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Craft and Draft: To Be or not To Be – Intransitive vs. Transitive Verbs

April 29, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

When I write, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about verbs. I’ll often pause, mid-sentence, staring blankly into the distance, considering the way a verb sounds in combination with the surrounding words, its context in our language outside of the sentence I’m trying to use it in, and whether or not it captures the tone I want for a specific section. I’ve lost hours to mulling over and mashing specific words into verb shaped holes. I’ll sometimes swap in seven or eight synonyms looking for just the right verb, that one jumble of letters that makes the most sense logically, syntactically, and holistically.

So it comes as no surprise that when I edit a peer’s writing, the first thing I look at are verbs. I’ve noticed that a lot of writers tend to put emphasis on their adverbs and adjectives, trying to capture action, personality, and setting with exposition and direct description. While this can work, it often encourages lazy verbs, who, with a just a gentle nudge and a dash of motivation, could be doing a lot more work in the sentence.

Two Flavors of Verbs

If you pull up the definition of a verb in a dictionary, you’ll find “intrans” or “trans” next to it. Sometimes it will say “used without an object” or “used with an object” instead, but it fundamentally means the same thing. These grammatically designate “intransitive” and “transitive,” or more simply, if the verb functions with a direct object or not. Practically, it tells you what kind of relationship the verb has with the subject of the sentence.

An intransitive verb does not take a direct object, and acts as a descriptor for the subject: “I ran.” All the verb does it tell the reader what action the subject took. Nothing more, nothing less.

A transitive verb does take a direct object, and explains how, why, or what the subject did: “I ran the marathon.” This verb has an object (marathon) that receives, and explains, the action of the sentence.

Pretty subtle difference, right? Subtle, but very important. An intransitive verb, even when coupled with prepositions or other adornment (“I ran to the end of the block.”) still only describes, and does little to move the narrative forward. A transitive verb, conversely, unfolds an explicit action or event, and as its name implies, transfers action onto the direct object, propelling your story forward.

Note: There are verbs that can be both intransitive and transitive, depending on context. I used, “to run” above, as an example, but there are many others.

Why does it matter?

Engaging writing captures a reader’s attention and holds onto it fiercely. It needs the reader’s engagement to live. If someone gets distracted or bored and stops reading, the piece might as well not exist. Your writing dies if no one reads it. ::drama intensifies::

Verb use impacts the pacing of a story. Have you ever read a piece of writing, that while topically and thematically fascinating, seemed to drag on and on, and could barely hold your attention? If you analyze the writing, you’ll probably find that the author used a lot of intransitive verbs. There is nothing inherently wrong with these verbs, and at times they are the best choice for a sentence, but they do have the effect of slowing down the natural movement of writing.

Reading is a fluid journey. Our brains have been trained to recognize this transference of action from verb to direct object automatically, but that also means that if we don’t subconsciously see it, we’re likely to lose interest in what we’re reading.

Think of your story or essay like a series of white water rapids propelling your reader down a river, each sentence flowing from the previous one, cascading across the page as a torrent of words. Each intransitive verb is like a rock in the way of the flow, slowing the water down, forcing your reader to linger there for a moment before moving on. If you put too many rocks in the reader’s path, the flow will slow to a trickle, or maybe even stop, prematurely ending your reader’s journey to the end of your piece.

Transitive verbs keep the flow consistent, unbroken, and sweep your reader down the river of words with the energy and enthusiasm of an unhindered waterfall.

To Be, Is, Was

While normal intransitive verbs can be troublesome, the single most common intransitive error comes from the verb, “to be.”

It makes sense. “To be” is our existential default, how we describe the delicate intricacies of what it means to be human, how we articulate our feelings and describe ourselves to others. It’s a wonderful, necessary verb, with one fatal flaw. “To be” is always intransitive. It’s somewhat of a grammatical anomaly; “to be” sets up a comparison with the subject and a subject compliment (not a direct object), and as a result, does nothing but offer flat description. Because of this odd behavior, “is,” and “was” never move a story forward.

For example:

“Alex is a writer.”

In this sentence, “is” acts as an equals sign for the subject (Alex) and the subject compliment (a writer). Alex = a writer. The sentence contains no action. It serves only to describe the subject, and plant some exposition in the piece. The problem is that the verb – arguably the heart of the sentence – is doing no work, floating idly in the middle, like it’s on vacation or something.

Why waste a perfectly good verb?

Let’s rewrite that sentence with a transitive verb:

“Alex writes essays.”

We still capture the idea that Alex is a writer, but now we get more information in the form of the direct object (essays), and know what he writes. The verb works hard here, giving us information about the subject, while simultaneously providing action. Alex actively writes essays, doesn’t just exists two-dimensionally as a writer. The transitive form (in this admittedly simple example) conveys more information than its intransitive counterpart, and makes our monkey brains happy by using language’s natural propensity to keep rolling onward.

To Edit, To Revise

Scrutinize your verbs. When you write a sentence, look to see what action the sentence tries to convey, and then see if your verb accurately portrays that. You might subconsciously be using a form of “to be” because it sounds natural, not realizing that you’re slowing down your own narrative and holding a reader back.

Do a search for “is” and “was” and see if you’re using them as “filler verbs” where a more appropriate transitive verb might work better. Intransitive verbs do serve a purpose, and there are times when you intentionally want to slow your reader down, either to delay the payoff of a certain scene, or to have them really focus on a certain detail or description. “To be” is a great, unfortunately overused verb, partly because it’s so malleable, partly because few writers stop to check if the verb they’ve used is contextually a “best-fit.”

If you can start including more transitive verbs, you’ll almost certainly improve the flow and pacing of your writing, and keep a reader’s attention from wandering off to cat videos. I’d say, given how many cat videos I find myself watching daily, that’s a win.

Proper application of a Subject - Verb - Subject Compliment sentence.

Proper application of a Subject – Verb – Subject Compliment sentence.

Craft and Draft: Fixing What Ain’t Not Broke

October 19, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

You’re belly button-deep in a manuscript that has taken over your soul and filled you with a writing fervor so intense that you haven’t eaten or gone to the bathroom in 18 hours. Everything is going amazingly well; the characters are organic and their motivations are varied, believable, even human at times. Your narrative arc is building tension exactly like you imagined, and that dramatic climax you’ve got tucked so deftly up your sleeve is about to drop with an impact that could be measured in megatons. You got this writing thing down. 

And then you give your manuscript to a friend/editor/someone you’ve strapped to a chair and forced to read your work.

Their feedback isn’t the glowing awesomeness you expected from such a genre-altering, life-changing, world-healing piece of writing. They found plot problems. Big ones. Characters who seemed flat or underdeveloped. They even found some language that just straight up didn’t make sense.

How dare they question your art!? You are the master of this story, a demi-god of the world your brain manifested and turned into many many pages of words. This lowly reviewer just doesn’t get it. You stomp around like a child in snow boots, cursing their name and reminding yourself how awesome you are with impromptu bathroom mirror pep-talks.

After some time away from your story, you sit down and read it yourself. Suddenly all of those mistakes our reviewer pointed out are pretty damn obvious

Oooooops.

How do you fix it (and apologize to your editor for your tanturm)?

1. Admit you have some issues

Not personally. I don’t care if you’ve got a coke habit for your coke habit. I’m talking about writing issues here.

Some of your characters may not be working very well. Hell, your main character may not be working very well. Before you can fix anything, you have to accept that your first draft will have flaws. And they may be major. And there may be a lot of them. And it may require a shit load of editing and rewriting to fix.

That’s OK. The first step is acknowledging you have a problem. It can be really hard to separate your emotions from something you have worked so hard on, but 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 you won’t get it perfect the first time around. There is absolutely no shame in revising. There is a lot more work, but no shame.

Even famous authors face these issues. Erik Larson (author of multiple national bestsellers like Isaac’s Storm and Devil in the White City) nearly didn’t use Isaac as the protagonist of his book because he felt he was “uni-dimensional.” This is after (what I assume, citation needed) hundreds upon hundreds of hours of research about Isaac, his life, and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Sometimes you have to make hard choices for what is best for your writing, even if it means throwing away countless amounts of hard work.

It’s not fun and it’s not easy, but sometimes, you just gotta take one for the story.

Remember when I asked if I could borrow your speeder? Well, I had a little accident. There was an Ewok and a tree and some rebel scum; long story. Anyway, I swear it’s not as bad as it looks.

2. Reduce, reuse, recycle

A lot of writing problems come from the desire to be super-duper complex, as if that will somehow make everything instantly more compelling and multidimensional. While, yes, tossing a running chainsaw to a juggler already keeping an angry ocelot and a canister of tear gas in the air would certainly be entertaining, it definitely opens him up to a much bigger margin of error.

Troublesome and unclear plot points can be resolved by removing or reducing the number of conflicts. Sometimes this means removing a character from a scene entirely, or removing a scene that you thought was a moment of pure genius. You may have just made to many allusions to outside works or other parts of your own work that make an entire section lose its edge.

Brevity is the soul of wit, but also makes for crisp, coherent writing.

When you reread one of your major plot-moving scenes, stop yourself anywhere you start thinking about another point in the story or something else entirely. Chances are, if the section can’t hold your attention, it will also send your readers off on a mental tangent, and even possibly cause them to stop reading.

Unless you’ve got a lot of practice under your belt, don’t try to over complicate things. Simple characters with clearly defined motivations in well described, relevant settings will always be more interesting to read than crazy shit that is just in there to crazify other shit.

If your ultimate goal is publicly readability, these are the choices (and possibly sacrifices) you have to make. Remember, just because you remove something, doesn’t mean you can’t add it back in later, or rewrite it and use it somewhere else in the story, or at the very, very least use it in another story.

Writing is awesome like that.

No, dude, I’m sure. You totally don’t need that piece. It’s for decoration or something. Listen, trust me, I saw a video of how to do this on Youtube.

3. Bust out the tools

If you aren’t going to get it right on the first try, you probably also won’t get it right on the second. Or third. Or fifteenth.

OK, you might have it right by then, but revising is definitely not a one-and-done process. It’s a lot more like whittling; you slowly shave away layers and carve out details until the perfect look and design appears where a hunk of plain ‘ole wood sat before.

Spend some time revising character, then move to dialogue. When that seems a little better, move on to scene, setting, and contextual detail. Revise the exposition along with the action. Slowly but surely, the themes of the piece will stick out their little, poignant heads, and your stylistic voice will yell at them to come play in the sun.

But you’ve got to put in the work. If editing something of length seems daunting, try splitting it into chapters, acts, or some other more digestible chunks. Writing programs like Scrivener work really, really well for this, but if technology just ain’t ‘cho thang, printing it out and making little piles works just as well.

If you’ve got a short form piece (let’s say, sub-5000 words) just suck it up and edit the damn thing. It isn’t going to magically get better the longer it sits on your hard drive. The sooner you get your mind-wrench on the literary nuts and bolts of the story, the sooner it will be super-mega-awesome and the sooner random people will want to pay you tens upon tens of dollars for it.

OK, I admit: this might not be right. But! All of the pieces are technically attached. I’m definitely putting these hours down on my timesheet.

4. Get perspective

Unless you spend some time away from your writing, you’ll never see your own mistakes. Forest for the trees, or whatever.

When you’re at a natural stopping point (read: you’ve exhausted your entire reserve of mental energy and would barf if you tried to drink another cup of coffee) put the piece away for a while. Save it to a folder that’s a couple of folders deep. Print it out and stick it under your couch. Whatever you need to do to get some creative distance from the thing.

I’ve done this countless times for homework assignments, blog posts, personal essays, and yes, even full length novel/novellas. You’ll be amazed what a little bit of down time can do for your worldview on things. Specific things you just couldn’t live without in an earlier draft will suddenly seem trivial. Other weird, half-developed ideas will suddenly become subplots or great cultural commentary that you missed or ignored the first time around.

Step away from the computer. Go do some chores or play some video games or take a trip to the ruins of Pompei. Your writing will thank you (and be better) for it.

Yea, OK, No. It doesn’t look any better from up here. In fact, I think it looks worse. Let’s look at it from way over there, far far away from this mangled wreckage.

Step 5: Rinse, repeat

This isn’t really a step, it’s just a reminder to redo all the other steps once you think you’re done with them. This process may seem tedious at first glance, but as a personal favor to me (and your Right-Brain), try it at least once.

If your writing doesn’t look, sound, and feel better from a round of acceptance, reduction, perspective, and editing, then I’ll buy you a beer.

Hey, let’s not tell Lord Vader about this whole “I crashed a really expensive speeder that I wasn’t supposed to be riding in the first place” thing. I feel like he’d overreact and get all ” force-choke-a-stormtrooper” on us.

Craft and Draft: Fully Licensed Preacher Practitioner

August 9, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

There’s nothing worse than those guys who sit and give you advice, but seem to forget it all when they themselves run into the same problem they have been advising about. Like the guys who, with supreme confidence, tell you exactly how to pick up girls but always seem to be the ones slumped over a bar stool crying into a mojito by themselves at the end of the night.

Those guys suck.

So in an effort to show that the advice I have been giving isn’t just magically pulled out of my metaphorical ass: Behold! An example of me literally practicing what I preach.

A nonfiction article of mine about the plights of shaving went live today on “The Good Men Project” – http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-shaving-face/

Despite it only being slightly over 1000 words, this piece was part of a pretty extensive revision cycle:

1. The first draft was finished on February 19, 2012. It was roughly 1500 words.
2. I trimmed it down to 1300 words, cleaned it up dramatically, and completed the second draft of February 27, 2012.
3. I submit this piece to a workshop of 10 of my Hopkins peers in the fabulous Cathy Alter‘s “Contemporary Nonfiction” class on April 10, 2012. It was about 1275 words at the time.
4. Based on that feedback, I revised, removed, changed, restructured, and added to the existing draft. Total word count, 1150.
5. Revised again, chopping out irrelevant sections, and revising some of the jokes to be more absurd, because hey, why not?
6. Finished one more round of changes, cleaned up the grammar and formatting, and submitted it to The Good Men Project on May 22, 2012.
7. Article was accepted and published on August 9, 2012. Final word count: 1041.

So there you have it. A single 1041 word article took about 4 whole months to draft, revise, pitch, and publish.

Good things come to those who wait. The good news is, you can work on tons of other things concurrently.

Get to writing (or revising)!

This is a picture of me writing this post. A little meta-POV for your Thursday.

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