Chapter Three

Action

Use Action and Movement to Engage your Reader

If you were standing before a group of people giving a speech about dogsledding to the North Pole and a fly buzzed past your head, your audience would look away from you and watch the fly. It isn’t that what you are saying is less interesting than the fly (one would hope), but that your listeners’ attention naturally is attracted by movement. Any movement.

The same is true of your readers’ attention. Depict a character moving from point A to point B, and your readers will want to know how your character made the journey, particularly if you create some obstacles along the way. Movement is one of the most compelling forces in writing. It arouses curiosity.

Make your sentences tell stories.

The intrigue of movement accounts for the appeal of narrative and plot. Without movement of some kind, there is no story. Similarly, the principle that movement arouses curiosity applies to sentence structure. As Joseph Williams advises in Style, if you want your writing to be vigorous, make your sentences tell stories. You can do this by using your subjects to name characters and your verbs to name their actions.

Compare, for example, “An investigation was conducted concerning our accounting procedures” with “The IRS investigated our accounting procedures.” The first sentence merely states a fact (an investigation was conducted), but the second tells a story by naming a character (the IRS) and an action (investigated). (Note also the change from passive to active voice, a choice I discuss later in the chapter.)

To make your sentences tell stories, make sure they contain characters and actions. Rather than “It was my hope that a move to Paris would result in giving me time for writing,” write “I moved to Paris, where I hoped to spend my days writing.” Rather than “Our house at that time was in a village with a view of the river, the plain, and the mountains,” write, as Ernest Hemingway does in A Farewell to Arms, “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.”

Now here’s a sentence for you to invigorate by adding action: “A sudden decline in the stock market occurred.”

How did you change it? My guess is that you introduced action by using the past tense of the verb crash.

If your sentence has no characters that can be used to create a story, you might have to introduce one. For example, you might rewrite “As per your request, an investigation of the feasibility of the mining of this area for iron ore is under way” by introducing pronouns: “As you requested, we have begun to investigate the feasibility of mining this area for iron ore.”

Likewise, you might rewrite “The result of the examination of soil samples was the discovery of an incredibly rich vein of iron” like this: “When the mining engineers examined the soil samples, they discovered an incredibly rich vein of iron.”

Or you might rewrite “Sometimes in the dark there was noise from the marching of troops under our windows and the movement of guns pulled by motor-tractors” so that it reads the way Hemingway wrote it: “Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors.” (Emphasis added.)

As many technical writers have discovered, you can create movement by personifying an inanimate object. Rather than “The result of the tests was the discovery of an incredibly rich vein of iron,” write “The tests led to the discovery of an incredibly rich vein of iron” or “The tests revealed an incredibly rich vein of iron.”

Use verbs to animate your descriptions.

Imagine you are F. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer known for the beauty and power of your descriptions. You’re sitting at your writing desk, perhaps feeling a little sluggish after last night’s party, but it’s time to work, so you settle down to the task at hand. You’re writing a novel about Jay Gatsby’s undying love for Daisy Buchanan, who—to Gatsby’s eternal sorrow—is married to Tom Buchanan. You’re puzzling over how to introduce Tom to your readers. You decide to set the scene for his grand entrance with a description of the Buchanans’ mansion.

You write: “Their house was a huge Colonial. The lawn was expansive, with sun-dials and brick walks and flower gardens. There were vines on the sides of the house and French windows in front—and here’s Tom, just back from riding his horse.”

Well, you think, looking over what you have written, there’s not much grandeur there. This description is bland. Fortunately, you remind yourself, this is only your first draft. So, you ask, how can I make it more vivid and interesting?

First, you decide to remind your reader that the scene is being presented from a particular point of view—in this case, your narrator’s. (I discuss point of view in chapter seven.) Second, you provide specific, concrete, colorful detail (as I discussed in chapter two) so that your reader can see the setting and the character. Third—and here is the lesson of this chapter—you create movement. You know that movement and action add energy to your writing and that this principle is particularly useful in bringing your descriptions to life. The way you see it, descriptions are not still photographs but moving pictures. Nothing is fixed; everything is in motion. With this approach in mind, you choose action verbs like running and jumping and glowing to animate the objects you’re describing. You rewrite the passage this way:

Well, that’s better, you tell yourself. Now to describe Tom.

For your first draft, you write: “His face had become harder since he was a student at Yale. He had big muscles. His body was strong and powerful—even cruel.”

As before, you know your passage needs work. In your revised version, you again remind your reader that the scene is being viewed from the eyes of a narrator. You add specific detail, and you use active verbs to animate the objects you are describing:

There. You’re satisfied. In your description of Tom’s imposing physical presence you have created a sense of irrepressible energy, of movement about to burst forth, and you have set the stage for the scene in the next chapter, when Tom’s mistress insists she has the right to say his wife’s name, and Tom—in response to her taunting—makes “a short deft movement … with his open hand” and breaks her nose. His movement is like the snap of a coiled spring.

Now, how can you, the real you, apply this lesson to your writing? How, for example, might you rewrite this sentence: “News of our boss’s departure affected all of us?”

One possibility is “News of our boss’s departure saddened all of us.” Another is “When our boss announced he was leaving, we stomped our feet, pounded the table with our fists, and raised our voices in a chorus of unbridled joy and celebration.” You may prefer one version over the other—depending on how you feel about your boss (or who your reader is).

Here’s another example. Rather than “An emphasis on departmental problem solving would result in an increase in efficiency,” write “If our department would emphasize problem solving, it would increase its efficiency.” But you’re not finished. Add a few details, and you get: “If our department would attend more carefully to solving little problems before they became big ones, it would meet its monthly production quota on a more regular basis.”

One advantage of writing with action verbs is that they relieve you of an overreliance on adjectives and adverbs. Compare, for example, “The sales representative talked incoherently” with “The sales representative babbled,” or—going back to that favorite person of yours—compare “My boss spoke continuously for forty-five minutes” with “My boss droned on for forty-five minutes.” Modifiers such as incoherently and continuously have their place, but they usually convey meaning with less emphasis and power than verbs.

Use semicolons and elliptical constructions to suggest movement.

I’m discussing the semicolon in the context of movement and action because it enables you to create a particular type of movement, a type I call—for lack of a better expression—“mind travel.” Mind travel is the mental leap the reader makes when creating connections between thoughts, or when filling in the gaps between words and sentences. The more you spell things out, the shorter the distance the reader must leap; the less you spell things out, the longer the distance the reader must leap.

A semicolon can provide just the right jumping distance. As Anne Stilman points out in Grammatically Correct: The Writer’s Essential Guide to Punctuation, Spelling, Style, Usage, and Grammar, a semicolon used in place of a conjunction can create just the right effect. For example, rather than “Doreen was starting to worry because Leo was now two hours late,” consider writing “Doreen was starting to worry; Leo was now two hours late.” As Stilman explains:

Mind travel, in other words, is a mental activity your reader finds pleasing.

The same principle of using intentional gaps to create mental movement applies to elliptical constructions, or constructions in which certain words are omitted for stylistic effect. (I’ll discuss ellipses in detail in chapter four.) Compare “Susan caught the first fish, John caught the second fish, and Dan caught the third fish” with “Susan caught the first fish, John caught the second, and Dan caught the third.” Now compare that sentence with an even more elliptical version: “Susan caught the first fish, John the second, and Dan the third.” Though no longer visible, the omitted words still function. The missing verbs and fish have dropped to the subtext, where they still exist in the reader’s mind. The reader traveling over the gaps created by their absence enjoys filling in the blanks and making the connections.

Know How to Work with the Active and Passive Voices

In the active voice, the subject performs the action (“I wrote the essay”). In the passive voice, the subject receives the action (“The essay was written by me”). As you no doubt have been told by English teachers and programmed grammar checkers alike, the active voice is more direct, concise, and emphatic than the passive voice. As a rule, you should prefer the active voice over the passive voice.

Use the active voice for emphasis and energy.

Consider this sentence: “An attempt was made to make a determination concerning why there was a failure on the part of the contractor to bring the project to completion on time.” Pretty awful, wouldn’t you say?

To improve it, shift from the passive voice, where the subject of the sentence is acted upon, to the active voice, where the subject does the acting, and you get, “We made an attempt to make a determination concerning why the contractor failed to bring the project to completion on time.”

That’s better, but more revision is needed. (Or should I have written, “That’s better, but you need to do more revising?") Keeping in mind my earlier discussion of nominalizations, look for nouns (attempt, determination, completion) that could be expressed as verbs (attempt, determine, complete). Here’s the final revision: “We attempted to determine why the contractor failed to complete the project on time.”

Try your hand at revising this sentence: “An improvement in writing that has too heavy a dependency on nouns can be achieved by making a circle around each noun and posing a question to yourself regarding whether a replacement of it with a verb could be made.”

How did you do? One possible revision is “To improve writing that depends too heavily on nouns, circle each noun and ask yourself if you could replace it with a verb.” Much better, don’t you think?

Here’s another one for you to revise: “Our customers’ complaints about poor service should lead us to make a determination about whether their complaints are warranted.” One possible revision is, “When our customers complain about poor service, we should determine whether their complaints are warranted.”

Despite the advantages of preferring the active voice over the passive and of preferring verbs over nouns, it would be misleading to suggest that the passive voice and nominalizations should be avoided in all cases. To be sure, both can be used to good effect. But to appreciate the problem with overusing the passive voice, read this sentence: Consideration as to whether to show a preference for the active voice and active verbs over the passive voice and nominalizations generally should be given if improvement in your writing and vigor in your style are desirable.

Know when to use the passive voice.

Use the active voice to write with emphasis and vigor. Rather than “The account was handled by me,” for example, write “I handled the account.” That’s good advice as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. More complete advice would be to use the active voice—unless you have a good reason to use the passive voice.

There are five situations in which the passive voice is more effective than the active voice. Use the passive voice:

1. To emphasize the receiver of the action. Use the passive voice when the receiver of the action is more important than the performer. Compare the active “Millions of people have read The Hunt for Red October” with the passive “The Hunt for Red October has been read by millions.” Compare “Our employees routinely disregard the new quality control procedures” with “The new quality control procedures are routinely disregarded by our employees.” The active voice would be preferable in a paragraph focusing on the employees, whereas the passive voice would be preferable in a paragraph focusing on the new quality control procedures. The question is where do you want your emphasis? When the receiver of the action is more important than the performer, use the passive voice.

2. To de-emphasize the performer of the action. When there is no advantage in the reader’s knowing the performer of the action, use the “truncated passive voice,” in which the performer is dropped from the sentence. Consider this sentence: “Our engineers have installed a more powerful CPU to give you faster processing.” If the reader doesn’t care who did the installing, use the passive voice: “A more powerful CPU has been installed to give you faster processing.”

Similarly, when the performer of the action is either unknown or relatively unimportant, use the truncated passive. Compare “Everyone ’round the world heard the shot” with “The shot was heard ’round the world.”

3. To avoid responsibility. When the active voice seems indiscreet or when it calls unwanted attention to the performer of a negative action, use the “diplomatic passive voice.” The passive voice allows you to avoid assigning responsibility for the action. Compare “You mishandled the account” with “The account was mishandled.”

4. To create smooth connections between sentences. Compare the following two passages:

When the active voice breaks the flow of thought from the previous sentence, use the passive voice.

5. To maintain a consistent point of view or sequence of subjects. Compare these two passages:

When the active voice creates a disjointed sequence of subjects, use the passive voice.

So the next time you are criticized for using the passive voice—by either a human reader or computer-programmed grammar checker—don’t submit to the indictment passively (so to speak). Ask your critic to comment on whether your use of the passive isn’t justified under one of the five situations described above. If your critic gives you a puzzled look or responds with a blank screen, you may want to stand behind your choice. After all, why would the passive voice exist if it served no useful purpose?

Know How to Work with Verbs and Nouns

Without nouns to name persons, places, things, or ideas, we would have great difficulty in communicating even the most basic information. An overreliance on nouns, however, can undermine a vigorous writing style. As a rule, when presented with the choice between using a verb or noun to express your thought, choose the verb.

Prefer strong action verbs over nominalizations.

Movement gives life to your writing, and the best way to create movement is to use verbs, those marvelous animators of language. To paraphrase Donald Hall, author of Writing Well: Verbs act. Verbs swing. Verbs cascade. Verbs explode. Verbs energize your style.

It’s hard to imagine writing without verbs, and of course all writers use them. In The American Way of Death, for example, Jessica Mitford offers a catalog of verbs to dramatize the gruesome details of embalming:

Some writers, however, don’t use verbs frequently enough, or they use the wrong kind. Rather than strong action verbs, they reach instinctively for nouns linked to weak verbs. Rather than connect, they make a connection. Rather than investigate, they conduct an investigation. Rather than suggest, they make a suggestion.

As I noted in chapters one and two, preferring nominalizations—or the noun form of verbs—over action verbs can result in wordiness and imprecision. Writers who routinely make this choice might think that the noun forms add authority to their writing, but rather than the weight of authority, nominalizations usually add the weight of dullness. The result: a noun-heavy style that is slow, ponderous, and (yawn) plodding.

Consider, for example, this sentence: “After the scientists undertook a study of the fossils, they made a change in their theory.” The sentence exhibits a lumbering wordiness. Like a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit, it achieves little movement, and what movement it does achieve is ineffectual. Now consider this version: “After the scientists studied the fossils, they changed their theory.” Can you hear the difference?

Here are some more examples:

Noun-heavy style	Verb-energized style
Make a revision in this sentence.	Revise this sentence.
Please take under consideration my proposal.	Please consider my proposal.
The mallard offered protection to her ducklings when the raccoon made an approach.	The mallard protected her ducklings when the raccoon approached.

Note that nominalizations and verbs sometimes have identical spellings, as in study/study and change/change. Because the noun forms require extra words, however, they still damage (or do damage to) your style. Compare “We need to conduct a study of the problem and make changes in our strategy” with “We need to study the problem and change our strategy.”

A related problem has to do with adjectives, or words that modify nouns and pronouns. As with nominalizations, choosing adjectives rather than verbs can obscure action and repress energy. For example, “These figures are indicative that our trade deficit is dependent on the strength of the dollar” vs. “These figures indicate that our balance of trade depends on the strength of the dollar.”

For practice, revise these sentences:

1. The students voiced a complaint about the dorm food.
2. The intention of the pilot was to effect a landing on the grass field.
3. The scientists did some speculation about the reason for the explosion of the star.
4. The auditors conducted an investigation into the discrepancies and made a recommendation that we make a change in our procedure.
5. Knowledge and practice of certain principles of effective writing will give you the ability to make significant improvement in your style. (Hint: Create a subject for the verbs by beginning the sentence with If you)

Here are some suggested revisions:

1. The students complained about the dorm food.
2. The pilot intended to land on the grass field.
3. The scientists speculated about why the star exploded.
4. The auditors investigated the discrepancies and recommended we change our procedure.
5. If you know and practice certain principles of effective writing, you can improve your style significantly.
   Or: Knowing and practicing certain principles of effective writing will enable you to improve your style significantly.

With these examples, I have offered a demonstration of the power of verb-energized writing. (You’re not going to let that sentence go by without revising it, are you?)

Know when to use nominalizations.

Although you should generally choose a verb over its noun form, there are certain circumstances when nominalizations are useful. In fact, as Joseph Williams points out, “We cannot get along without them.”

Williams identifies four instances when nominalizations work to your advantage:

1. When they are subjects that refer to previously expressed topics or actions. For example, in the sentence, “This decision can lead to costly consequences,” the nominalized word decision links the sentence to the one that precedes it, thus creating a more cohesive flow. Likewise, note the usefulness of the nominalization discussion in this sentence: “Although we debated the issue for hours, our discussion was inconclusive.”

2. When they replace the awkward phrase “the fact that.” Compare “The fact that she denied what he accused her of impressed the committee” with “Her denial of his accusations impressed the committee.” Compare “The fact that you were absent suggests that you are ambivalent” with “Your absence suggests ambivalence.”

3. When they save a few words by naming the object of a verb. Compare “I failed to do what my boss expected me to do” with “I failed to meet my boss’s expectations.” Compare “She presented what we learned as a result of investigating the topic” with “She presented the results of the investigation.”

4. When they refer to a familiar concept. Compare the following sentences:

Verb form	Nominalized form
I suggest you register when you arrive.	I suggest you register on arrival.
The Ph.D. candidate reviewed the material before she was examined orally.	The Ph.D. candidate reviewed the material before her oral examinations.
The right to speak freely is protected by the first amendment.	Freedom of speech is protected by the first amendment.
Being taxed when you’re not represented is unjust.	Taxation without representation is unjust.

Despite their usefulness in these four instances, however, nominalizations should be used cautiously. As a rule, to energize your writing, don’t nominalize; verbalize.

Don’t verb your nouns.

As the comics character Calvin once said to Hobbes, “Verbing weirds language.” I agree. Just as nouning makes dead your style, verbing weirds language. And it has been going on for a long time.

As I noted above, more than thirty years ago, the noun contact was made into a verb over the vehement objections of certain purists. Today we see the same thing happening to the nouns impact and access. They are being verbed. Thirty years from now, however, I suspect that few people will remember that anyone objected.

So can we dialogue for a moment about verbing language? Or would you rather conference about it?

Why do some writers like to verb their words?

For the same reason people wore powdered wigs in the eighteenth century and bell-bottoms in the 1960s. They think it makes them debonair or hip. I don’t mean to argue that language should never change. Text has long been used in the English language, but now it is also used as a verb. As our world—and our perception of our world—changes, so should our language.

Verbing your nouns is not always wrong. There are times when it’s necessary to bend your words to suit your needs, as we did when we shortened the noun facsimile to fax and then began using it not only as a noun but also as a verb. Both in writing and in speech, this function shift is called inflection. But some writers go too far. What I object to is verbing words when doing so obscures rather than elucidates meaning. So don’t verb your nouns just for the sake of verbing your nouns. Would you like to interface with me on that point, or do you agree?

Avoid noun stacks.

A noun stack is a series of nouns, some of which have been created from verbs. Just as nominalizations can steal energy from a sentence, noun stacks—to use wording that illustrates my point—can cause energy elimination problems in your style.

The problem with noun stacks is that they alter the natural flow of thought in a way that momentarily suspends movement. For example, consider this noun stack: an acquisition candidate identification process. Note how the first three nouns (which have been impressed into service as adjectives) do not reveal their meaning until we come to the last word, process. Only then do the preceding words an acquisition candidate identification make sense. This suspension of natural movement creates an awkward pause in the sentence, a dead zone in which nothing is happening.

You can unstack those long, ungainly phrases by starting from the last word in the stack, or the right side of the phrase, and reversing the order. As you make your way through the stack, substitute verbs for nouns when appropriate and add prepositions and pronouns as needed. (It’s easier to do than it might sound.) An acquisition candidate identification process, for example, unstacks like this: a process for identifying candidates for acquisition. Here’s another example: software integrity validation specifications unstacks as specifications to validate the integrity of our software.

Some noun stacks, of course, are not only acceptable, but also convenient and useful. The term noun stacks itself expresses the idea more definitely and more compactly than a stack of nouns. Many common expressions, such as school year and workbench, are actually noun stacks. Likewise, many technical and scientific terms, such as vacancy rate, software validation, system availability, and heart palpitation, are noun stacks put to practical use.

It isn’t until you add a third or fourth noun to the stack that you begin to impede the natural progression and flow of a sentence in a way that damages your style. Although software validation specifications seems useful and only somewhat cumbersome, software integrity validation specifications definitely crosses the line. (Note that integrity and validation are redundant anyway.) Another consideration to keep in mind when weighing the value of compactness against the advantage of movement is frequency. Too many noun stacks have a cumulative effect that can weigh down your style and make it sound stiff, mechanical, and bureaucratic. So as a rule, practice noun stack construction avoidance—in other words, avoid noun stacks—for a lively style.

In a word, action is the key. Use action verbs, mind travel, and the active voice to create movement. Make your sentences tell stories, and don’t let those nominalizations and noun stacks get in the way. Remember: To keep it interesting, keep it moving.

Chapter Three Exercises

Use Action and Movement to Engage Your Reader

1. Make your sentences tell stories.

Rewrite the following passage using verbs to make it tell a story: “The jungles were dark and unyielding. There were gaping corpses. Nobody knew anything about the mysterious war.”

2. Use verbs to animate your descriptions.

Write a description that invokes the senses (as recommended in chapter two) and is animated by verbs. Begin with “The place seemed curiously vacant.”

3. Use semicolons and elliptical constructions to suggest movement.

a. In which of the following sentences is the semicolon used to create “mind travel?”

i. Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

ii. The January sun sets at 5 P.M. in the North Country; we’ll never find our campsite before dark.

iii. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings; I only wanted to help.

b. Think of your favorite place. Write two sentences describing that place using a semicolon between them to create “mind travel.”

c. Delete one or two words from the following sentences to make them elliptical:

i. A bird in the hand is worth two birds in the bush.

ii. We can’t do anything to solve the problem, but Massoud can do something.

iii. You revised two sentences, but I’m revising three sentences.

Know How to Work with the Active and Passive Voices

4. Use the active voice for emphasis and energy.

Convert the passive voice (where the subject receives the action) to the active voice (where the subject performs the action) in the following sentences:

a. A beer was ordered for her by him, a Blue Ribbon, because (he said) she deserved a prize for being the best thing that had been seen by him in days.

b. Her purse was dropped out of her hand, spilling.

c. Even in the dark, when his headlights were turned off by him, enough light was reflected by the snow to see by.

5. Know when to use the passive voice.

In which of the following sentences is the passive voice used to good effect?

a. A right turn was made by her off the road.

b. So many mistakes were made that the project had to be scuttled.

c. The envelope was opened and the words were read by me.

Know How to Work with Verbs and Nouns

6. Prefer strong action verbs over nominalizations.

Rewrite the following sentence replacing the nominalizations with action verbs: “I came to the realization that I needed to make a revision in this sentence.”

7. Know when to use nominalizations.

In which of the sentences below is the nominalization put to good use?

a. Marchand’s professors had offered instructions to him to use a low flame.

b. Marchand’s beaker exploded because he failed to follow instructions.

c. Marchand let out a groan and made a request for medical assistance.

8. Don’t verb your nouns.

Change one “verbed noun” into a normal verb and leave the other “verbed noun” as it is in the following sentence: “Isabella gifted the committee chair with her favorite pen after he tabled the motion.”

9. Avoid noun stacks.

a. Unstack the noun stack in the following sentence: “She asked me for noun stack elimination advice.”

b. Leave one noun stack as it is and unstack the other one in the following sentence: “The consumer safety board issued a Firestone tire recall.”

Chapter Three Exercise Answers

Use Action and Movement to Engage Your Reader

1. Make your sentences tell stories.

Here’s how Tim O’Brien wrote the passage in his novel, In the Lake of the Woods:

2. Use verbs to animate your descriptions.

Here is O’Brien’s description from In the Lake of the Woods:

3. Use semicolons and elliptical constructions to suggest movement.

a. Answer: Sentence ii.

b. Does the semicolon you placed between your two sentences invite the reader to imagine a relationship or connection?

c. Did you delete i. birds, ii. do something, and iii. the second sentences?

Know How to Work with the Active and Passive Voices

4. Use the active voice for emphasis and energy.

Here’s how Louise Erdrich wrote those sentences in Love Medicine:

5. Know when to use the passive voice.

Did you choose sentence b because the “diplomatic passive” does not identify the people who made the mistakes?

Know How to Work with Verbs and Nouns

6. Prefer strong action verbs over nominalizations.

Revised sentence: “I realized I needed to revise this sentence.”

7. Know when to use nominalizations.

Answer: Sentence b.

8. Don’t verb your nouns.

Revised sentence: “Isabella gave the committee chair her favorite pen after he tabled the motion.”

9. Avoid noun stacks.

a. Revised sentence: “She asked me for advice on eliminating stacks of nouns [or eliminating noun stacks].”

b. Revised sentence: “The consumer safety board recalled tires made by Firestone.”