McCall Hoyle lives in the foothills of the North Georgia Mountains with her husband, children, and an odd assortment of pets. She is a middle school teacher and librarian. When she’s not reading, writing, or teaching, she’s probably playing with or training one of many dogs. You can learn more about her at mccallhoyle.com.
If you read September’s post on verbs, you already know how this English teacher and author feels about them. If you have any doubts about the significance of this little part of speech, go back and read last month’s post. Or even better, go read Stephen King’s book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Every serious writer should read it at some point. Also, everything that applies to using vivid action verbs in the fiction that King writes applies to writing in all genres. Since this is a teen writing blog, I’m assuming most of you are still students. So stick with me. This post might improve your next essay grade as much as it improves your chances of getting published someday. How’s that for helpful?
So just to recap—verbs are the fulcrum of every sentence. In fact, if you don’t have a verb, you don’t have a sentence—just like you don’t have a seesaw without something for the long board to teeter or hinge on. Last month, we focused on replacing weak fulcrums or linking verbs like is, am, was, were, are with vivid action verbs like, hiss, kiss, jab, waltz, etc. Obviously, the verb hiss provides much greater imagery than the verb is. Readers want stories to unfold like movies in their heads. The way writers produce these visual images is by painting pictures with words. Therefore, in order to get the greatest bang for our metaphoric bucks, we must aim to choose verbs that create images as often as possible. Â
Your last assignment was to go back through a couple of pages of your writing and highlight all the linking verbs and then replace as many of them as possible with stronger verbs. Hopefully, you tried it and were amazed. Remember all writers use linking verbs, even the prominent Stephen King. Our jobs as writers of fiction is to push ourselves to use as few of them as possible.
Last month, we focused on weak linking verbs. I think we all agree that strong action verbs rule, but no discussion of verbs would be complete without addressing the third and final verb type—the pesky helping verb. One thing we need to remember is that there is some overlap between linking and helping verbs. For example, is, am, was, were, and are can act like helping verbs as well as linking verbs. Don’t get too hung up on identifying one verb type versus the other, just remember that these kinds of verbs might be red flags. They might signal that you’re getting a bit lazy and need to do a little revising. Remember, a verb is a helping verb when it is combined with a second verb to create a verb phrase. Also remember that there are lots of other helping verbs, like have, has, had, do, does, did.
For the grammarians in the crowd, who really want to understand the details, here’s an example to help.
Linking verb:
Lauren is nice. (The verb is links the subject, Lauren, to an adjective that describes Lauren, nice.)
Helping verb or verb phrase:
Lauren is walking by the cute boys and pretending not to notice them. (Here we’ve smashed two verbs together—the weak helping verb is and a form of the action verb walk to create a verb phrase.)
           Are linking or helping verbs wrong? Absolutely not, but they are often a sign that we can push ourselves harder as writers. So how do we eliminate helping verbs you ask? In some instances, we can simply delete them.
           Example: Lauren is walking by the waterfall.
           Versus: Lauren walks by the waterfall.
That’s easy, right? Oftentimes, we have to work harder. Let’s go back to the first example:
Lauren is walking by the cute boys and pretending not to notice them.
           We could simply revise to: Lauren walks by the cute boys and pretends not to notice them.
           Or we could channel our inner Stephen Kings and go one step further: Lauren sashays by the cute boys and pretends not to notice them.
If you’re familiar with the verb sashays, you see a much better visual of how Lauren is moving as the movie plays in your head.
That’s a lot of grammatical information to digest, but if you take revising your verbs one step at a time, it’s a super easy way to help your readers get lost in your writing and keep turning the pages.
On a side note, it’s unrealistic to believe that we will completely banish helping verbs from our writing. I’ve used a ton of them in this short post, although I challenge you to read some of my fiction and try to find pages with more than a handful on any page. And of course, dialogue is an exception. Use all the weak helping verbs you like in dialogue. Sadly, we humans are even lazier in our speaking than we are in our writing. Needless to say, we use helping verbs constantly when we speak.
It’s time for me to stop preaching and for you to start revising. Best of luck! I’d love to hear about your lightbulb moments and/or how your writing improves as you push yourself to paint images with more vivid action verbs.
For more practice, choose a couple of random pages from your favorite book. Highlight all the helping verbs and verb phrases on each page and compare yourself to one of your writing heroes.
When you’re finished, leave a comment to let me know what you noticed about your writing, how you revised the verbs, what you learned, etc.
Thank you for this post!!! This one and your previous one have been super helpful to me!!!!!! And also, thanks for clarifying that it’s okay to use linking/helping verbs in dialogue. ‘Cause I started to notice I use them a lot in my dialogue and was worrying a bit. So, this has been SUPER helpful!!!!
Thanks again!
Why do we always seem to post within five minutes of each other? ?
? I have no idea. Eventually it’s going to become a challenge to see who will post first!
Challenge accepted.
Haha! I love this. If it’s helpful for your competition, our posts go live at 6am central time.
YES, Stephanie, that helps! Alright, Ally, let’s do this!!!!
Great minds think alike.
You are going DOWN, Issabelle! ??
Haha, we’ll see….
I’m reading this and laughing so hard right now! ?Good luck with your challenge; I’m excited to see who gets there first!
Thanks, Riya!! I have a bad feeling it’s not going to be me. ?
Yay! So happy I could help, Isabelle! 🙂
It’s gonna be me. ?
Oh, really? I have a plan!! (Okay, actually my plan is pretty pathetic, but *shrugs* it’s the best I’ve got.) Question though: is this like a one-time competition, or on-going?
That is yet to be determined. *Evil laugh* I know what I have to do. *Fades away in the darkness that is conveniently me*
Hahaha. You know, Ally, we should get an award for most funny conversation on Go Teen Writers.
This was a great post! In my English and Lit class, we are reviewing story structure. Story. Structure. I learned that in second grade. The only time I remember talking about verbs was, like, last year. But one of my favorite things to do is actually replace all my weak verbs with better ones. This is when my friends the synonyms come in. I might have misunderstood the post, but it’s time I go off on a tangent about something else.
Bri and Lucas walked quietly into the dark room.
Bri and Lucas slipped soundlessly into Dalilah’s dark room.
Sorry this is so long. I just got out of bed after attempting WILD. It didn’t work, though. ?
I think you would really enjoy Stephen King’s book, ON WRITING! Hope you’re waking up now! LOL
This was actually what I was just learning about in my Humanities class, but you taught it in such an awesome way! I shuddered when I started to learn about them, so now, thanks to this post, I may have the courage to tackle them in my exam! Thanks for helping me understand it better.
I just went through my manuscript and found something to fix. Originally, my sentence went “It was coming their way.” Now, with the help of those nice action verbs, it goes “The giant lumbered toward the sled, heading right toward them.”
Love this! So helpful! Thanks for sharing!
Love this. This step makes writing vivid. Do you have a go to list of “Steven King” verbs?
This is awesome! Thanks!
Quick question, are you planning on doing a NaNoWriMo series for November?
Ooh, good question. I would like to know this as well.
I think Jill is the only one of us who is doing NaNo this year. We have some posts from previous years, but we don’t have anything planned for this year. (That I know of. It’s possible Jill and Shan just haven’t told me!)
Have you participated before?
https://goteenwriters.com/2018/10/22/37-story-brainstorming-questions-to-help-you-prepare-for-nanowrimo/
https://goteenwriters.com/2018/10/31/5-last-minute-nanowrimo-prep-steps/
Nope, never done NaNoWriMo. Normally, I just set myself huge, unreachable challenges whenever I feel like it. Like in January this year I wrote about 50K and this month I tried to complete my WIP’s first draft but that didn’t work. (Mainly because i’m writing second draft and first draft about the same time. That’s ’cause I’m weird.)
NaNoWriMo is my favorite part of November besides my birthday. My first time was last year, and I had soooooo much fun. I, being the flip-floppy girl of the pencil that I am, start a NEW novel EVERY NOVEMBER. I might just keep working on my scary story series. It’s one of the only things that I actually finished, so, obviously, it’s awesome. And short. (We don’t talk about the word count.)
Good news- I finished a tiny story! Like, actually finished something. I’m so proud of myself ?
Great job, Ally! That’s awesome!? I have a hard time finishing things as well.?
YAAAAAYYYY! That’s super awesome. You should totally be proud of yourself.
Fantastic, Ally! Congratulations!
Ok, Issabelle-
Tomorrow, the new post goes up.
Who will comment first… you… me… Willy Wonka… the giant eagles… who knows?