Verbs and Excess Words
Inflection is emphasis, tone, rhythm, and lyricism of how
a sentence is said. When speaking orally, we naturally tell people what we’re
saying through how we say it. A listener can understand what we’re saying while we’re speaking.
But a reader
has to speculate about how we are saying something then use that to figure out
what we’re saying. If they are wrong, and they’ve emphasized it wrong, the
sentence might have its meaning changed, or not make any sense to them at all.
Take, for instance, “I never said she stole my money.”
“I never said
she stole my money.”
“I never said
she stole my money.”
“I never said
she stole my money.”
“I never said she
stole my money.”
“I never said she stole
my money.”
“I never said she stole my money.”
“I never said she stole my money.”
Each sentence has a completely different meaning. And, in
this case, I could just italicize the word to tell the reader how I wanted them
to say each one, so I had some control over the important inflection. However,
italics tells the reader to really
emphasize what they’re reading and can’t be used lightly without sounding
silly. At best, it’ll sound like the speaker is a drama queen.
What’s important to note for the writer is that the
audience always assumes that the verb is the most important part of the
sentence, or, as in the case above, the negative verb.
Most will read, “I never said she stole my money,” as
“That didn’t happen.” “I never said it, and she didn’t do it.”
You can control this assumption by changing context.
“You just going around telling everyone Jenny took your
money?”
“I never said she stole my money. Jimmy’s the blabbermouth here.”
Readers can read inflection in hindsight, but it’s a
dangerous business. If they can immediately readjust, they won’t even notice,
but if they have to go back and reread, there’s a chance they’ll feel your
writing is confusing or dense.
People first prioritize negatives.
“Don’t you dare give me that look.”
“Don’t you dare give me that look.”
“I’m not a whore.”
“He won’t like it.”
The reader assumes the sentence’s point is about what
will not happen.
In most sentences though, in which there is no negation, readers
prioritize verbs, especially over the nouns. They assume emphasis on the
action, and that that action is the reason for the sentence’s existence. If you
want to draw attention to the noun, you remove the verb from the sentence:
“There was a chair.”
“Was,” of course, is a verb, but it is a weak verb used
to make the important aspect either the adjective (which takes precedent over
the noun if it exists) or the noun.
“The chair was blue.”
In most cases, adjectives and adverbs of secondary
importance.
“The tall man walked in the door,” focuses on that a man walked in the door—who happened to be tall. “Tall” is a peripheral, extra piece of information tacked on. In “He was tall,” it tells the reader his height is important.
Weak or common verbs draw attention to other parts of the
sentence. A basic verb with any sort of adverb will put the emphasis on that
adverb. If you have a repetitive sentence structure, or use adverbs constantly,
it will make the rhythm of the work distracting because it fights the reader’s
usual assumption.
Dictating images with action instead of adverbs or
adjectives also saves time and makes a sentence more meaty. Usually, you want
to save single-motive sentences for the important aspects.
If I say, “He slammed his hand down on the table, making
the pocket-watch bounce,” I’ve just told you there’s a pocket-watch on the
table, but not necessarily because the pocket watch is important. It might be
just that I’m describing the force he used. The reader is more likely to ignore
it.
If I say, “There was a pocket-watch on the table,” the
audience will probably realize the pocket-watch is important. Maybe you want
them to, and it’s a great tool to do so. But, if every sentence so far has a
singular point, it’s not only likely that the story revealing information too
slowly, but also you can’t imply importance by singular points anymore.
The verb is the most powerful part of your sentence. It
usually has assumed emphasis, and you can toy with implied importance by how
you use your verbs.
After the verb, the adverb, and the adjectives, it is
often the preposition that takes focus. A weak verb without an adverb in a
sentence with a prepositional phrase will become about that prepositional phrase.
“He stood in the hot sun.”
“In” is the actual preposition, “in the hot sun,” is the
prepositional phrase. The point of the sentence focuses on the phrase itself,
in this case, the adjective: hot. Because “stood” is such a banal word, it
seems the sentence is about how hot it is.
Most prepositional phrases are superfluous by technical
definition, but are included for emphasis. In the case of, “He stood in the hot
sun,” it can be assumed that the preposition is the important part, easily
replaced by, “The sun was hot,” and not lost much in the way of information. So
this is an exception.
But you often will have phrases that the preposition says
something assumed, or even just doesn’t add anything:
“The paint on the wall peeled.”
“He thought about it.”
“On the wall” is the prepositional phrase. Technically,
the paint could be anywhere, but it’s
safe to assume that if the reader knows the character is in a room, the first
place he’ll assume “paint” is would be the wall. The preposition would only be
needed if it wasn’t in the first expected place, like the ceiling. In this
case, “The paint peeled,” could be a perfectly adequate sentence if just for
information’s sake.
“He thought about it,” is a prime example of a sentence
enhanced by extra, if unnecessary words. “He thought,” and “He thought about
it,” mean exactly the same thing.
However, readers will always react funny to the flat sentence, “He thought.”
Believe me, I’ve tried it. And I’ve left it. Because
that’s the kind of writer I am.
No one speaks like that, so you keep the preposition
purely for the purpose of cadence, not technical meaning. This will be a common
issue; even though a sentence might not need a word to convey information, it
is needed to sound right—or even just sound the way the author wants.
Leaving in “excess” words is as much about rhythm and inflection
as it is about duration of moment. If you want to control the length of time a
visual takes, you want to control the length of your sentence:
“He punched,” is very different visually from, “Without
thinking, Jonathan raised his arm, fist balled, and swung a hard, heavy punch,
the hardest he’s ever thrown.”
One is a quick, immediate action. The other takes longer
for even the characters, almost as though time slowed down. Each are different,
and each are useful in the right situation. This “duration” is also affected by
number of syllables and “-ing” words; shorter syllables like “hit,” are faster
than longer words like, “smacked.” “-Ing” words feel slower, less abrupt. “She
accepted his drink, grabbing it,” versus, “She accepted and grabbed it.”
“Grabbing” in the first feels like a just slightly softer touch, “grabbed”
feeling harsher. Of course, if you really want a difference, you might say,
“take,” to make her more polite.
Mostly “extra” words draw a lot of attention to
themselves because usually, if you’re including them, it’s important. This is
why you should never just start deleting words simply because people tell you
to; every time you included an “excess” word, it had a purpose. (Just keep in
mind that that purpose may have very well been due to stalling or looking
formal.)
For instance:
“He stood out in the hot sun,” versus, “He stood in the
hot sun.”
Now they might look like the same sentence, and the
difference is so subtle, it’s entirely possible that the author honestly doesn’t
care about the slight change. But there is
a difference.
“Out” is the focus of the sentence.
“He stood out in the hot sun,” makes us think about where
the man is, not the heat of the sun. The sun becomes the peripheral
information. He is out in the open, nothing around. No shade, no buildings. How
far from these things, we don’t know, but he’s exposed.
Note, that if it had a strong verb, like “stumbled,” the
strong verb would take precedent like they normally do, but then the extra
preposition of “out” would still supersede “in the hot sun,” even though
adjectives are usually prioritized over prepositions.
“He stumbled out into the hot sun,” would focus on the
image of him stumbling, yes, but “out” would still make us envision the
location—where he is stumbling.
Excess words can trip readers up because they take
emphasis; too many extra and your sentence loses a natural rhythm.
This brings me to my final point about inflection, which
is that “dense” writing has more to do with misappropriated emphasis than it
does big words.
Because we naturally understand the action as the
priority, then the descriptions, then the where, then the what and assume emphasis based on those parts of speech,
readers most often get confused when the verb, noun, adjective or adverb is
confused.
There are a lot of words that can fall into more than one
category: evil, influence, open, and anal for starters.
“Evil” can be a noun or an adjective:
“Evil floods the world.”
“The evil dog bit the mailman.”
Influence can be a noun or a verb.
“His influence made me do it.”
“He influenced me to do it.”
Open can be an adjective or a verb.
“He is an open person.”
“He opened the door.”
Anal can be an adjective or a verb.
“I am so anal that I’m not going to allow myself to explain
how anal can be an action.”
When you have a sentence and a person first assumes
something is a certain part of speech and then the next word is really that
part of speech, it can lead to confusion. So, she thinks it’s a noun, but
really the next word is the noun of the sentence, and she has to start over.
“The evil influence of Dracula takes over Europe!”
If she thinks “evil” is a noun on a first impression, her
mental inflection is going to read it as a noun.
Read, “The evil influence of Dracula…” versus “The evil
influences Dracula,” and you can hear how you say evil and influence
differently, and why missing it might be jarring.
Once she gets to ‘influence,’ she’s going to realize her
inflection is wrong and have to start over. The problem can be exacerbated if
she’s (like many readers) not a careful reader and sees, “The evil influences
of Dracula takes over Europe!”
The sentence will make sense all the way up to “takes.” In order to avoid starting over, it’s likely she’ll spend some time on “takes” to see if it’s not supposed to be “take.” Or, she will read it as she expects and not realize that she misinterpreted it. In this case, it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t really change the meaning of the sentence, but we’ve all had times where we read something wrong and didn’t find out until several pages later that something is off.
This problem is worse for fantasy and science-fiction
writers who are constantly making up words.
“The god machine drilled through the crust.”
The reader might read “god” as a noun when really it’s
functioning as an adjective. Hopefully, a temporary mishap like this won’t
cause a problem, but if it’s combined with long, complex sentences, a bunch of
new terms, and large words (as it was in the story that I took this line from),
the reader can feel overwhelmed.
It’s useful to utilize hyphens and capitalization
whenever you have the opportunity for made-up terms, especially those that are
combinations of already existing words. Capitalization will tell readers what
is the whole noun—The Surveying Squadron from Tempora—or new
terminology—god-machine—which can help them not get confused as to what’s
supposed be the real action from the action inside a noun.
Writing is an interesting and complex new way of looking at words. Not all authors (few I'd say) understand the minutiae of why readers are affected by the written word the way they are; they just learn naturally through trial and error and apply it to their gut instincts. Regardless, it's somewhat fascinating to understand the assumptions we make as readers, and it can help the writer figure out why his sentence didn't land.
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