to be," the past conjugation is always "were" regardless of person or number.
If I were a millionaire
If we were millionaires
If she were a millionare
And so on, in every permutation of the verb in this tense.

English speakers tend to ignore this in colloquial speech, unless they're educated people or writers or other disreputable types. *cough*  So in common everyday usage, it wouldn't be startling to hear someone say,
If I was a millionaire, I would buy dinner.
And everyone at the table would know who's not picking up the tab, right?

So what's a fiction writer to do? It's kind of a case-by-case matter. If you're writing the interior monologue or dialogue of a person likely to use the colloquial expression, then it's safe to use the colloquial variant there. If your protagonist is a lawyer or English teacher, or if your prose style tends away from the colloquial for other reasons, probably not so much.

And this could be said of many common colloquialisms, such as "probably not so much" in the previous sentence. That's not correct formal English, but it's acceptable colloquial English. Fictive grammar is always something of a blend of grammar rules, part formal grammar, part wild English. How you blend them is part of your voice, but that doesn't mean you get to do it blindly. Do it deliberately, with grace and control and clarity, to achieve an effect.

Does that answer your question? It's not cut and dried, I know, so if you have questions, please do ask.

Theresa

Present perfect huh?

A car carrying a bride to her wedding has slid across the road and gotten stuck in a snowbank, but the state police have sent out an SUV to pick her up. The wedding has gone on as scheduled.

I changed the details there, but that's a sentence construction I just read in a news story. Now I know that journalism has an odd way with tenses (most headlines in present tense, for example), but this really stopped me. Did it just happen, as I assumed from the present-perfect (has slid)? No, it was earlier today. The "state police have sent out" seems to me to be saying that the SUV hasn't gotten there yet. But the wedding "has gone on"-- so obviously the SUV got there, picked up the bride (this actually happened to someone I know, btw-- you should never schedule a wedding in the winter in Northern Indiana... another couple I know -- also a January Indiana wedding-- had to move their reception because the snow-laden hall roof collapsed) -- what was I saying? Oh, yes, present perfect.

What does present-perfect tense imply to you? When you read that a car "has slid across the road," what does that mean to you about when it happened?

It's a bit confusing to me because "has" makes me think that the action happened very recently and maybe isn't concluded fully. But if the wedding took place, obviously she didn't just get stuck in the snowdrift. So that was sort of misdirective, that present perfect.

When do you use present perfect?

Alicia

Verb Agreement with Compound Subjects

Once upon a time I had to write a house style guide from scratch. Someday I'll do a post on the process of creating that guide, but in the meantime, I thought I would post some excerpts from it. Last week, in response to a bunch of questions about possessive nouns, we looked at the basic rules for apostrophes and apostrophe-s constructions. Today we'll look at compound nouns and the number of the verb. This is one of those little nitpicky things that can lead to big-time copy editor battles.


Singular-and-Singular

When a subject is a compound joined by the conjunction and, it takes a plural verb regardless of the number of each individual noun in the subject.

EXAMPLE: Lucy and Harry were childhood sweethearts.


Singular-Or/Nor-Singular

When a subject is a compound composed of two singular nouns joined by or or nor, it takes a singular verb.

EXAMPLE: Either Lucy or Harry always orders apple pie.


Plural-Or/Nor-Plural

When a subject is a compound composed of two plural nouns joined by or or nor, it takes a plural verb.

EXAMPLE: The Smiths or the Joneses want their pie heated.


Or/Nor With Singular and Plural

When a subject is a compound composed of a singular and a plural joined by or or nor, the verb agrees with the part of the subject closest to it.

EXAMPLE: Either Lucy or the Smiths are wrong.
but
EXAMPLE: Either the Smiths or Lucy is wrong.

Exception: When a compound noun is thought of as a single unit, it is treated as singular regardless of the number of the nouns contained therein. Therefore, “macaroni and cheese” (singular and singular), “peas and carrots” (plural and plural), and “chicken and dumplings” (singular and plural) each take singular verbs despite differences in the numbers of the nouns.

Also note: Odd singular-plural agreement constructions can be avoided by editing the structure of the sentence.
EXAMPLE: Either Lucy is wrong, or the Smiths are.

Theresa

C.L. Gray said...
Perhaps a teaching on how to avoid "had" in events that happened two or three days in the past.


Okay, let me think about this.

First thing I'm going to say is... don't go back. That is, if you don't recount things that happened three days ago, you won't need "had". (Talk about evading the issue...:) That is, "had" as the past-perfect auxiliary verb

But really, I don't like flashbacks as I think they tend to detract from the verisimilitude of the scene. Here they are, having an argument, and she says the "D" word (divorce), and they're both shocked, and ... and then he thinks back to the last time they went to dinner three nights ago, "and she had ordered calimari though he hated even the sight of it, and....", and there goes the immediacy, there goes the sense of being in the moment, and there perhaps goes the characterization (does he just drift off in the middle of an argument? No wonder she's talking divorce!).

It reminds me of a Friends episode re-run I saw the other day, or rather one moment in it, where Joey (the actor) is telling how a mentor had taught him the trick of seeming to ruminate and remember as "smelling your farts." And then there's a flashback to Joey as a character, and he stops in the middle of the scene and tilts his head like he's smelling his fart.

The joke is that flashing back can be rather like, you know, smelling your farts-- it looks sort of significant, but it's not.

Okay, okay, I know I don't persuade anyone who loves flashbacks not to use them (though I defy you all to try that-- go ahead, write the flashback now without thinking, oh, no, I'm smelling my farts!).


So how about a flashback without that annoying "had" everywhere?

Well, I think we should distinguish between just a line or two about something in the past, and a real flashback.
If it's just a line or two-- She raised her hand to show off the time travel wristband she had been awarded at graduation-- then go ahead and use "had" and don't fret it. It's the most expeditious way to set the one event in the past of the story. (And of course, it's also correct, which matters to me. :)

But a flashback is a -scene-, not just a reference to a past event. A flashback takes the reader back to a time before the story present and presents this passage of time as if it's a scene, with setting, action, dialogue. (We should have a discussion of whether there should be introspection/POV in a flashback... also, is the flashback a character flashing back and remembering something, or an independent scene, or... see all these existential questions that arise when you mess with the time continuum???)

So with a real flashback, I'd suggest maybe starting with "had" to mark the descent into the past, but then once you get there, no more had (until maybe the very end of the flashback scene, when you're transitting back to the present of the story). So:

She had been so proud at that graduation. She had proudly worn her blue time-agent uniform, and her parents had beamed when they saw her. When the director called her name, she walked up the aisle to get her diploma, and she stood as still as she could as he strapped on the wristband...

That is, get us into the past scene with "had been", then once we're in the scene, just go with simple past to make it feel like a scene, to make us feel right there experiencing it.

How do you all handle this?

Alicia

Visit Me at RU! :)

I know it's been a quiet week around here, which you can bet means a crazy week for me away from the blog.

But I do have a substantive post on verb tenses up over at Romance University today. We're talking about the ways fiction uses verb tenses, and how that might be different from what you were taught in school.

Theresa

Skittering

I want to make one quick point about the last post where we practiced communicating emotion without stating the emotion directly. (You all did a wonderful job, by the way, and wasn't it fun to see how many different ways the same action could be interpreted?)

This kind of writing might feel hard when you first start doing it, but it gets easier with practice. Before too long, you'll start realizing there are other ways to communicate concepts without putting them in giant neon letters. HEY READER! MY THEME IS, "KARMA GONNA GET HIM!" We hardly ever see such direct statements in fiction, right? But authors have still found ways to communicate these indirect concepts. It's the nature of storytelling. And even though it might feel hard or challenging now to control unstated notions on the smallest scale, as we did in the last post, eventually you'll find ways to broaden that technique and find ways to incorporate implied concepts on a much larger scale.

We might even take a look at that some day. But for today, I want to keep the focus tight and look at something that several of you mentioned in comments and email. "Skittered." You liked that use of that word. It's a good verb because it's slightly unusual, vivid, dynamic, and has a hint of emotion which we could draw out in the context. How much weaker would the sentence have been if we'd started with, "Henry leaped," or "Henry jumped," or the dreaded, "Henry moved." Nothing wrong with these verb choices. They're perfectly serviceable. But they're not quite as awake as skittered, are they?

We talk a lot about verbs here. We've made lists of overused verbs, and we've done endless sentence revisions to show you ways to cut down on verbals, and we've sung the praises of good verb choices. Why so much focus on verbs? They're the heavy lifters in a sentence, and yet so many manuscripts treat them like also-rans. Think about, for example,

She looked at the lush purple heather glowing faintly crimson under the striped pink-and-orange sunset and the puffy tinted clouds.

We see variations of this basic problem over and over again -- we might even file this one under "Marks of the Amateur." I think of this as a balance issue. The two most powerful word slots in that sentence -- in any sentence -- are the subject and main verb. And what do we have in those two power slots? A drab pronoun and a flat verb. The sentence is backloaded (and overloaded) with descriptive words in lesser positions.

Sometimes you want to do this to achieve a particular effect. But when sentence after sentence is written this way, the effect is clunky, overwritten, off-balance prose.

What's a quick fix for this sentence? Assume the point of view is clear, and post your revised sentences in the comments. I'm willing to bet we'll find several ways to improve it. But regardless of the method chosen, I'm also willing to bet that the main verb of the sentence becomes much more powerful.

Theresa

Future perfect

I came across this sentence and thought it was a good example of future perfect (will have) tense:


By the time I get back, I hope you will have forgiven me.

That is, in some time of the future, the action will have already happened in the past of that future (but still the future of now).

It's sort of like time travel, only without the nausea. :)

Alicia

This is about a past participle! Change of pace!

I came across this line in an article about LBJ (who I have grown to think of as a tragic hero in the Greek tradition, with his greatest strength-- the ability to make people compromise-- leading to his downfall-- the Vietnam War):
"Johnson would have dressed these people down in public and then drank all the liquor in their cabinet."

Drank or drunk? To me, it's drunk (would have drunk) because it is the conditional-- he didn't actually drink. But for a second, before it flew out of my mind, I thought I had a reason why "drank" is right. Now it's gone, but I remember that at some moment, I had a blinding insight.

Poor me. My blinding insights are so often lost during the blinding.

Anyway, does anyone have a good argument for "drank" there? Or are we all agreed -- conditional tense (would have) takes past participle (drunk)?
Alicia

Subjunctive mood... not long for this world?

I was asked about the subjunctive, which is used with statements that are "contrary to fact" (like "If I were you," because I am not you, as REM reminds us)-- is it still with us? Yes, it is, but maybe not for long.

Here's an example:
"He would have preferred that Richard was there with him."

The question was: Would you use "that Richard were there . . . "?



The most common time to use the subjunctive is after "if", but "prefer" and "wish" and similar "not true" words will call for the subjunctive. It's also used after verbs like "advise" and "suggest"--
"I suggest that he join the club."
In subjunctive, you use the verb part of the infinitive, that is, without the to-- (join, not to join).

With "to be", it's just "be," and that's the most common.

So "I'd advise that he be invited to join the club."

But when the statement is contrary to fact, you use the past tense, not the present tense:
So above, since Richard isn't there, I'd go with "were".
"He would have preferred that Richard was there with him."
This indicates that something isn't true-- it's preferred or wished, but it's not true.

So "If I were you," but "If I am right." (I -could- be right. It's been known to happen. But I know I am not you!)

However, the use of this seems to be dropping away. Language tends to move towards greater complexity, and then towards greater simplicity (especially when many people learn it AFTER childhood-- kids can learn any complexity because their brains are so malleable, but adult learners need the rules simplified). The subjunctive is complex and hard to explain (I know-- tried to teach it to a decade's worth of students :), and so it will probably disappear in the next generation. After all, it's generally clear when a statement is contrary to fact, so there doesn't actually HAVE to be a marker of it.

So use the subjunctive now, because it will likely be gone in a couple decades.

This is the sort of thing that, if you do it right, you're marking yourself as good at grammar. But if you do it wrong (if you use subjunctive with a true statement, for example), it's worse than not doing it at all. But this is another thing that an editor isn't likely to hold against you-- just something we expect to fix in the line edit or copy edit. So while I'm happy to explain this, I'd say, don't sweat it. It's not that big a deal. Take all those brain cells you might have devoted to the subjunctive, and use them instead to recognize and fix dangling modifiers. :)


Stephen Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, btw, is a great book for explicating the changes in language.

Alicia

I sneaked/snuck in some past tense here

Commenters asked about "kneeled" and "snuck" as past tense forms of the verbs.

These are just variants, and both are generally acceptable. (I say "snuck" all the time—perfectly good word, though children use it to make dirty limericks, so it's good not to let them use it, I guess!)

But notice the difference. "Snuck" is an old form, from old English, when past tense was usually signified by a change in the central vowel (sing/sang, sneak/snuck, kneel/knelt). Think about why that is useful—the change is so clear that there's no doubt when you say "sang" that you mean it happened in the past. (The –ed form is NOT as sonically clear, and notice how often we do without it—we often slip into present tense, just as I did there!) This was probably helpful when the language was still being formed and you wouldn't always know whether the person in the next county could understand your accent—they would notice a big vowel change like that. I have seen that even those irregular verbs that have a sort of –ed sometimes do it with the harder "t" along with a vowel change—KEPT and KNELT—again, the harder sound there would make it easier for a stranger to "hear" the past tense even if he didn't quite understand your accent otherwise.

(Did you know that the prefix y- before a t-ending past word was the way a lot of verbs made past participles? I think the only surviving such word is yclept, which means "(something) has been named or identified." and I only remember it because it's so weird.)

Irregular verbs (those that conjugate past and/or past participle with something other than -ed) are usually among the oldest verbs in the language, often called "strong verbs," perhaps because they are so "strong" they have resisted change and standardization for a thousand years. These are often the most important verbs, the ones in most common use—go and come and bring and is and have and get and forget and think and know and wake and sleep, and a couple dozen more. These are the ones children and non-native speakers have trouble with because they logically assume that you add –ed to make past tense: "I already goed to class."

Believe it or not, formation of past tense has profound linguistic and even philosophical effects, which I won't attempt to explain (have you ever noticed that the word "Chomsky" is a synonym for "difficult?"). But here's an article about Stephen Pinker's exploration of this past tense issue. (Warning-- .pdf file takes a while to load.)

So what happened? Well, there was the Norman conquest in 1066, after which, for a couple hundred years, Norman French became the language of court and the courts (which is why bailiffs still call out "Oyez, oyez," to open courts in a lot of states). While most Brits still clung to their native tongues (the Welsh and Scots, of course, are British but have their own languages even now), French words entered the English language, often existing right beside the old word, sometimes being seen as the "classier" term ("beef" is French; "cow" is English). Most "Latinate" words – 70% or so of our vocabulary, but more nouns than verbs!—came into English through French (a "romance" language—that is, based like Italian and Spanish on Latin), but our syntax (sentence structure mostly) is still Teutonic (Germanic), from a much earlier contribution/invasion.

Okay, as I recall, somewhere around 1400 was "The Great Vowel Shift," where the vowels (especially those in the middle of the word) became more long—shifting from the middle of the mouth more to the front – "ah" became "ay". This had something to do with social dislocations from the Black Plague, but really, linguistics class was a LONG time ago. So those same vowels which changed to mark tense were changing, and maybe the distinction between the forms was getting muddy. Anyway, after that, came the great trend towards standardization, imposed by dictionary writers and teachers and preachers too. This is when the –ed for past caught hold. (You'll see very few –ed past tense verbs in Chaucer, but lots in Shakespeare.) The London accent became the preferred accent, and the London way of word formation became pre-eminent. But English is a great and flexible language, and here we are, 400 years later, and "standard" still has little hold on us, does it? That's especially true with verbs, which are not as subject to change in context as nouns because, well, "the action of going" hasn't changed as much as "the method of going" (i.e., carriage to car to plane).

So we have in common English, and even accepted "standard" English, all sorts of irregular verbs. Most verbs went compliantly enough towards the standard, and we find that we walked and talked (though not "runned" or "speaked" or "sayed") without too much complaining. But sometimes, the attempt to standardize an old verb hasn't really worked, so that we have the new –ed version right along side the old version. Kneeled/knelt and sneaked/snuck are examples. There isn't a lot of reason, or for that matter rhyme, to which ends up preferred. For example, most of us would say dived, not dove, is preferred, but what about drived vs. drove? If your child said, "Daddy drived me to school," you'd probably make a gentle correction, "No, honey, Daddy DROVE you to school."

For some of these verbs, one form or the other won out, and for others of these verbs, both forms still exist as acceptable (though often one is preferred-- usually the -ed form, like "dived" rather than "dove"). This is happening right now, with plenty of debate, and it's actually a great example of where dictionaries are often trying to dictate the more logical way (-ed) and usage keeps the old way in action. (Some verbs actually went backwards—I read that "dived" is older than "dove," for example. But that's unusual.)

How do you know which is right? (And keep in mind that the British often have different preferences. I have never seen the word whilst used by a modern American writer, but the British use it instead of while.) Choose a good dictionary that identifies the preferred version in American or British English—that is, if you're American and writing for American audiences, use Websters, not the OED (and, uh, this is why we rebelled in 1776! Didn't you see that in the Declaration of Independence? "Wherefore they want us to say 'whilst,' we don't wanna?"). If you're British, use the OED, but often the OED comes down on the "descriptive" side of the description/prescription debate (do we just describe the major usages, or prescribe the "right" way to use the word?), and so often just trying to figure out dived vs. dove turns into a four-hour (but very pleasant) session in checking and cross-referencing different words and sources. I don't know about Aussies and Kiwis and Canadians and "post-colonials"—you tell me? Which dictionary do you use?

(One thing I love about watching BBC shows is the variety of accents—the British, for a much smaller nation, have many, many more accents than we do, and some, like the Glaswegian Scots, are just about incomprehensible to me. But then, I grew up in SW Virginia, and I stopped to get gas at a SE Virginia – swamp country—station, and couldn't understand a word of the man next to me. The cashier, a young local African-American woman, was bilingual—I mean, she could understand me and speak to me in my "dialect," and then turn to the white local man and start speaking that other language that I guess was how they speak English in the Dismal Swamp! Anyway, I could really get then why profound changes in sound to signify important things like positive and negative, past and present, would be helpful when communicating outside your own region.)

Now as for whether and when you can use the non-preferred term without the editor changing it... well, first, remember "house style" dictates, and if you want to dispute that, take it up with the publisher, not your poor editor, okay? Understand that, absent a house-style ruling, we will usually opt for whatever the dictionary we use specifies as "preferred," and really, how much of a fight do you want over "sneaked/snuck?" Save your ammo for when I change your character's deep dark secret from "he murdered his grandmother in cold blood" to "one evening, he didn't go by his grandmother's room to read the Bible to her as he always did, because he was exhausted from working 16 hours to earn enough to keep her in a decent nursing home and he fell asleep and slept through till morning, and poor Grandma had a heart attack in the middle of the night and he's always blamed himself even though she was 94 and had a heart condition."

Pick your battles, and I'd think "kneeled" vs. "knelt" isn't a hill you want to waste too much of your infantry on.

Okay, let's say you're a total sweetheart, a dream to edit, and you want to make this manuscript so clean the editor won't have to change a word? Ask the editor what dictionary the house uses, and work with that. (Edition will often matter here, because this "standardization" is still going on. In my childhood, "snuck" was perfectly acceptable, and it's actually still what I say if not write, but it's not the "preferred" form in current dictionaries.) BTW, the preferred form is listed first in the dictionary entry of the present tense word, so in the "sneak" entry, the past tense will be listed as "sneaked, also snuck." That indicates that "sneaked" is preferred.

Now, when the narrative is in character voice (deep POV) and in dialogue, use what the character would say. But if most of the narrative is in your voice, educated, intellectual, erudite, elegant, and then suddenly Their father drived the kids to school, well, don't tell me that one verb is "character voice". Character voice isn't just a word here and there. And if you are really in character voice, I'll know whether the words fit the voice. In fact, I'm likely to note, "Would he actually think the term erudite? Or would he think smart-assed?"

Alicia

Theresa, I couldn't find this in the style guide (yet-- still looking :). Jeff asked me if this is singular or plural (Word grammarcheck insists it's singular):

The rest of the group (was/were) left behind.

My first thought was that it was singular (because "rest" is singular), but then I thought maybe plural. (Nothing if not decisive here. :) I said if "the rest" was actually substituting for a portion (like "Half the group"), it was singular, but if it was substituting for a number (like "Two members of the group"), it's plural if the number is more than 1. I realize that half of four is two, so the antecedents for "the rest" would amount to the same thing, so it's actually more of a matter of emphasis. Did he want to emphasize the individuality of the "left-behind" (two), or the decimation of the group (half left behind and the group bisected)?

Collective nouns represent both a single entity (the group) and more than one entity (the individual members together), so you often have to do some thinking about which you're referring to at the moment. It might help to think of the singular group as being in consensus or acting as one (The committee was pleased with your report and was planning to approve your request) or in disagreement (the audience were divided about the third act). (I might add that this is not something most readers are likely to take issue with either way, but your choice might emphasize the unity or disunity of the group subliminally.)

It might help to see if the meaning comes across if you add "members" to the collective noun (that is, plural-- emphasizing the individuals). The rest of the group members were left behind? But if adding "members" or some other individual marker messes with the meaning because you are really talking about a unified group, then you might go with the singular verb. (I just want to put in here that S/V agreement is really unnecessary in a language where "number" is already marked on the noun -- cat/cats-- but does anyone in charge listen to me and change the grammar? NOOOOOO.)

Now in Britain, collective nouns are mostly treated as plural-- The team are ready for the game Friday. In fact, along with adding U to "-or" words, this is one of the most visible differences between British and American English. So it's a good idea to consider the nationality of your publisher!

Here's an example of "when in doubt, take it out!"
The team sprang to its feet, eager to take the field.
Well, the team is acting as one, so singular, but... but... "its feet"? Sounds like the team is a centipede! How about recasting to get rid of feet altogether?
The team sprang up--?

The crew team rested its oars, content with third place?

What do you all think?
Alicia

New trends in prose I'm going to edit out...

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's "my voice". But any idiosyncrasy is going to lose all claim to power the story or to reflect the character (or author) voice, if it is used constantly as if it's standard English. Less is more, for cripes' sake. LESS IS MORE!!!

So if you're doubling predicates (without an AND) every paragraph or so, do not be surprised when your grumpy editor edits almost all of them back to standard English. Is this some new trend? I'm seeing it all the time in submissions and contest entries (almost never, nota bene, in published fiction). Here's an example I'm making up:

He reached out, touched her.

Oh, another-- these never come as singlets. They are usually throughout the whole chapter, regardless of POV character (that is, we can't blame the character voice).

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

And yet another:

Her head ached, reeled with pain.

You know, this is actually one of those times you can use a participle! (Theresa said memorably that three things can happen when you use participles, and two of them are bad-- well, here's the good one.)

Her head ached, reeling with pain.

Well, I don't know if a head can reel, but that is actually part of the problem with this doubling of predicate. You have two predicates. Do they actually both use the same subject? Sometimes the sloppiness of this construction means that the first predicate is actually an action of the subject, but the second predicate applies apparently to some missing subject that I guess the reader is supposed to supply, like:

His hand itched to smack the kid, welled up with anger.

Well, the hand didn't well up with anger, so is it the kid welling up? The "he" that owns the hand? Predicates and subjects need to match. If you disagree with that, please find another language to write in.

(Oh, sure, you can occasionally, for some effect you can identify, break the rules. But if you do it all the time, it's you establishing a new rule, not breaking the rules. And if you want to define a rule -and abide by it-- wherein you have doubled predicates with one subject that connects directly with only one of those predicates, well, go ahead. Elucidate. Explain your logic, when the rule applies and when it doesn't, and give examples. If you don't want to do that, don't expect me or the reader to do your work for you.)

Another problem is that the practice leads to redundancy.

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

I see this one a lot, where the writer apparently can't decide between two synonyms and so uses them both. (The former trend, fortunately lost in the mists of time, was to put a slash mark between them: Gilead climbed/clambered up the wall.)

Sin boldly. Choose. Climbed, clambered-- which fits better here? CHOOSE. You are in charge.

There's a great way to handle sentences where one person commits two actions, and yes, it uses two predicates. It also uses a handy little word, sometimes called a "conjunction" because it conjoins two like things (for example, actions). Conjunctions are useful because they not only show that two things are related, but HOW they are related (so "but" shows they are related by contrast or conflict). So:

He reached out and touched her.

Does that sound trite? Yes? Well, maybe it IS trite. Maybe it's too trite to write. Maybe you should make that sentence do more than repeat a long-distance commercial, huh? If you make a grammatical sentence and it says nothing of import, it's not going to suddenly become meaningful because you make it an ungrammatical sentence. Concentrate on saying something that matters.

Something to keep in mind is that editors get everything amplified. What seems to you to be a trendy or clever opening is, by the time you send it to us, rather hackneyed-- twenty other writers have already thought of that and sent it to us. So your clever opening-- oh, like the hero and heroine colliding in the corridor, my favorite clever opening that I've only seen 10K times-- isn't going to seem too clever. And how unique and true will your story seem, if it's opened in a way that opens so many other stories?

I digress. What I meant was-- if the editor has seen your "voice" thingy so much it's become annoying and has its own unflattering moniker and yahoogroups list, maybe it's not the best representation of your voice, and maybe this aspect of your voice is not actually so representative of your uniqueness.

Does that mean you should never break the rules, never listen to your inner rhythms, never try to replicate the character's voice? Of course not. It just means that you shouldn't choose one transgressive technique and use it over and over and over again. Your voice is more than one lapse in grammar, one used, moreover, by a lot of other writers-- and, uh, one that your editor is likely to "fix" anyway.

What are other "transgressive" but common techniques? I think one is the breaking up of perfectly nice sentences into one sentence and a series of fragments, like:
He knew. Knew her. Her perfume. Her perfidy. (Hmm. I like that ... perfume, perfidy. I like it a lot better in one sentence. :)

Again, I don't mean that you should never break rules of grammar and syntax. But there's not power in breaking the rule if you ALWAYS break the rules. We're likely to assume that you just don't know the rules.

Alicia

Quote tag verbing

I'm not one of those who hates quote tags or restricts them to "he said." I like verbs that tell what the quote IS: asked, remarked, commented, observed, shouted, whispered-- verbs that are "say" words (that is, they specifically refer to speech) but are giving the extra info you might get if you were there and could see the facial expression and hear the tone. I also have no problem with adverbs that modify (she said softly) or contradict (he yelled lovingly) the quote verb, as long as it works and isn't redundant (not so fond of "he murmured softly," though I'm sure I've written that :).

So I'm hardly a puritan when it comes to quote tags. But of course, I do draw the line. Now I want you all to think about what you find acceptable and what you find objectionable as a tag for dialogue. (Assume that, for purposes of rhythm and/or speaker identification, you need a quote tag, and an action tag might be too much, distracting from the speech, etc.)

So here are some tag verbs I've seen recently, and maybe you can pick out the ones that annoy you and the ones that don't, and if you have a rationale, let us know. :) Now before or after these is a line of speech, like:
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
That is, these are TAGS. They are to be connected (like she said above) with a comma before or after the speech. They are not sentences on their own. Okay? And the speech line presumably has something to do with the chosen tag, like "You can't divide by zero," he instructed.

he growled
she smiled
she laughed
he grunted
she hissed
she whispered
he ground out
he grated (what is it with "gr" words? Reminds me of the Crazy English guy who pointed out that most English words that begin with "sn" have to do with the nose)
she attempted
she blurted
he added
he teased
he taunted
she explained
he instructed
he snorted
she sneered
he exclaimed
she lectured
she interrogated
he insisted
he rasped
she muttered


Thoughts? Other tags you like or hate?
Alicia

"Must" past tense

Previous post... what is the past tense of "must"? "Had to?" (That is what one source says, though I suspect that is an Americanism.) "Must have"? The sentence I had was complicated because it was in the negative (She must not have expected him/she must not expect him), and so it complicated the verb. Anyway, here is an interesting discussion of this issue-- is "must" its own past tense? It's a bit archaic, maybe, but "must" has been the past tense of "must," and one respondent in that discussion points out that modals (the little verb-words that add a condition to a verb, like could or should) often do dual duty, with present or past tense determined by context or some other indication (like "five years ago"). Interesting, anyway. The respondent mentions that the OED makes a distinction for "indirect speech" (like "He told her that he must go"). I think a character's internal thoughts might count as indirect speech, where there's actually a certain existential confusion of past and present. (Notice how we debate whether a thought should be in present or past tense-- same issue.)

Redlines Twelve: Had and Was

I'm so busy right now. I keep wanting to return to our pitches, and we will, but until I clear a couple of major projects off my desk, we'll have to be content with the next redlines article.

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Once upon a time, someone started a rumor that the words “had” and “was” should be excised ruthlessly from all prose. As with many good rumors, this one grew from a seed of truth. This month, we’re going to examine the reason behind the rumor and give you some guidelines for when to change these verbs.

Weak Verbs, Strong Verbs

Some say that English is a noun-based language, and they might be right. Our dictionaries are packed with nominalizations (verbs turned into nouns, such as “rely” into “reliance”), and with verbs that pull double duty as nouns (such as “walk” and “dance”).

One peculiar result of this noun-dependency is that in sentence structure, the main verb often works harder than all the attendant nouns and modifiers.

Think about the sentence, “She ate eggs, toast and fruit.” In this simple sentence, a single verb describes an action taken on three separate objects. That’s a lot of work for one little word to do.

It is important, then, that the crucial main verb in a sentence be a strong one whenever possible. In a previous column, we examined the concept of strong and weak verbs. To review, the strongest verbs describe a dynamic action. “Cooked,” “danced” and “fluttered” are examples of simple past forms of strong, active verbs.

The weakest verbs describe states of being instead of actions. Conjugations of the verbs “to be” and “to have” are generally weak verbs. Thus, writing, “She had eggs, toast and fruit,” is weaker than writing, “She ate eggs, toast and fruit.” “Ate” is stronger than “had” because it is active.

There is a middle ground of interesting verbs that describe states of being instead of actions. “Yearned” and “desired” are good examples of interesting verbs. Both are stronger than their counterpart, “wanted,” because they amplify of the state of being implied by the weaker verb.

Here, then, is the source of the rumor about cutting “was” and “had.” Conjugations of “to be” and “to have,” when standing alone, are weak verbs in a powerful sentence slot. Of course, they are not the only culprits. Let’s look at some examples.

“We took a walk by the lake.”

In this sentence, the word “walk” is functioning as a noun. The word “took” occupies the main verb slot. If you want to strengthen the sentence, change it to:

“We walked by the lake.”

Similarly,
“He had a fight with the bartender”
becomes
“He fought with the bartender.”

And,
“She was full of hope for a call from Billy”
becomes
“She hoped for a call from Billy”
or, by amplifying the verb,
“She yearned for a call from Billy.”

These may not be brilliant sentences, but they illustrate the point. Do you see how the revised sentences are stronger because verb is stronger? Obviously, there will be times that this particular edit does not apply, but as a general rule, stronger verbs lead to better sentences.

Because “was” and “had,” standing alone, are conjugations of weak verbs, many writers embark on search and destroy missions to eliminate these two words. But “was” and “had” do not always stand alone. Both are needed to form other verb tenses--tenses that are necessary in sentences describing actions in sequence.

When The “Was” Rumor Is Wrong

Let’s start with participles. The past progressive tense is generally formed by adding “-ing” to the end of a verb, and “was” or “were” before it. For example, the past progressive of “to walk” is (singular) “was walking” or (plural) “were walking.” This verb tense is used to describe an ongoing action that is paired with a discrete act. Confused? Let’s look at an example:

“She was walking by the lake when the bomb exploded.”

The action of walking is ongoing, and the explosion is a discrete event that occurs while the walking is occuring. In order for the sequence of events to make sense to the reader, the participial form of the verb--with the dreaded “was”--is necessary. If you switch the past participle for the simple past, you get:

“She walked by the lake when the bomb exploded.”

This sentence is less clear because the timing sequence is not as precise. Did the walk lead to the explosion, or the explosion lead to the walk? Were the two events simultaneous?

When The “Had” Rumor Is Wrong

Now let’s look at past perfect. The past perfect tense is generally formed by placing “had” in front of the simple past form of a verb. So, the past perfect of “to ask” is “had asked.” This verb tense is used to describe events that occur prior to events in the simple past. Again, this definition is confusing, so let’s look at an example that might take place at a wedding reception:

He wanted to dance with her, but when he had asked her at the rehearsal dinner, she had said, “Not likely.”

It’s a clumsy sentence but it illustrates the point. The wedding rehearsal occurs before the wedding reception. If we use the simple past in the main body of the narrative--as we do in most fiction--then the past perfect is needed to keep the timeline straight.

Look at what happens when we edit out “had” from our wedding reception scene:

He wanted to dance with her, but when he asked her at the rehearsal, she said, “Not likely.”

Even with the temporal reference to the rehearsal, this sentence feels disjointed. The time sequencing is slightly off because of the incorrect verb tense. To my eyes, the edited sentence reads as if the entire thing takes place at the rehearsal. The version with the past perfect makes it clear that wanting to dance is placed in the time of the wedding reception, and asking and answering is placed in the time of the rehearsal.

As always, this is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, simple conjugations of “to be” and “to have” are appropriate (as in this sentence--“are” is a form of “to be”).


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Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialogue sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Redlines Four (on avoiding the need for "sequel") can be found here.
Redlines Five (on description) can be found here.
Redlines Six (on passive voice) can be found here.
Redlines Seven (on strong verbs) can be found here.
Redlines Eight (on tension statements) can be found here.
We'll skip Redlines Nine because its topic has already been covered in other posts.
Redlines Ten (on backstory and narrative compression) can be found here.
Redlines Eleven (on parsing and pitching) can be found here.

Theresa

Tips for Noun Conversion

Last week we looked at some of the rationale behind my peculiar obsession with verbs and verb forms, and as usual, the comments gave us all a lot to think about and made me want to do a follow-up post. You commenters are a really bright bunch!

One of the things we looked at in last week's post was how relatively difficult it is to shift a noun into a verb or adjective slot. It’s not impossible, of course, but compared to the way verbs mutate with abandon, nouns are a bit trickier.

So here are some ideas on how to verb a noun in ways that won’t undercut your sentence. In this, as in all writing tricks, your number one goal is clarity.

Look For Strong Associations

Nouns as physical objects are frequently associated with particular actions or events that can more easily translate to verb usages. Think about how the noun is used. “Plate,” for example, is a physical object, a flat panel, usually circular, used to serve food. Because the association between the object (the panel) and the activity (serving food) is so strong, we can say, “I plated the roast,” and everyone will know exactly what activity is implied by the verb.

Or will they? Some nouns have multiple strong associations. I think if there’s one thing we learned from trying to verb the noun “finger” in last week’s post, it’s that finger has more than one possible verb usage. This is because the physical object, the noun finger, has strong associations to two separate actions, pointing and touching.

This leads us to our second tip.

One Word: Context

“Plate” as a noun can also mean a thin metal veneer, a thin sheet of metal or glass, home base, and who knows what else. The thin metal veneer definition is crucial for this discussion, because “plate” as a verb is probably more frequently associated with the act of affixing the veneer to the surface it covers: silver over nickel to create silverplate, for example.

This is why context is critical. We don’t normally apply metal coatings to cooked meats, so saying “I plated the roast” makes its meaning known by the direct object roast. If we had said, instead, “I plated the candelabra,” we might understand by the direct object candelabra that we’re not talking about serving dinner but about attaching a veneer.

Let me give you another example. Last week over on my knitting blog, I talked about trying to con my niece and nephews into manning my swift and ballwinder. (For the non-fiber-obsessed among you, a swift is a contraption for holding coiled hanks of yarn,and the ballwinder is a hand-cranked gizmo that converts the hanks into neat flat cakes.) In that context, I wrote this sentence: Why do the work myself when I can Tom Sawyer someone else into doing it?

Tom Sawyer, obviously, is a proper noun. Without the proper context of me a/k/a the lazy and devious auntie and my young relatives a/k/a those about to be conned into doing my work for me, that verbing wouldn’t make as much sense.

A Special Caution for Adjectival Nouns

A press release crossed my desk this morning for a new book called “The Penis Diet.” Penis, of course, is a noun. We can debate someday about whether we should properly consider it, in this usage, an adjective or an adjectival noun. Putting aside that debate for the moment, there’s a caution contained in the phrase.

What does “Penis Diet” mean? Multiple choice question here. Is it:
a) A diet to change the size of penises (such as “The Belly Diet”)
b) A diet of nothing but penises (a la “The Grapefruit Diet”)
c) Abstention from indulgence in penises (similar to “tv diets” or “shopping diets”)
d) A diet for people suffering from penis problems (a la “The Heart Diet”)
e) Something else altogether

Given the potential for confusion, it’s probably not a coincidence that the book in question is also subtitled. And that's the danger in adjectival nouns (or nouns used as adjectives, or multi-word or compound nouns -- take your pick). Some compounds are so inherently obviously in meaning that we grasp them instantly: cabbage patch, rose water, match point. Some, like penis diet, might not be quite as, er, graspable.

Theresa

On Bananas and Banana Peels

You may have gathered by now that I’m a bit obsessed with verbs, and I thought it might help you all tolerate this obsession if I talked a little about the theoretical basis for this obsession. To really understand this, let’s talk a little about nouns.

Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song about nouns?

Well every person you can know,
And every place that you can go,
And any thing that you can show,
You know they're nouns.
A noun's a special kind of word,
It's any name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun is a person, place or thing.

Our Madlibbish Exercise

Step One.
List five common nouns. Any common nouns will do. Look around your environment if you need ideas. I’ll choose banana, glass, corkboard, calendar and finger.

Step Two.

Insert each noun into the verb slot in the following sentence.“If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to ___________ you.”

So I get,
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to banana you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to glass you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to corkboard you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to calendar you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to finger you.

Only one of my five makes sense, and it’s the one where the noun (finger) has such a strong connotation of action (to point) that the action associated with the noun works in the verb slot. “Finger” becomes a synonym for “point.”

What were yours? Did any of them make sense, or were they mostly nonsense? For the ones that made sense, is there a strong link between the object and its usage that makes the verb form easy to comprehend?

English is Noun-Dependent

Some languages are noun-dependent and some are verb-dependent. English is noun-dependent. The sentence structures are built around solid nouns. A noun is a noun is a noun, and though they *can* shift into other parts of speech, it’s not all that common.

Verbs, by comparison, are slipperly little eels. Verbs mutate. One minute they’re active and healthy main verbs in an independent clause. The next, they’ve shifted form and turned into adjectives (past and present participles) or nouns (gerunds and nominalizations).

Another exercise might clarify this. Take your list of five nouns from above and add an -ing to them and insert them into the following sentence:

_________-ing her friend was a good idea.

I get:

Bananaing her friend was a good idea.
Glassing her friend was a good idea.
Corkboarding her friend was a good idea.
Calendering her friend was a good idea.
Fingering her friend was a good idea.

That’s what happens when you try to turn a common noun into a verb, and the resulting verb into a gerund. It doesn’t work unless the noun already has a strong enough association with a particular action to be synonymous with a verb for that action.

Or take the same -ing form and try it as a present participle:

_____________-ing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.

Bananaing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Glassing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Corkboarding very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Calendering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Fingering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.

Look at what happens to “fingering” when we use it in a way that breaks the association to the act of pointing. It stops making sense.

Can we use nouns as simple adjectives, without the participial form but in their native form? Let’s try.

On Saturday, we attended a very __________ party.

On Saturday, we attended a very banana party.
On Saturday, we attended a very glass party.
On Saturday, we attended a very corkboard party.
On Saturday, we attended a very calendar party.
On Saturday, we attended a very finger party.

Nope. Doesn’t work.

But wait, you say. What about this: “We attended a banana party.” It could be a party to celebrate bananas,right? Well, okay, it could be, but that doesn’t convert banana to an adjective in this usage. What it does is convert “banana party” to a compound noun, two nouns which, when used together, mean something different than either noun standing alone.

My point is this. We quibble about things like participle usage and verb choice because verbs are the slippery banana peels in English sentences. One false step, and your sentence skids out of control. Nouns are solid and sturdy -- ever have an argument about nouns that was rooted in grammar rather than in semantics? -- and comparing them like this might help you all understand why I’m such a nut about verbs. Your nouns will almost always function as nouns. Your verbs? Total free-for-all.

Theresa

There's No Such Thing As a Bad Word

Let's revisit this idea of dull verbs so that there's no confusion, because this is an important point. Actually, two important points.

Point the First
No word deserves to be permanently excised from a writer's vocabulary.

I don't care if we're talking about an F-bomb or a C-word, a stentorian repetition or a Seussian nonsense word, a fourteen-syllable Latin derivative or a conjugation of to be. All words are good words.

Point the Second
The writer's job is to use the right word.

Mark Twain said it best. "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." You see, a word can be a good word without being the right word.

Good writing is largely a matter of precision. By placing well-chosen words in a clear and logical order, you are able to communicate -- not just to communicate, but to evoke a response in your reader. You can make them believe in -- not just believe in, but care passionately about constructs of your imagination. You can make them turn the pages of your story not because they plunked down ten bucks at Border's and might as well get their money's worth, but because they would rather lose sleep than wake up in the morning without knowing what happened in the next chapter.

Never forget that your mission is to engage your reader in every word, every line, every paragraph on every page. Be vigilant. Be daring. But whatever you do, don't be dull.

If the core writing is good, I can forgive a writer who tries and fails to do something technically difficult. Much harder to forgive is lazy, sloppy, careless writing. It's always easier to pull a good writer back than to push a weak writer forward.

So that said, let's look at some of the comments to the post on dull verbs.

Ian said,
But...I like "looked!" It's a useful verb! Although I'll admit I'm guilty of overusing it.

That's sort of the point. If you reach for the same verbs over and over again, your prose will start to grow pale. It's possible you might not be fully engaged in the writing process -- that happens even to the best writers. Or perhaps you draft fast, just to get things down on paper, and miss certain key repetitions during revisions. In either case, useful verbs used properly are fine. Useful verbs overused begin to weaken the prose.

Unhinged said,
I have more of a problem using repetitive nouns. Someone caught me using the word unease twice AND using the word uncertainty, just on one page.

Overused nouns can also create problems, but generally not the same kinds of problems as overused verbs. Did you notice, though, that both your argen-fargen U words are abstract nouns? Do you think that's why they drew the objection? (BTW, thanks for giving me my new favorite swear word. Argen-fargen. Love it, and plan to overuse it thoroughly.)

Whirlochre offers a fantastic rule of thumb.
Use utilitarian words to usher in extraordinary detail.

Yes! Exactly! You want your prose emphasis to go to the detail with the biggest "wow" factor. We talked about this a little in the old Redlines column where I rehashed John Gardner's ideas on how to load a sentence. But your rule of thumb tackles that idea from a different angle, and I thank you for sharing it.

The ever-insightful Green Knight points out that these verb weaknesses often signal other problems:
- she saw this, she noticed that, she observed the other. 'She saw her friend walk down the street' is weak on more fronts than one. If we're inside her POV, we know she's doing the observing, so 'xx walked down the street' is good enough. At which point I realise that those words just aren't working very hard and I can convey much more story in the same amount of space: 'xx stumbled along the gutter' is much better.

Those "telling" verbs do shallow out point of view. If you want to stay in a limited-subjective third person, you're wise to clip them out. Ditto for she thought, she felt, she believed and so on.

Dara shares a technique I use, too.
I find it helpful to do a "find" for certain words and make them red.

Sometimes the numbers can be shocking. Here's a rule of thumb I've learned over time. If you search and replace "ing" with a colored text "ing," the number of replacements less about 20% will be roughly the number of present participles in your text. That 20% comes from words like fingers and wings.

Adrian says,
Everyone claims that said as a dialogue tag is "invisible." I disagree. It's a dull, overused verb.

I think both positions are correct: said is invisible, and said is overused. When words are overused, they flatten out and lose any significant impact on the reader. Said has been flattened to such a degree that we can almost see right through it, like overworked pastry dough.

You're better off overusing beats than overusing said. That is, if you have to overuse anything at all.

Bernita says,
When I see an excess of "interesting " verbs I see a writer trying too hard.

Yes, this is the opposite side of the coin. Heads, the verbs are dull and the reader isn't engaged in the story. Tails, the reader is noticing the words instead of the story. Either way, the reader isn't entering into the fictional world.

Dave flags the word muttered for us. I have to agree with that one. People don't mutter in life anywhere near as much as characters mutter in novels. And then he quotes one of my own example sentences back at me, complete with the verb look. Woo hoo! He's been paying attention! (sigh)

The problem with look -- actually, there are multiple problems with look, but we'll focus on the one that exists in both my sample sentence and in a couple posed by Southern Writer:

"It looks like rain," Tex said.
Mae didn't look mad.
She gave me a warning look.
It looks like a great place.

In all four examples, the same basic dynamic occurs: the reader is getting a conclusion instead of a description. Tex doesn't talk about clouds rolling in and wind picking up or whatever evidence he sees of approaching rain. And because he doesn't talk about it, we don't experience it with him. We get only his conclusion.

Sometimes it's a useful shorthand to say, "It looks like a great place." But most of the time, you're better off describing the place (remember the rule of three -- three brushstrokes set a scene) and letting the reader draw the conclusion himself. This creates an engaged reader, one who is always looking for "clues" in the text.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing such wonderful tips and insights.

Theresa

Bloggus Interruptus

Things have been insanely busy chez nous, which you may have already guessed because of the blog silence. The world blew up on Wednesday, and I've just now caught enough of the falling pieces to start cobbling it back together. Happens sometimes. I'm sure everyone knows what it means to be busy.

I want to respond to some of the comments to the post on dull verbs, but before we do that, I thought I'd post the next Redlines column. This one tackles the same basic idea from a different angle. After we've looked this one over, we'll come back to some ideas and questions about dull verbs.

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Last month, we continued examining subject-verb-object dynamics. This month, we’re going to look at other types of tangled constructions, in particular, sentences that don’t put the strongest verb into the best sentence slot. In other words, we’re going to learn a trick to help you organize sentences for power and impact.

Let’s start with a core idea. As we have already seen, simple sentences contain a main subject, verb, and sometimes an object. But not all sentences are simple -- some are compound, complex, or all dressed up with phrases and clauses. Unfortunately, the more pieces you hang onto the basic subject-verb-object spine, the more likely it is that your sentence will lose focus.

One form of lost focus occurs when you have lots of action words -- verbs of any tense or variation -- competing for attention. Generally, verbs do the heavy lifting in a sentence because they literally tell the reader what is happening, where the action is. But not all verbs are active.

Here’s an example:
He was the kind of man who liked to build model airplanes.

In this case, everything that comes before “who” (the relative pronoun) is the main part of the sentence. Everything that comes after “who” is a subordinate clause. The subject-verb-object slots in the main sentence generally will draw a reader’s attention more than the subordinate idea. This is why we say that ideas of greater importance usually go in the main part of the sentence, and ideas of lesser importance (subordinate ideas, get it?) usually follow the relative pronoun.

The sentence contains three action words: was, liked and build. Of these three, one is very weak (was), one is weak (liked), and one is strong (build).

What’s the difference between a weak and a strong verb? Weak verbs describe states of being, emotional states, preferences, and similar intangibles. Conjugations of the verb “to be” are so weak as to be nearly transparent. The reader’s mind interprets “to be” verbs similar to the equal signs in math equations. “He = the kind of man.” It barely registers, which makes it weak.

Strong verbs, by contrast, are ones that describe an activity or a dynamic state. Strong verbs can be simple enough to include in first grade primers (run, walk) or precise enough to describe distinct shades of activity (waddle, toddle).

In our sample sentence, the weakest verb is the main verb of the main clause. This is a powerful slot in the sentence, and is being filled with a nearly invisible word. So, to maximize impact, remove the weak verb from the strong slot.

Thus,
He was the kind of man who liked to build model airplanes.
becomes
He liked to build model airplanes.

Notice that “who” is nowhere to be found in the second sentence. So the edit completely removes the weak main clause, and lets the formerly subordinate idea claim a more important role. If we wanted, we could take it a step further, by letting the dynamic “build” function as the main verb instead of as an infinitive. Remember, dynamic verbs (build) are stronger than verbs of emotion (liked).

In that case,
He liked to build model airplanes.
becomes
He built model airplanes.

There are shades of meaning between these two sentences that might not warrant the change. For example, perhaps the second sentence would be more appropriate if the man’s job was building model airplanes, and the first sentence would apply more to a hobby. So I present this second-level edit of our original sentence mainly as a way of completing the thought, with the caveat that authorial judgment must come into play.

I want to return now to the word “who.” It’s a danger word, a red flag. Along with its cousins (whom, which, that, whose), “who” signals the possibility of a twisted sentence. Writers are generally aware that “that” is a dangerous word. But how do you untangle sentences loaded with danger words? The process is similar to the one we’ve already described -- identify the verbs, measure their relative strength and weakness, and sort them out accordingly.

Let’s practice on a couple examples.

Past relationship failures were the issue that kept her from trusting Lucas.

You see the weak verb, “were,” in a position of power. The other verb is “kept” and it follows one of our red flag words, “that.” If we move “kept” into the power slot, we get:

Past relationship failures kept her from trusting Lucas.

Let’s try one more:

She’d been in a weird limbo for months, a limbo that made her feel as though her life was going nowhere.

Once again, we have a weak verb as the main verb in the main clause -- been. We have a red flag word -- that. But this time, the writer needed to repeat the object (limbo) in order to append the descriptive clause. Why? Most likely, the original sentence contained a dangling modifier. (Think, “She’d been in a weird limbo for months that made her feel as though her life was going nowhere” -- obviously, the months didn’t make her feel anything, but the limbo did.)

A better fix would be to ditch the weak main verb and avoid dangling by putting the temporal reference right up front and out of the way.

For months, a weird limbo made her feel as though her life was going nowhere.

The sharp-eyed among you will note that "as though" also introduces a clause. It's an adverb clause, not a relative pronoun clause, and we'll leave it be for now.

As with any editorial technique, this is not a one-size-fits-all application. Some sentences will function beautifully with a relative pronoun (who, whom, which, that, whose) and would actually suffer otherwise. I leave you with one of my favorite examples of a good one, the first sentence from “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

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This is the seventh in the Redlines series.
Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialogue sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Redlines Four (on avoiding the need for "sequel") can be found here.
Redlines Five (on description) can be found here.
Redlines Six (on passive voice) can be found here.

Theresa

Dull Verbs

When I'm line editing a manuscript, I watch for certain dull verbs. These verbs are perfectly respectable, and they find their way into every manuscript, but the main problem with them is twofold. First, they are overused. In a language with thousands and thousands of nuanced verbs, surely we can mix them up a bit. That is, every time a character has to change his spatial location from point A to point B, we don't have to always use the same simple, unemotional verbs to accomplish that.

And second, while serviceable, they're not as evocative as they could be. A verb like move, for example, conveys a state of motion without implying anything about the quality of that motion. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of verbs that convey motion plus some other nuance -- fidget, jiggle, twitch, wiggle, writhe, budge, shift, stir, dash, dart, leap, scramble -- really, there are far too many to list.

Before you fuss too much about the overlooked splendors of these plain and sturdy verbs, ask yourself -- do you want readers to think of your prose as serviceable or as evocative?

Without further ado, here's my list. I'm sure there are plenty more besides these, but these are the ones that come to mind now.

get/got
put
push
pull
took
came (not in a sexual sense)
went
reached
looked
had (not in the past perfect)
turned
walked
moved

A special note about looked. I find that far too often, writers reach for "eye cues" to signal action or emotion. She looked away, he looked devastated, she looked into his face for a sign, and so on. Again, these are flat expressions. Lazy, even. I'm to the point where I want to pull out almost every instance of "looked" just to add some pizzazz to the writing.

I'd love to hear which verbs you flag in your own manuscripts.

Theresa