Consider this sentence: She was leaning to the left, favoring her right leg, which was hurting now.
Here we have a verb, leaning, preceded by an auxiliary verb, was. Verbs with auxiliaries are never as sharply focused as verbs without them, because the former indicate indefinite time, whereas the latter suggest a given instant. The novelist’s goal is to let the story unfold as it happens, to keep the reader in the moment—the “ongoing present.” One thing that will help you do that is to use verbs that tell readers what’s happening right now.
The example sentence, therefore, would be more focused if you dropped the was and said “She leaned. . . .”
Paul Thayer
Your book editor
Many writers often construct sentences like these:
Putting down his red pen and swiveling his chair around before settling back into his seat, Max said, “Blah blah blah.”
Grabbing my arm, he dragged me into the bedroom, pinning me to the wall with his body.
Such sentences are the result of the writer’s attempt to add variety in sentence structure. That’s an admirable goal, but writing sentences with introductory verbal phrases results in shifts in temporal focus or to plain illogic by implying that more than one action occurred at the same time. In the examples above, Max did not put down his pen, swivel his chair around and settle back into his seat and say, “Blah blah blah” all at the same time. Likewise, the man didn’t grab somebody’s arm, drag that person into the bedroom and pin that person to the wall with his body. These actions were sequential events.
Another example:
Firing the hired man and burning down his shack, John drove into town.
Same error. The sentence implies that the action of firing the hired man and burning down his shack and the action of driving into town are simultaneous events. Ditto with this sentence:
Running up the stairs, he opened the bathroom door.
No one can open an upstairs door as they run upstairs, unless their arms are forty feet long.
Notice that these sentences use an introductory participial (verbal) phrase that begins with a gerund, a verb formed by adding –ing. Beginning many sentences with a gerund used in this way is a symptom of what I call “-ing disease.”
Sentences that defy logic and time restrictions are one of the most common narrative grammatical mistakes. Don’t catch -ing disease.
Paul Thayer
My website
Any native English speaker who writes a run-on sentence is either (1) someone who was raised by wolves, (2) a tadpole in disguise, (3) a Scientologist, (4) a communist, or (5) an exiled member of an alien species. So beware. If you are any of these things, you don’t want your family to know about it.
A run-on sentence, also known as a fused sentence or a run-together sentence, contains two or more independent clauses not connected by the correct punctuation or conjunction. (An independent clause has a subject and a verb, expresses a complete thought, and can stand alone.)
Example of a run-on sentence:
Kelly likes to cook she makes something different every day.
This sentence contains two independent clauses. It expresses two ideas:
1. Kelly likes to cook
2. she makes something different every day
Writers can fix a run-on sentence in three ways:
• Put a period between the two independent clauses: Kelly likes to cook. She makes something different every day.
• Put a semicolon between the two independent clauses: Kelly likes to cook; she makes something different every day.
• Put a conjunction between the two independent clauses: Kelly likes to cook, and she makes something different every day.
Any editor who finds more than ten run-on sentences in a manuscript will either self-implode or quit the profession and become an insurance agent.
Paul Thayer
My website
When you place a semicolon in a sentence, remember that you must have an independent clause both before and after the semicolon and that the ideas expressed in both main clauses should be closely related. Example:
I like you; you’re nice.
Also remember that the semicolon is always used before a conjunctive adverb that introduces a second independent clause. Example:
Her arguments sounded convincing; therefore, the majority voted for her.
The word therefore is a conjunctive adverb. Note that a comma always follows the conjunctive adverb.
Conjunctive adverbs include accordingly, also, anyhow, as a result, besides, consequently, furthermore, henceforth, however, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover, nevertheless, otherwise, then, thus, and therefore.
Most editors agree that the use of semicolons should be kept to a minimum in fiction. I wouldn’t use them at all in dialogue. The University of Chicago Manual of Style, the bible of the publishing industry, says, “Semicolons tend to be frowned upon in fiction. An editor who doesn’t allow them at all is overly rigid, however, since they are sometimes useful and even necessary.”
Paul Thayer
My website
One of my clients asked me this question:
Q. Using the word said after a line of dialogue all the time seems boring. Why can’t I use more descriptive verbs?
A. Using attribution verbs like gasped, laughed, spat, croaked, rasped, barked, and even (oh God please no) ejaculated and many others of their ilk is unnecessary and redolent of the work of amateurs and writers of pulp fiction. Speakers don’t gasp or spit or laugh a line, they say it.
Stephen King agrees, calling the use of these words “shooting the attribution verb full of steroids” (page 126 in On Writing). He admits to committing that sin in the past, but declares now that “the best form of dialogue attribution is said.” Dean Koontz declares that he never uses any attribution but said, although he may have done so in the early days, as King did. Other writers and teachers, including Elmore Leonard, have also sung the praises of the simple word said.
One of Leonard’s ten rules of writing is “Never use a verb other than said to carry dialogue.” He says: “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.”
You can use some attribution verbs other than said as long as they aren’t of the steroid-injected kind. For instance, you can use words such as shouted, cried, called, whispered, murmured, mumbled, and a few others occasionally. If writers go beyond that by using goofy steroid words or verbs followed by adverbs, they’re intruding in the story by explaining too much. As King says (page 128, On Writing) if your context is constructed correctly, “when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it—fast or slowly, happily or sadly.” So don’t write something like this: “Go to hell!,” he said angrily. Don’t add the adverb angrily. Anyone who says that is obviously pissed off.
Paul Thayer
My website
I find sentences like the following one in most novels written by novice writers.
She started to run across the street.
Writers should avoid saying that someone “began” or “started” to do something or that something began or started to happen. People either do something or they don’t, and an event either occurs or it doesn’t. In the example sentence you should write, “She ran across the street.”
You wouldn’t say, “The bomb started to explode,” would you? I certainly hope not. You’d say, “The bomb exploded.”
Paul Thayer
My website
A pronoun must agree in number with its antecedent. They must both be either singular or plural. Look at this sentence:
This happens to everyone whether they choose to believe it or not.
Here the pronoun they must agree with its antecedent, everyone. But they is plural, and everyone is singular (everyone means “every single one”). Uh-oh! What to do?
Unfortunately (but unavoidably), this pronoun agreement problem broaches the “singular they” debate—the name generally given to the use of they, them, their, or theirs to refer to a singular pronoun, as in “Everyone was blowing their nose.”
The singular they has been used in English since Chaucer’s time, but most grammarians have traditionally prescribed the use of the masculine pronoun: “Everyone was blowing his nose.” In recent years, however, the singular they has gained popularity because of the move toward gender-neutral language. Nevertheless, many learned language mavens still maintain that terms such as everyone and each student should be treated as grammatically singular. Even the noted English lexicographer Henry Watson Fowler, writing in the 1920s, felt that the singular they sounded “old-fashioned” and wittily demonstrated how the singular they never seems to agree perfectly:
“Everyone was blowing their nose”?
“Everyone was blowing their noses”?
“Everyone were blowing their noses”?
Proposals for gender-neutral pronouns have been made since the 1850s, but the subsequent discussions tend to go round and round and never reach a consensus. New pronouns may be invented in the future, but for now we’re all forced to deal with this English idiosyncrasy.
In the past, most of us were taught to solve this problem by replacing the “singular they” with the “generic he,” like this:
For reasons they couldn’t explain, each of them found his good time turning bad.
But these days that’s considered sexist, so we’re advised to replace he and his, etc., with he and she, his and her, etc. That solution, though, produces clumsy sentences such as
An employee who thinks that he or she can’t be replaced rarely stops to ask himself or herself if the boss holds the same opinion of him or her.
Horrors! That won’t do.
The best solution is to write around the problem. For instance, sometimes a troublesome singular noun can be changed to the plural. Then a sentence that says
Everyone hopes that they will win the lottery.
becomes
Many people hope that they will win the lottery.
And sometimes you can ditch the pronoun. Then a sentence that says
Each guest should bring their own knife and fork.
becomes
Each guest should bring a knife and fork.
. . . and the lottery sentence becomes
Everyone hopes to win the lottery.
Including me. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with this problem.
Paul Thayer
My website
