Verbs and Verbosity in Fiction

Image Credits:-

Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

Screenshot taken by me, Allison Symes.

Now you might think one of these has an obvious place in any kind of creative writing and the other definitely not.

On the face of it, quite right too. Ironically, though there can be a place for some judicially placed verbosity but more on that shortly.

Verbs are, of course, part of the writer’s creative toolbox, along with the various component parts of our language. I use them to trigger story ideas. How?

Random Generators – Verbs

Well, there is such a thing as a random verb generator. Yes, really. There are plenty of other generators too and I use all of them fairly regularly to come up with stories. It is like being set a prompt by someone you don’t know and I like to respond to the challenge of that. Doing this has increased my productivity significantly too.

I can use these generators in different ways. I can set how many words at a time to generate. In many of them, including this one, I can set first and/or last letter. If I choose to generate two or three verbs I can then choose whether to use all of them in my story or pick just one of them. I’ve found it pays to only generate up to five items at a time as usually one or more of the results will be enough to get me started on an idea. More than that and you can feel swamped.

The Importance of Verbs

Why verbs in particular? (Other than yours truly needing a reasonable “peg” for the letter V for this In Fiction series! I will put my hands up to that one!).

Verbs are the “power house” of language given their definition is given as “a verb describes an action, state, or occurrence”. I cannot think of any form of creative writing without them. We have to get our characters carrying out various actions and having reactions and consequences.

There has to be an almost constant state of “doing” throughout the story to keep our readers’ interest. There has to be plenty of occurrences in longer stories. Even in my flash fiction, there has to be an action, a reaction and a consequence.

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What I don’t need so much of are the adjectives, the good old describing words. I can often show things about my characters without using these. Also their dialogue/internal thoughts can cover more ground more quickly. But verbs, especially in a short piece of work, are crucial.

If I wanted to say a character was cold, I could indicate just how cold they were by saying something like she was very cold. Better still would be to say she was freezing. Freezing is a strong image (and is also a useful bit of description). But I can limit how much description I give in a story.

I can let readers work things out from context. What I don’t want to limit are the actions and reactions. It is the old what happens next, then after that ploy, all the way through to The End.

Verbosity

Surely then as I am writing to a tight word count, there is no room for verbosity in my characters. Their speech/thoughts should be to the point and move the story along in some way. Generally, yes that would be the case. Occasionally though it would be appropriate for the right character to be verbose in their speech – a pompous one for example is likely to be. I can use their speech and its mannerisms to show that verbosity.

Nervous characters can sometimes speak too much too quickly as if trying to get all of the words (no doubt including verbs!) out as soon as they can. There will be at least one reason behind that nervousness (fear of the boss etc just being one).

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Verbosity then can be used to show something like that up especially if earlier in the story you’ve got them speaking/thinking “normally”. It will act as a red flag to a reader to pay attention. Why has this character suddenly got a bad case of the verbals?

It is a question of having a good reason for the verbosity then. For characters who would have this tendency, I often ensure they don’t use contractions and, instead of saying something simply, they go “around the houses” to say something which could’ve been said in half the time and with half the effort put in.

Readers quickly pick up on this being a mannerism and will start forming their own judgments about your verbose creation. Are they funny with it? Just a pain in the neck? Just how pompous is this character and so on? Hopefully they’ll be keen to find out whether the verbosity is for comedic effect. Incidentally verbose characters never think they are – fiction does so often mirror life!

Verbosity comes up in various TV shows too – think Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers and Captain George Mainwaring in Dad’s Army. Having someone being well meaning but verbose with it is fine (and I think Mainwaring fits in that category. For Fawlty, I think his verbosity is a coping mechanism).

You can indicate this trait by getting a character to use a long-winded term for something whereas everyone around them uses the simpler generic tone but there should be a good reason for your character to be like that. A good reason doesn’t have to be good as we understand it. It does have to be good from the character’s viewpoint. Very few are going to admit to something like “I speak like this because I’m an insufferable snob”. Most might admit to something like “I speak like this because it was how I was taught”.

Conclusion

I often outline my characters to ensure I know enough about them to write their stories up. Plenty of verbs flying about here! For traits like verbosity (or its opposite being taciturn), I work out first why my characters are like that. My story will then explore whether they change or whether these traits are simply part of who they are and what they do in the course of the story is more important.