Are Weak Verbs Ruining Your Writing? Make an Impact with Stronger Action Words

Join Drake and Marie as they how to banish weak writing and use the right verb! 
 
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Transcript

Marie watched the screen where Drake was talking. You don't need that, right? Because Marie is your P.O.V. character. So nobody else can be watching the screen. So Drake spoke on this from the screen, you know, or on the screen or however you want to phrase it.

Yeah, I would say take it to the diagraming And what, you know, sentence structure is all about controlling what the reader looks at. So if I write Marie watched as Drake came at her with a knife. Now I'm looking at Marie as she's looking at something in this case probably terrified, as opposed to just, you know, Drake came at Marie with the knife, you know, now.

And so if we diagram those in the first way, the subject is Marie and the action is watched. But that's not the action of the sentence. Not not really. Not the one we want the reader to focus on. Drake You know, charge to Marie with a knife. Now the subject is Drake, and the action is charged. And that is such a stronger image to allow the reader to see.

Releasing your inner dragon.

Would you like to start.

So I feel like this is one of those questions that could be asked without using words like I feel? Maybe. Maybe one can go a little more potent on the question. What do you think? How would you phrase the question.

I don’t write out of my mouth. Putting me on the spot.

And that was an example of a much stronger verb that at least creates an image of not writing out of your mouth right.

Well, this is why, you know, we start there. This is why we say you can't write the way you talk. Because we talk very simply. We talk very passively. We talk very redundantly. We use a lot of adverbs and just crappy ways of talking because that's just how we communicate. That is good person to person communication. Plus, we rely on body language and facial expressions and inflections and in pros.

You don't get any of that. And that's why I always say you can't write the way you talk because it will read weak.

And one of the ways in which you can massively and dramatically improve the strength of your writing is by choosing the correct verbs, not necessarily the strongest verb, but the correct verb for the image that you want to paint. And that's what we're going to talk about today, is how to use your verbs correctly to paint a good image in the reader's mind.

I think that's the fundamental argument that a lot of people have. Some people, not many, but a few people read my stuff and go, you're way too descriptive. You don't leave anything to the reader's imagination. You don't do anything for them. You know, you let when I write, because I did have this discussion with a fan years ago and they were like, you know, I love your storytelling, but you're way too detailed.

I wish you would be less detailed when I'm writing. I don't give any detail to my to my fans. He also didn't use punctuation or capitalization, so when he says he gives nothing to the fans or to the readers of his stuff, he literally means nothing, you know? And so.

So so he was he was obviously on a weird path. But I have heard and I have seen successful authors who are less descriptive, who do write minimalist.

Yeah.

And that is 100% a valid, a valid style choice.

There's nothing likely to be new on the genre.

Yeah.

You know, a murder mystery is about the murder mystery. It's about the details of the world and the sure and everything like that. Like it is for us, an epic fantasy.

Yeah. And it's also it's also a case, like I says, like some some writers do want to leave more to the imagination of the reader, do want to give the reader some scope of imagination, whatever. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But no matter if you are a descriptive writer or not, you still are. And in fact, it's even more important for minimalist writers.

You have to choose the right verbs. The verb is the center point of your of your sentence. It's the it's the part of your sentence that's literally doing the work. It creates the strongest image in your readers mind if I say I punch the screen versus I touch the screen? These evoke two very different images, and the only thing that changes is the verb.

So why can one have verbs that are too strong?

Because it doesn't paint the image that we're trying to paint.

So if you know, I say if I'm trying to show you that the car next to me bumped into me and I wrote the car next to me, slammed into me like, that's going to paint a very violent collision, which is where you might have somebody write, you know, add those crappy ly adverbs to, you know, the car gently slammed into me.

You have these weird images that are created in the reader's mind?

Dumbledore shouted calmly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, the verbs are definitely can definitely be too strong. And if you find yourself following a verb with a adverb that is meant to soften the verb, you've you've made the verb too strong.

Or using an adverb to strengthen a verb, you've made the verb too weak.

Exactly. Yeah. So which is the other way around? That's. It's like, you know, I. I thrust my fist forward heavily, you know?

Right.

Give the reverse.

Yeah, right.

And it's basically the intent is either to strengthen the verb or to weaken the verb, and either way you've used the wrong verb.

Yeah. And that's, that's one of the three, there's three points that I always teach for adverbs. It's not, I'm not against y adverbs. There's always a place for them. I think it's silly to say cut them all out. But there are three ways that you should never use an ly adverb. And one of them is because you use the wrong verb.

So you're using in an ly adverb to strengthen the fact that you chose a weak verb, or you're using an ly adverb to to lessen because you chose a too strong of a verb. And so, yeah, that's and that's just dumb. Here's adding a word for no reason.

Just apropos the discussion about descriptors. The peanut gallery put a great chat in there where they said that Jane Austen never really describes locations of people physically, but always describes the personality or how they hold themselves. Which is true. You very rarely get an actual physical description of the person. You get their personality and what they look like and the feelings the place evoked, which is probably why she's so popular.

You know, 200 years later, because she connects on a very emotional level with a reader rather than on a physical one. Like I know what her locations feel like, you know, the same with the Bronte sisters actually thinking about them. Now, I know what those locations. I know what Withering Heights feel like, you know, I know what these locations feel like, even if I can't describe them.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the way I try to write. You know, I've told this story before about when in the second book of the Genesis saga, when the decision was made to put the characters on the main cover and the artist was like, Hey, I don't have time to reread book one, can you go through and send me where you describe the main characters?

And I was like, I didn't describe the main characters. And he was like, Yeah, you did. I know exactly what they look like. I'm like, Yeah, you know exactly what they look like. But I never describe them. Like, that's all on you. And it's it's the way you describe them in a way that the person can kind of visualize what they feel is the best for them for that character.

And so I do I do like that much better than now. I do like to give one or two details. You know, Blyth has silver eyes and white hair like I do like those few little details to help paint. But for the most part, you know, I don't go into, you know, how plump her lips are or the shape of her nose.

Or.

Her other. In other words, you know, your your books won't be quoted on men writing woman subreddit.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no.

That is a subreddit. You should only visit if you want to see true horror.

Because.

I didn't know.

That there are some descriptions.

Yeah, I didn't even know that subreddit existed. No, I mean, I if. If it's important to the story, I bring it in, but. But it's because it's important to that moment or whatever.

I mean, like in her opening chapter, there's some guys that are manhandling her and, and basically treating her as an object. And so there is some references to, you know, different body parts.

But I don't describe a woman by their body parts like I don't the woman walked in her you know, I don't know how to do it. Are her voluptuous hips like I don't I don't even know how to write something like that. So, yeah, I don't describe people by their body parts.

Yeah, But yeah, so

the verbs are a very central part of all of that description. All of the discussion we've had up to now. Do you have like, besides weak, besides words that all sorts l y adverbs, do you have any other like signs of a weak verb that you want to highlight?

Yeah. I mean the, the big thing that most people fail on is when they're using a verb that's too weak is because they're using a verb that doesn't actually paint anything.

So,

you know, I handed the ticket to the person behind the counter. Like it doesn't really paint any picture. I bet you you don't see any actual motion or anything like that as opposed to if you did something like, you know, I thrust the ticket at the person behind the counter that gives a sense of anger or frustration or whatever.

So just handing doesn't add anything. It just it gives the user the motion, but doesn't give you any emotion. You know, I walked into the room versus I stumbled in or I strode into the room or whatever. So one of the things that brought.

Me into the room.

Right, exactly. So what I'm looking for verbs to do is to do more than just paint the visual of the scene. You know, this sentence that I'm doing. I wanted to add something more. I wanted to actually give to the story.

But now that being said, it is entirely possible to go overboard and and to use really weird verbs that have no actual purpose in being in a sentence and, and the kind of the picture they paint can end up strange.

Yeah. There's a there's so in my and my shirt don't tell a class when I'm talking about verbs, you know, I start off with Drake hit the wall and like everybody can see that. But if I wrote Drake bashed the wall. Bashed brings with it something that hit doesn't or Drake slaps on the wall or Drake, you know, whatever.

But the last one I write, which is technically correct, Drake percussive to the wall and it's just like, unless the wall is a big, gigantic drum, it's a weird way of saying that. So our producer, Monique, who's always given us things to watch before these things, just kind of help think about things. One of the videos that she did send to us about this was a girl talking about verbs and she said she said, Well, I have this one that I just wrote and I really like it.

And I know it's weird, but I really like it. And it was the snow cradled in the sun light and I'm like, I don't even know what I'm supposed to paint with that verb.

So

it's just weird. Although she did have one that was really nice because she was talking about an exercise that she was doing that her teacher made her do.

And the she was talking about common combinations like, you know, snow falls, leaves, rustle. You know, we're used to these pairings of things. And so the teacher was doing this exercise and one of them was guillotine. And, you know, we always get like guillotine slices or guillotine or whatever. And she said one of the students came up with the guillotine, widowed the head.

And I'm like, see, now that's actually poetic and, and kind of really cool. She, you know, she was saying the same thing. But yeah, so there you can use some unique verbs or, you know, in this case a noun that your verbs or whatever. And that's actually really cool because it does paint this poetic picture. I don't know what to picture in my head when the snow griddles in the sunlight.

I honestly guess it's supposed to be kind of like a barbecue, but I don't know. That doesn't seem quite.

I don't know. I've seen that. I've seen a lot of snow and I've seen a lot of snow and sunlight. And I'm not quite reaching the picture, I think.

But even if even if you wanted to go that something like sizzled or, you know, something like that, if you want to give it the baking kind of thing, griddle just doesn't. I know that was a very odd choice for me.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not saying she's wrong. Yeah, she has the ability to do whatever she wants to do in her writing, but those are the things that. So to me.

I think one other thing that we do just need to touch on is that you can in fact turn a noun into a verb. In English, you always can. This is a perfectly acceptable thing, but make sure you understand what the what picture is going to be painted in in that in that use of the

noun. When I'm talking about people who write really shallow themes I say you've Michael Bay’d your theme. Yeah and everyone who's seen a michael Bay movie gets that. yeah. No it's just a movie with big explosions and no depth whatsoever. So I have verb, even a proper noun. I mean, that is a beautiful thing about that. Yeah, but, but so to me what I was going to say earlier, a lot of this stuff comes how I see it as just like a typo.

If I have a sentence as a typo in it, where it has a word that you know doesn't mean what you think it means or whatever, or is misspelled or is missing a word, or it's just a poorly constructed sentence. So it's the information is there, but you might have, you know, a dangling participle or whatever. And those things become confusing to read those pull the reader out of the story.

Doing something like the snow griddled under the sun also pulls the reader out of the story and not in a good way. And so that's the same thing. So even though you might go, well, that's a clever way of thinking about that, it's still a clever way that's going to pop me out of the story. And I'm no longer watching the movie because I'm like, Okay, that's weird.

That's a weird way to say that. It's a weird way to do whatever. And so I feel the same way about that. You know, if you had something like the Guillotine widowed, the Baron's head off, you're not going to be popped out of the story as much as the first example. And so that's the thing that I do caution about trying to get tricky with your verbs.

If they bring an emotion that isn't there or the other side of it. You know, my other answer to your question of what else do you look for? Is cutting out ambiguity. So Drake realized what he said was dumb. So realized I can't paint that. You know, that's that's something that is this vague statement that I don't know what you you know, I'm going to see something, but it's not going to be what you necessarily want me to see.

It might be different. And so, you know, if you write Drake sighed, shaking his head in remorse over what he just said or something like that. So now you're showing me what it means to for Drake to realize that what he said was dumb. Yeah. So that's the other thing that I'm looking for. Those vague words suddenly is the realize the news, the all of that.

Sometimes they have their place. And again, I'm never saying cut all of them or anything like that, but it's definitely not a great choice.

Normally when when you're when your filter words are doing the majority of the heavy lifting in the sentence you're pro probably using the wrong verb.

Well, let's go now filtering, because filtering is a verb that becomes your action. So, why don't you go down that.

Okay, so filtering is basically when you have additional pieces in the prose that you don't need, right? For example,

Marie watched the screen where Drake was talking. You don't need that, right? Because Marie is your P.O.V. character. So nobody else can be watching the screen. So Drake spoke on this from the screen, you know, or on the screen or however you want to phrase it.

Yeah, I would say take it to the diagraming And what, you know, sentence structure is all about controlling what the reader looks at. So if I write Marie watched as Drake came at her with a knife. Now I'm looking at Marie as she's looking at something in this case probably terrified, as opposed to just, you know, Drake came at Marie with the knife, you know, now.

And so if we diagram those in the first way, the subject is Marie and the action is watched. But that's not the action of the sentence. Not not really. Not the one we want the reader to focus on. Drake You know, charge to Marie with a knife. Now the subject is Drake, and the action is charged. And that is such a stronger image to allow the reader to see.

And then, yeah, as long as you've done your job and as long as you're writing in a limited P.O.V., then we know who the P.O.V. is. So therefore everything that is seen, heard, smell, touch, felt, experienced is being experienced by that P.O.V. And this really comes down to a lack of confidence both in themselves as writers, because they're like, if I don't say Marie, watch Drake do it, then how will they ever know that it was Marie who was watching?

I don't know, because you did a good job in setting up the P.O.V. and everything that scene is said, you know, seen by Marie. Maybe there's that. And then it's also not trusting your readers to be smart enough to be able to follow this because you've done it right. So a lot of it just has to do with confidence and trust.

And I mean, I guess like there are there are like if you say you write an omniscient, something like that, then maybe you need some filtering. But for the most part, even an omniscient, you don't really need it because you're describing from an external point of view, You know what I mean? Like you can just say Drake ran at Marie with the knife.

Right?

Right, exactly. It is the same thing.

Yeah.

My mouth a little dry. So I’m going to eat a piece of candy.

So I guess those those to me all the all the big points that you need to bear in mind with the you need to know that if you're using an l y verb to strengthen a verb or to weaken a verb, you're using the wrong that if you are using if you are using weird verbs that paint weird images, you know, like check with a few people what image it creates in there.

Because you, the author, you know exactly what image you create. Obviously, the word reads right to you and then what you're filtering makes sure that, you know, you're not doing lifting with a with a wrong thing. And then I think we do want to go through a practical example.

Yeah. Do you want to copy that into a word document so we can share it on screen.

I already have.

you're awesome.

So before we go there, I do want to talk about one thing, and it's one of my philosophies that both me and you share, but so many writers do not. And I do believe that this is the one thing that gets so many writers and that that writer that we just picked on about her YouTube comment. I always say you as the writer do not have the ability to choose whether what you've written is good or not.

It's not your call because you're not writing for yourself. So she said, I know it's weird, but I like it. You will never hear me say.

That.

Because I don't care what I like. I care how it impacts the others. And so when I write something now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a sellout. I love everything I write. But if I love the line, the snow griddled under the sun and then I let my beta readers read it and you know, 20% of them circled that and went, This threw me out of the story.

Yeah, I would go, Well, I don't want to Four out of five stars or three out of five stars or a two out of five stars. If more and more people were circling it and I would go as much as I love that, let me write something else that I love. And so it's not that I would then go, fine, you know, and write some line that's just a piece of garbage line that I hate because I'm not going to put my name on something that I think is a piece of garbage that I hate.

So I'm going to go back to the, you know, imagination well, and I'm going to come up with another way to describe it that I still love. And then I'm going to get that out to them because I don't get to decide if I like something that's not my decision. And so then it's going to go out to them.

So now it's a second thing that I love, maybe love more than the original line and then the beta readers are going to be like, like this fix. I really like this. This this works really well for me. And I go, Bingo. Now it is subjective. You're never going to get 100%. But you know, I've actually paired my beta team down to closer to 40.

It's a lot of work having 100 meter readers. So this next round of this next novel, I put it down to just under 40. I think it's 39. But still, you know, if one or two of them is like this doesn't work for me or it almost works for me, or I think you should change it to here, whatever.

But the rest of them are like, This is awesome. Then that gives me a 4.7, 4.8 out of five stars. I'm good with that because you're never going to meet because if I fix, if I fix that to, fix that one or two people, then one or two other people are going to be thrown off or maybe even more.

And so again, it's not about batting a thousand, because you

can't.

It is about getting to the point where you have the vast majority, as long as it's over, really 80% would be your minimum because that's four out of five stars. But really I try to hit over 90% of the people are satisfied with I'm doing or I'll just keep working on it and it's just time I'm an effort.

And so, you know, I'm the type of person that just doesn't mind rewriting something 50 times if I have to, because eventually I'm going to figure it out.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Should we hit this document.

Yes.

All right. So this is a very short piece, but it is rife, rife with with weak verbs. The man went into the room and looked around. He took a step forward and got his gun from his belt. The door made a noise as a closed behind him. He was scared, but he moved slowly toward the window. Outside the wind was blowing softly, making the tree shake slightly.

The man put his hand on the glass and felt the coldness. He was thinking about what he had to do next. Okay. How many did you spot? Audience. All right.

So one average sentence.

Then let's talk about these puppies.

So again, like when we get to the bottom of this, we start realizing that the image that we're trying to paint in here is one of kind of dread or concern or fear or whatever. And so a lot of that can be conveyed through subtext, through your verb choices. So like just to start off with, we have two of them in the first sentence.

So we start with went, What if we said something instead? Like crept, because crept is going to bring in with it emotion because we're not just going into a room, we're creeping into the room which is going to automatically convey some stuff.

It's all but we say that's eyes darting around.

Yeah. Now another thing I want to talk about with this, because there was another video that Monique sent to us where the girl kind of did an exercise like this. And I was listening to it over breakfast and my wife was listening to me and she was going through it and she was like, This word is weak and we can replace with this and this word is weak.

And she got to this one where she said, This word is weak and me and my wife at the same time, because we were kind of editing it as she, you know, right before she did, we both said a word and she was like, um well, you know, this one's probably fine. Like we can just leave this. And we were both like, No, it isn't.

It's terrible. But it's because there's another Drake ism that I use to try to teach people. When you're editing, stop trying to edit what is written. Sometimes you can like this first one. The man went into the room. The man crept into the room. We are editing what the actual thing is written, but the other thing you have to do is take a step back and try to find out what you're trying to do.

And so, like with this one, if we were to if we were to just edit what's there and looked around, we might do and glanced around or and whatever. But we would we get locked into this sentence structure that's already written and so sure and glanced around is better than and looked around. However, what Marie did was I don't want to just edit the words as written.

I want to convey something. So what am I trying to convey? I'm trying to convey a nervousness. well, a better way than and glanced around is what Marie did here, which is eyes darting around. So she had to take a step back, stop looking at the structure that already existed. Ask yourself, what am I trying to convey?

What's a way to convey that? And then just rewrite it so it's imperative that you stop trying to edit what is there and take a step back and just think, okay, I'm trying to convey that this person is nervous. Give me ten ways to convey that our eye is darting around. I mean, there's all sorts of things, you know.

sweat, dreamy, streaming down his palms, like whatever. There's all.

Streaming. It's maybe a bit much, but sweat dampening his palms right whatever.

And the saying when you take a step back, when you stop trying to edit the words as written and take a step back and go, okay, what am I trying to convey here? And then just go, okay, let me think of five ways to do that and then think of them and go, yeah, I like this. I like the third way that I came up with best or I like the first way.

I like the whatever. Yeah, that helps you in editing so much so exactly what you did here. You don't shackle yourself to the structure of the crap sentence you wrote that you're trying to fix.

Yeah.

Then he took a step forward. He took, at the very least, can be replaced with he stepped. You can literally just do this and it's already better.

Right? He stepped forward.

Stepped forward. You can probably improve on stepped with some kind of like you know he snuck his foot forward or something like.

That with with careful steps.

Yeah.

You know, it's this whole I mean, a human didn't write this. I just had ChatGPT I just told her to write me the worst, crappy, weak verbs in a scene. So I just wrote this really quickly. In all honesty, when we with the the the sentence that we have before it, that really we can just cut the step forward because we already have been creeping into the room so we can turn this sentence into just a more nervous way of fondling his gun.

Yeah. Or pulling it from his from his belt or anything else like that.

He's fingers curled, curl,

yeah.

So a lot of times when you're editing your double dip because when you write weakly you'll write a weak sentence and then you'll just naturally go, I need another weak sentence to make sure that the two week sentences together will kind of convey what I'm trying to do. And then once you strengthen one, you usually can just get rid of the other.

Yeah. And so that's kind of what we have here.

So when the door creaks behind him, he can actually draw the the gun, right? So we can say instead of the door making noise, we can say.

The door creaked behind him and he ripped it.

Which I like whipped better. But you know, again, we start to get very, very subjective here. And this is the difference. You know, when you watch me and Marie do something like this, this is where it's like there is no right or wrong answer. It's what what the author is trying to convey. And me and Marie are different authors. You know, we have a lot of similarities in our in our thinking and what we feel we should be doing as our job.

But we write different because.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you why why I chose ripped is because in my mind, it's violent. He's startled and it's violent. And like, you know, maybe it's got one of those leather clips on the holster that just flies off, right?

Yeah. No, that's why I said there's no wrong way. That's why when I. When I edited you, I was like, I probably shouldn't have done that.

No, but it is valid. I'd like that. We see. Because whipped and ripped creates slightly different images in the readers might ripped is more out of control whipped is still in control it to me anyway.

Still in control but but also.

On the edge.

So ripped to me conveys more of a violent movement, whereas Whip conveys more of a nervous moment movement in this case. So, you know, again, if we're going with this nervousness, some subtext, this kind of creepy, I'm a little scared.

And.

You know, that's so again, this is this is how we think we actually when we're writing, every verb is going to convey a different emotion. And so it's what is the what is the tone of the scene? And the tone is very important so that you stick with it. And so that because remember, subtext means you're never saying so that's the subtext of the scene is I want to convey this character's nervousness and there's a little scared so I don't have to write the words.

He was scared because I'm showing this.

Since I'm doing that, I want everything. I want all the verbs to kind of build upon each other because I'm not flat out saying he was scared like we had on this next line. I'm going to show his nervousness and show his scared ness, which means I got to do it a few times.

You know, everything and any time that I can do something that kind of continues to build upon that motif, that's what I'm doing.

Yeah.

So I just changed the the sentence from he moves slowly toward the window, too. He snuck toward the window.

Because we know.

That he was scared because we don't need it.

Right.

And we've all used crept in in this piece so we can't repeat the crept.

Okay then outside.

Now snuck is going to. There's nothing wrong with that. It's going to convey the subtext, but it doesn't really give us that he's slowly moving. So if we want to, you know, you you focused on the subtext of, you know, kind of the the tension and the fear. But let's say I want I really know I want to show that he's really moving slowly.

Well, I might. Right. He inched toward the window, you know, to show that he's actually moving slowly. So it just depends on what you're trying to do. Neither right and either are wrong. It it's just what am I trying to convey as the author, what I want the reader to see. And by just I mean just look that we just changed one word he snuck toward the window is going to convey a nervousness, a caution, you know, stuff like that.

But it's not necessarily having him slow a crawl. Whereas if we. Right. He inched toward the window. Now the stress is more on the speed in which he's moving and not the emotion in which he's moving. So, again, choosing these verbs is this important? This is how much it makes a difference between what you're doing. I neither right or wrong just depends on what me as the author, what Marie as the author wants to focus on.

What's the reader to focus on?

This next sentence could be an email. Now, actually, it could be one sentence if you like. It can be one concept. outside, the trees swayed in the light breeze or.

You know, and again, this is where it comes down to sentence structure. No right, no wrong. So Marie wants the reader to focus on the trees? Because the subject of this sentence is trees and the action is swayed. But let's say we wanted them to focus on the wind. So outside had a light breeze wafted through the tree branches or whatever.

So now the subject becomes the breeze. So again, it's not it has nothing with right or wrong. It has to do with what do I, as the author, want the reader to focus on in this sentence? Because what do you want?

What do you want the reader to understand about what what they're reading the mind.

That's why it's so important to be able to diagram your sentences, because you've got to be able to pull out your subject in action because those are the things that the reader is going to put more emphasis on than anything else.

The man put his hand on the glass and felt the coldness, Well, I'm going to stab you again.

And this is why you're like, All these people are like, I can just use chatGPT to write stories for me.

No, you can’t.

With that, because ChatGPT can't write. Yeah, well, we just start off, I mean, sentence structure, so. Awesome. So we have the outside. So like, I'll let you go before I.

Maybe cold glass.

I was going to go with something like brushing his fingertips across the cold glass.

I feel like put his hand on might be more like a palm but yeah.

Pressing his palm to the cold glass.

Hold on.

Cold seeped from the glass to the man's palm.

I know he hasn't put it there yet, but you can make that two actions.

Pressed.

Because I like the cold seeped.

Yeah, But instead of to the man's palm, I would probably do something like,

you know, Depends on what I'm trying to convey here. I could do infusing, you know, I could do invading, I could do biting into the man's. But I, like, you know, just depends on what I'm trying to do. There's all these different emotions that we could bring into play here, stabbing into the man's palm or, you know, whatever.

There's just depends on what we're trying to do. It's one of the reasons why it's hard for me to do something like this is because we're just editing sentences. Yeah, when I'm writing, I'm in the scene, I'm in the moment, so I'm feeling what, the character stealing. And so therefore, since I'm feeling with the character feeling, depending on what I'm feeling as a character, is what I'm going to say happens to my hand when I touch the window.

You know, if I'm feeling fear, I might write, you know. The man pressed his hands against the window. He shivered from the cold seeping, you know, whatever. So it just depends on what what subtext that I'm playing with, what motif I'm playing with at the time are going to be my how I start choosing my verbs.

Now this I would actually replace with internal thought. I would just straight up replace that with an internal thought.

That is one way to do this 100%. And I love using inner monologue, so I would never be opposed to that. So the line for those that are just listening, he was thinking about what he had to do next.

Yeah.

You know, so if we just talked to an inner monologue of what am I going to do next?

Yeah, so you can either do it, what am I going to do next? Or you can say, what was he going to do? And make it a rhetorical question. however you do internal monologue, however you do that internal thought.

Or we can bring in more of the motivation. You know, it could be if we left it in narration, it could be something like his life widowed down to this one cold moment in an empty room and he saw no way forward or something like that. I mean, there's. Yeah, it is. We can get his flowery and his.

Yeah, it just depends on what Again, it it all depends on the context of the story. But here's the funny thing. After you finish writing that, scroll up just a little bit. I keep going.

Up.

Yeah. So there was three or four was this in this paragraph originally? And after our edits there are zero. We kill.

The life is almost always weak.

It is always a red flag.

So. So let me let me read the updated paragraph entitled The man crept into the room, eyes darting around his finger curled around the butt of his gun, where it rode on his hip. The door creaked behind him and whipped took the weapon out of the holster. He inched toward the window outside the tree, swayed in the light breeze.

The man pressed his hand against the window, cold seeped from the glass, biting into the man's palm. What do I do next?

Now, if I was seriously adding, as the two windows so close together would bother me. So I would. Yeah. Re-wright.

Right. I don't like the fact that the door creaked, but nothing came of it. So I would fix. Like he'd look at nothing, you know, see, there's nothing or whatever the case.

When we edited this, we're just editing to get rid of weak verbs. So we still have a lot of problems with it, as we always do. But.

But the verbs are no longer weak, right?

I reread the the original.

Okay,

The man went into the room and looked around. He took a step forward and got his gun from his belt. The door made a noise behind him. He was scared, but he moved slowly toward the window. Outside the wind was blowing softly, making the trees shake slightly. The man pressed his, but the.

Man put.

The man put his hand on the glass and felt the coldness. He was thinking about what he had to do next.

I mean, those are completely different in immersion factor in their ability to draw the reader in, into the ability to make the reader feel more than just the visual ness of the scene. The original way you see everything, sure, But you don't feel anything. And again, we didn't edit it for to try and make it more immersive. We didn't try to make it showier.

We didn't do anything but just remove the weak verbs and put in stronger verbs. And even with that exercise of going through and just paying attention to the verbs that are being used, the piece is a million times better than it was, and it still shows the exact same thing.

Yeah, I think that that, you know, one of the first exercises you should do as a writer is try to write, try to write a piece completely without l l y adverbs and completely without was and were like, This is not how you should write your whole book, but as an exercise, it will help you dig deeper to, find other verbs to find the right verbs.

So I'm.

Doing.

This exercise a few times so that you can get into the rhythm.

Sometimes the door slowly closes and it's fine. But the reason.

Why this was is the right.

Right. Well, I mean, as a linking verb, you know, the sky was blue, whatever. You know, it's not that we're going to cut out every was and were. It's not that we're going to cut out every adverb. So in the case of the door slowly closing, if I want the focus to be on something else and I just want to to still show you that the door slowly closing, but I want you to pay attention to the door, slowly closing, then writing that in a weak way is the right way to write it because you'll see the door slowly closing, but you're focusing on whatever it is that I want you to focus on.

You're not focusing on. You know, if I if I expand that in, you know, inching its way forward, the door crept toward its you know.

Sometimes you can you can write to excessively like sometimes it really isn't that important and it can just have an ly adverb. It is not the end of the world. Right. Exactly. But when you start and when you're learning how to do this, run a macro highlight every was and kill them all. Like eliminate every single last one of them.

Eliminate every l.y adverb and and just learn how to write with stronger verbs.

Yeah she said run a macro. Basically if you're in word control h to bring up the fine replace in the top box. Right. Was I like to put was space or space was space. You can also choose whole words only. And then in the bottom box write the same thing. So was again or was space or space was space whatever.

And then go down to the formatting of it and choose highlight and then just pick a really obnoxious. I always use fuchsia and then just hit replace all and it replaced all your was is with was is that are highlighted fuchsia for l y I do l y space and then replaced with a y space but highlighted replace all Yeah you get words that aren't l y adverbs like family ends in l y whatever.

But you should be smart enough to know that family's not an l y adverb. So, you know, if you don't know that, then maybe you need to take a step back and and learn a little bit more about grammar before we even get to this stage. But that's. That's what we mean when we're saying, you know, run a macro to, to find this stuff and replace it.

You're fine. Replace works really, really, really well to quickly show you like, well, that's funny because last night during the writers group, somebody brought a thing and I was in my overall comments. I was like very, very heavily you're using the l y or because actually wrote a piece as a test piece to write it as showy as possible without telling anything.

And I'm like, use a lot l y adverbs. No, I didn't. And I mean, it's it was like an 800 word piece, and somebody actually did a search for me. He's like, There's 26, there's 26 l adverbs in this. And he's like, What? And I'm like, Yeah, there's a lot of them. And so we just we talk that way so you don't notice them in your writing.

And the other thing that I want to say is, guys, please like check how many felt used. Like sometimes felt is the right word. I'm not saying it's never the right word.

So when I say is you, can you feel or felt if the character is feeling or felting something that is tactile? I felt the raised a bumpy surface great. You cannot use it if it's an emotion or if it's a feeling or anything. You know, I felt scared, anything like that. I felt cold. No, none of those. Like if you're if you're physically touching something tactile, then you can use the word feel or felt.

Everything else, it doesn't belong in front.

I would I would rewrite that as well.

I my rule is felt in narration, period. Yeah. Hide it in dialog, you know, I felt so afraid that you. I can't believe you did that to me. You're. You know what.

I will occasionally have felt the dialog, but I am very I'm very cautious of it.

Narration I think that that was.

That once.

Yeah.

Same way.

Yeah.

But the big thing is when I'm teaching it is don't use it to feel emotions or to feel sensations because then you're just telling that you're feeling cold or feeling frightened.

Can you describe, you know, the bumpy surface of the lizard's skin? Sure But, you know, if it's not that important, I don't mind the occasional. I ran my fingers across the lizard skin, feeling the bumpy texture, like whatever. I mean, if if the story has nothing to do with lizard skin, then, you know, it's not that.

It's not important. I put it to you that. You can say I ran my fingers over the bumpy lizard skin. Yeah.

100%.

And then you.

Kill the felt, you just.

Try to come up with an example.

To.

Crush my hopes and dreams.

But yeah, so. So I think that the. That pretty much covers verbs.

Yeah. And hopefully you see how important they are. They literally are the most important word of every sentence.

They are the ones that do the work.

Yep.

And on that note, I think that is a good place to end this episode.

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one of the shortest ones ever.