Strong Verbs Make Strong Writing

You Want Me to Delete My Words? My Verbs?

 

  http://www.creativejuicesbooks.com/action-verbs.html

Creative Writing Tips on Action Verbs #1: Vivid Verbs Are Powerful Verbs

Verbs energize. An action verb generates more drama and emotion than a noun, adjective or adverb of similar meaning. Compare:

The children wept when their dog died. (Strong verbs: wept, died)The children shed tears over the death of their dog. (Nouns: tears, death)The children were sad when their dog was dead. (Weak verb to be + adjectives: sad, dead)

 

Use vivid verbs, powerful verbs, to fizz up the action, paint word-pictures, and evoke feelings in your readers. 

 

This is good advice. Strong verbs can make all the difference in your writing. Scan through your writing, your poem, your shorty story, your chapter, your essay, scan through your writing and circle all of your verbs. Read it out loud. If you see words like, "seems", "appears", empty verbs, get rid of them, and replace them with stronger verbs. If you see a sentence like "There are a lot of cats in the house," replace it with "Cats ran across the house, through the kitchen, clawing the couches, the wooden chairs, the mahogany dresser and my my five hundred dollar coach purse." Use every sentence to move the story forward, to reveal information about the character, to develop the setting, to create tension. Every sentence should advance the story line. Every sentence should matter, and every verb, every word, should be matter. If it doesn't, delete it. 

I'll see you tomorrow! Have fun writing!

-Emelina Minero