Trust Your Nouns and Verbs
By Kathryn Craft | January 1, 2016 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Therese butting in for a second to officially welcome Kathryn Craft to Writer Unboxed as a regular contributor. Kathryn has mad skills, which she’s shared with us as a guest of WU, and I couldn’t be happier that she’ll bring them to us now through her new column, Mad Skills. Welcome, Kathryn!
Most experienced writers know the syndrome: once you are a student of craft, it gets harder and harder to lose yourself in the work you read. Since being an editor of any sort exacerbates the problem, people sometimes ask if I can switch off my inner prose analyst long enough to suspend belief and get swept away.
The answer is yes, I can, but it takes some mad authorial skills. Passages from works that exemplify these skills will become the grist for this new Writer Unboxed column in the hope that we can all benefit from studying them.
It’s January 1, though, and you may be hung over, so I’m going to keep this first installment simple.
Trust your nouns and verbs.
Wait—can this really count as a mad skill? It’s grammar school stuff. My first grade reader, Tip and Mitten by Paul McKee, detailed the hijinks of a little terrier and a black kitten in such language:
My ball is not in the box.
Here is a little can.
My ball may be in it.
I have to find my ball.
Set aside for a moment the repetition needed to help children translate written shapes into the sounds of language. A story is developing here—by god, people, a ball is missing and the search is on! Okay, a publisher of adult stories would want you to raise the stakes, but if you think no one cares about this little drama, you’re wrong—two copies of the first 1949 edition of Tip and Mitten are available on Amazon for $80.00 a piece. Many of us are nostalgic about the words that first made us fall in love with reading.
How can nostalgia help me now?
The more you study novel writing the more overwhelmingly complex it can seem. But when you strip a story to its essence, you’ll find nouns and verbs fueling it: Something (noun) happens to (verb) a character (noun) that threatens (verb) her world (noun), so she sets (verb) a goal. A whole lotta nouns and verbs set up complications, which her backstory motivation (noun) and desire (noun) inspire her to surmount (verb). This is the cause and effect language characteristic of active voice, and it will keep your story moving forward.
Let’s take a look at an example from Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman. After a short opening from the protagonist’s perspective as a child, the second chapter opens the current story action in her adult point of view:
When all else fails I go to Erik. Tonight, all else has failed.
He answers the door, eyes bloodshot, unsurprised. And then the hitch in my breathing that comes, that always comes with Erik.
“Can’t sleep?” he says.
“No.”
He steps aside to let me in, shuts the door behind me, slides the bolts, and chains the locks.
This spare prose is not all that different from Tip and Mitten: “My ball is not in the box”/”When all else fails I go to Erik.” But oh, the layers of meaning hidden here.
Note that in this opening passage Younge-Ullman limits herself to two adjectives. Her character is preoccupied and on a mission; further description would dilute the story and allow it to drift.
If we learned in the above passage that Erik has red hair, would we readers think, Oh man, I have to keep reading because why oh why does he have red hair? No. We read to find out why his eyes are bloodshot and unsurprised. Why he slides the bolts and chains the locks. Why she can’t sleep. We want to know why all else has failed for the protagonist, and why her breathing always hitches with Erik. Every single inclusion here raises a question that sets the hook deeper.
This short chapter ends:
I know the way to the bedroom. I know his mouth will taste like Scotch. I walk ahead and listen for his footsteps behind me. Just inside the door his arms wrap around my waist. He swivels me around and pulls me closer. I let him.
I come here because I know Erik will drag me to the edge. He will drag me there, push me over, and then leap after me, to a place beyond pain, beyond loss, beyond the things that haunt us in the empty spaces of the night.
When all else fails, I have this.
Wow. This spare voice might be nothing like yours, and it may not make sense for your type of story, but there is craft here we can emulate.
No doubt, as a writer, you’ve known since Tip and Mitten how to choose nouns and verbs.
Trusting them to drive your reader straight into the story is a mad skill.
Have you ever admired the way an author relied upon nouns and verbs to dive right into story? Any examples you’d like to share, from either adult works or early readers (don’t be shy if it’s your own)? As writers, how do we sometimes get in our own way as concerns getting the story moving on page one?
[coffee]
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
Glad to see you’re going to be a regular here, Kathryn! Great post to kick-off the new year.
Thanks Lydia, Happy New Year!
Great post, Kathryn. I need to go out and buy this book!
Let me know what you think after you read it, Linda! No matter what, you’ll learn from it.
First of all, welcome to the WU family! We’re like the mafia, only we get arrested less frequently. Well, most of us.
Second, thanks for highlighting one of the absolute strongest debut novels I’ve read. Younge-Ullman blew me away with this book, with some of the most fearless writing I’ve ever seen. Thanks for helping us analyze what’s behind the power of her prose!
Hey Keith, thanks for the welcome (and the warning?). Thrilled to meet another FALLING UNDER fan! Fearless is a great word—she drives straight into the story again and again.
One, I’m so super excited for this new feature because Kathryn is simply brilliant.
Two, it’s funny how we can get so caught up in all the other things that need to go into writing, and how something as small as nouns and verbs can really carry such an impact. Thank you for this!
Glad you’re looking forward to more, Tasha! And you’re right—we can be like overeager designers who get so excited looking at fabrics for curtains and draped swags, throwing in blinds for good measure, and once all is decorated we’ve somehow forgotten that what we originally had was a window!
Welcome and thank you. i relish the craft content of WU and am glad to see you on board. I look forward to more excellent posts like this one.
I’ll venture an example from my novel “Nerve Damage”.
Kristin rested her cheek against Rachelle’s. “You can’t be sad, Mommy.”
Rachelle fingered the wedge-shaped patch of thick, deadened tissue overlying her neck and shoulder. Sometimes she woke up screaming.
Yes, my baby. Mommy can be sad.
BTW – You and Keith have sold me on “Falling Under”. Will be ordering it directly.
Happy New year to the WU community!
Hi Tom, this is such an interesting example, thanks for sharing it! I love the symmetry you achieved within this short sample. So interesting to me though, in light of this post, how hard it was to get through “fingered the wedge-shaped patch of thick, deadened tissue overlying…” Do you read your work aloud? Doing so is such a great tool because sometimes our tripping tongues will point out what our writer-minds will not. Read it aloud this way, and then again, subbing in “ran her fingers over the deadened tissue on her neck and shoulder.” In this moment, is it important that the reader discovers the patch is wedge-shaped and thick? Could that be placed somewhere else so the adjectives don’t stand between the reader and the emotion you want to put forth here? Always worth asking.
I agree. Good observation. Thank you.
Tom Combs,
You could use italics when telling the mother’s thoughts concerning her sadness.
I love this devastatingly simple rule, Kathryn. You’re excellent voice is always leading us onward in our Mad Skills!
Thanks Zan!
Thanks for introducing me to this Canadian author. Read an excerpt on Amazon and love, love the voice. Ordering now.
So looking forward to your future posts, both for your writerly wisdom and introduction to authors I would have otherwise not knows. Happy New Year, Kathryn!
Glad to do so, Densie! I too love her voice. Her last book was a YA and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.
What a perfect post to begin a New Year with, Kathryn! Nouns and Verbs. I should have them tattooed on my wrists :)
I like to do a writing exercise in description and find that the writing is strongest when I have specific nouns and strong verbs.
Vitaya I love the idea of a writing exercise in description that focuses on nouns and verbs! You’ve got my wheels turning, thanks!
Why do I have the feeling you’re going to be a very expensive columnist to read, Kathryn? My poor, groaning TBR pile! Heh.
Welcome aboard–an occurrence which feels as inevitable as it is delightful.
Haha Jan, hey, I aim to bedevil. I have no business buying another novel ever again and yet… what’s the fun in that? Thanks for the welcome.
What a great way to simplify writing! And what an amazing example- as you pointed out, a lot of depth was hidden in what appeared at first to be very simple sentences. :)
Glad you appreciated it Ian, thanks for stopping by.
Nouns and verbs–perfect. Keep your writing simple and it’ll turn out wonderful.
Or all least simplicity and active language creates a great base. I happen to believe language can be both concise and lush at the same time. Future examples to come!
Great post, and I’m so glad to see you are a regular contributor here. You might be happy to know that after many delays the past few months, I’m about to finish Evelyn Evolving. I tried to use lots of nouns and verbs as I wrote it. :-)
Glad to hear of your progress, Maryann, and even your title is a noun and a verb! ;) Thanks for stopping in.