I am late for a date with the treadmill–and my current book, Meg Cabot’s How To Be Popular–so this will be brief.
How strong are your verbs?
This topic keeps coming up and really has me thinking. Cutting adverbs is all fine and good, but using strong verbs that really pack a punch is what can really make a book stand out. I have a few favorite thesauruses but these will only get me so far. What else can I do?
Well, for starters, I’m taking notes from my favorite books. Whenever I see a verb that is unique or I know I haven’t used fifty times in my current WIP, and really evokes an image, I write it down. The goal is to then use this list to spark my own imagination and creativity and come up with additional ones, but this is a definite start.
In particular, I am actively searching for better verbs for movement (like walking or running) and for emotions . . . and anything else that catches my eye and fancy.
Last night’s words: drifted, barreled, plucked, ingested
What verbs do you tend to overuse? Have you found any good strong verbs–or any word really–that jumped out at you in a novel and you just had to write it down?
Happy Writing!!
