From the Editors Desk: On the Singular Importance of Verbs

In previous posts I encouraged readers to avoid adverbs when possible, and to construct active rather than passive sentences. Today I’ll show you how and why to follow that advice.

A great, or even good, sentence may offer description. A truly great sentence almost always describes something, which means it may layer literary device upon literary device: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, or metonymy. It may offer allusion, poetry, and even lyrical beauty. But other than a sentence that is wholly about a state of being (“It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”—Toni Morrison, Sula), certainly for expository writing, most sentences will offer action. And action requires that we attend to our verbs.

There are many types of verbs, and many grammatical phases of and for verbs: regular, irregular, transitive, auxiliary, modal, and more. My intention here is not to discuss conjugation or grammatical categories, but rather to direct your attention, as a matter of structure, to the singular importance of the verb to the sentence.

The action, and hence interest, of the sentence is contained almost wholly within your verb. Upon the verb pivots the action in its direction, intensity, and duration. The sharper the verb, the more concrete the action, the clearer the meaning, and hence the greater your reader’s interest.

Do your troops march across the field? Or do they advance across the field? Perhaps they charge across the field, or dash across the field. They might even promenade across the field. Each of those verbs, which all nominally mean more or less the same thing, alters the meaning of the sentence, perhaps subtly or perhaps dramatically. In either case they each offer a slightly different way of understanding the action and hence put a different picture of the events under description in a reader's mind.

So it is with all your verbs.

Does your protagonist pick up her purse from the table? Or does she grab it? Perhaps she snatches it. That one difference in the verb potentially discloses an entirely different mental state for your character. Does your captain look through his periscope, or does he peer through it? Does the young able seaman fall off his bunk? Or is he blown off it? Why have a horse run forward when it can gallop forward, or charge forward, or, heaven forbid, bolt forward?

Verbs are everything. Don't write that your character has knowledge when you can write that she possesses knowledge or even enjoys knowledge. Don't treat your verbs with disdain. Verbs are where the magic in the sentence resides. 

Once you start to think about it, you understand that there are many more possible verb choices than you may have realized. Does your protagonist undress himself, or unwrap himself? Is knowledge discovered? Or is it produced? Does a character reveal information? Or disclose it? Even verbs that appear to be very close synonyms may offer very distinct shades of meaning. And in the precision of that meaning, almost certainly, lives the interest for your reader.

Keeping your nouns precise is important, of course, to show subjects doing action and objects being acted upon. It is vital that pronouns agree with their antecedents lest confusion prevail. But the action, the state of affairs, the essence of the story, is always contained in the verb. If your sentence is flat, if the story drags, if confusion prevails, there’s a good chance you have not selected the best verb possible.

If you want to improve your sentences, attend to your verbs. (“Attending” to your verbs, you will notice, is better than “focusing on” your verbs or “directing your attention toward” your verbs.) The well-chosen verb precludes the need for vapid adverbs, drives the action along, reduces the need for yawning exposition, and heightens reader interest.

Select verbs with precision and your sentences will shine.

​--David J. Snyder