Writer needs fund of useful verbs.
May 14, 2010 10:19 PM Subscribe
Looking for the right verbs, idioms, and metaphors to spice up my writing.
My academic writing is very noun-heavy, and I often find myself groping for the right verbs to 1) make it more interesting and readable and 2) clarify what I really mean. You can only use "is," "concerns," "provides," "shows," "includes" and similar brown words or one-argument predicates so many times without seeming dull and unfocused. What kinds of verbs and turns of phrase do you find useful when you're writing papers (in the humanities)? What would you add to a list of verbs that already includes "to furnish" (a character with certain qualities), "to disclose" (an underlying theme), and "to unfold" (an argument)? To give you a better sense of what I mean, I will quote a random stylish passage from an academic writer that I admire and highlight all of the particularly inventive figures in bold:
"...Even in the eighteenth century, keys were needed to unpack the identities of all the persons, places, and things satirized therein. At times, however, this satiric prose is disconcertingly invaded by sentimental tropes that invite the reader to contemplate the emotional life of property, the affective bond between things and their owners. It is a measure of Sterne's influence and popularity that around 1760, these narratives began to envision their objects as sentimental travelers, out to accrue affect rather than profit." (Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire)
Anyway, that's just an example of the kind of language I'm looking for. Please hit me with your best verbs and figures. Bonus points for words that imply some sort of logic of argument.
My academic writing is very noun-heavy, and I often find myself groping for the right verbs to 1) make it more interesting and readable and 2) clarify what I really mean. You can only use "is," "concerns," "provides," "shows," "includes" and similar brown words or one-argument predicates so many times without seeming dull and unfocused. What kinds of verbs and turns of phrase do you find useful when you're writing papers (in the humanities)? What would you add to a list of verbs that already includes "to furnish" (a character with certain qualities), "to disclose" (an underlying theme), and "to unfold" (an argument)? To give you a better sense of what I mean, I will quote a random stylish passage from an academic writer that I admire and highlight all of the particularly inventive figures in bold:
"...Even in the eighteenth century, keys were needed to unpack the identities of all the persons, places, and things satirized therein. At times, however, this satiric prose is disconcertingly invaded by sentimental tropes that invite the reader to contemplate the emotional life of property, the affective bond between things and their owners. It is a measure of Sterne's influence and popularity that around 1760, these narratives began to envision their objects as sentimental travelers, out to accrue affect rather than profit." (Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire)
Anyway, that's just an example of the kind of language I'm looking for. Please hit me with your best verbs and figures. Bonus points for words that imply some sort of logic of argument.
The best verbs are the most physical. They should have some weight, color, and feel when you hold them in your mind's eye; they should make noise. As a result, some of the best sources for good verbs are physical trades and sciences: brewing, baking, textiles, chemistry.
"Distill" is a good one, for example. Through pressure and heat, the distiller purifies and separates a component of her mixture; through pressure and scrutiny, the academic purifies and separates a component of her text.
Some more ideas along this line of thought:
calibrate
collect
combine
compress
concentrate
condense
converge
dilute
distill
extract
fabricate
integrate
refine
resolve (the optical definition is pertinent here)
transfigure
transmute
weave
I will add this: The only thing worse than bland, boring, passive academic prose is overburdened, hi-octane, buzzy academic prose. It's only good to use these verbs if they're the right ones (that is, the metaphors you're using make sense), not just because they seem a little jazzier. I'm sure you know already know this, but there are a few too many academics who don't.
posted by cirripede at 11:24 PM on May 14, 2010 [5 favorites]
"Distill" is a good one, for example. Through pressure and heat, the distiller purifies and separates a component of her mixture; through pressure and scrutiny, the academic purifies and separates a component of her text.
Some more ideas along this line of thought:
calibrate
collect
combine
compress
concentrate
condense
converge
dilute
distill
extract
fabricate
integrate
refine
resolve (the optical definition is pertinent here)
transfigure
transmute
weave
I will add this: The only thing worse than bland, boring, passive academic prose is overburdened, hi-octane, buzzy academic prose. It's only good to use these verbs if they're the right ones (that is, the metaphors you're using make sense), not just because they seem a little jazzier. I'm sure you know already know this, but there are a few too many academics who don't.
posted by cirripede at 11:24 PM on May 14, 2010 [5 favorites]
If you're looking for new words, and for them to sink in and become part of your natural vocabulary when writing... the only advice I have is read. I find that if I'm trying to write anything decent, I simply can't do it without simultaneous reading of at least two or three books. I need to be reading in order to write.
posted by Biru at 2:41 AM on May 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Biru at 2:41 AM on May 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
The answer here is really not just to read, but to read a breadth and depth of material. Financial magazines, foofy magazines, cereal boxes, tourism pamphlets, novels, and academic writing.
It's great to admire work you aspire to, how about taking a few drab examples that you find and spicing them up with a red pencil for your own amusement?
Another exercise is to take your own writing over the top. Be truly extravagant in your diction. Insert mellifluous phrases. This helps get your brain looking for words with greater impact than the first, obvious choice.
Why create a writing voice when you can concoct, construct, or forge one? If this is the kind of change you hope to see in your writing, keep a dictionary at hand when you read, and use it. And keep a thesaurus at your side while you write.
posted by bilabial at 5:34 AM on May 15, 2010
It's great to admire work you aspire to, how about taking a few drab examples that you find and spicing them up with a red pencil for your own amusement?
Another exercise is to take your own writing over the top. Be truly extravagant in your diction. Insert mellifluous phrases. This helps get your brain looking for words with greater impact than the first, obvious choice.
Why create a writing voice when you can concoct, construct, or forge one? If this is the kind of change you hope to see in your writing, keep a dictionary at hand when you read, and use it. And keep a thesaurus at your side while you write.
posted by bilabial at 5:34 AM on May 15, 2010
I like cirripede's list above. I'll add another strong vote for active verbs (both in the general sense, and in the grammatical sense). Rather than listing more verbs, though, I'll just add a small piece of advice about finding the right ones.
In my experience, writing about writing veers off the rails when you lose sight of human action. So one way to maintain clarity and liveliness in your writing is to keep your focus on what people are doing with respect to the text in question. You might be interested in how a reader reacts to a passage, what inferences she draws, what connections she forges; or you might focus on the author's craft, how he structures a narrative or sketches a character -- or, if it's that sort of a text, you can zoom in on the actions and motivations of the characters themselves; or again, you might focus on the historical/cultural context of a particular text -- not impersonally, but in terms of what people located at a particular place and time did, and thought, and believed.
Sometimes, as in the passage you quote, a writer will go so far as to personify the text in order to imply that the writing itself is taking action ("invaded by tropes that invite"; "narratives envision their objects"). This is a tic of contemporary academic prose that I personally detest, because it is deceptive -- and often ridiculous. Invading tropes? Load your musket, Sir Laurence, here come those pesky sentimental tropes again... To avoid giving your readers fits of the giggles when you are trying to be serious, just remember that texts do not act: people do. Writers who forget this get lost all too easily in the misty stratosphere of jargon. A student of the humanities should keep his or her eye on the humans, I think.
I think your quest for verbs is the right quest, by the way: verbs keep your academic prose feeling light and active, while too many adjectives and adverbs will weigh it down.
posted by philokalia at 6:10 AM on May 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
In my experience, writing about writing veers off the rails when you lose sight of human action. So one way to maintain clarity and liveliness in your writing is to keep your focus on what people are doing with respect to the text in question. You might be interested in how a reader reacts to a passage, what inferences she draws, what connections she forges; or you might focus on the author's craft, how he structures a narrative or sketches a character -- or, if it's that sort of a text, you can zoom in on the actions and motivations of the characters themselves; or again, you might focus on the historical/cultural context of a particular text -- not impersonally, but in terms of what people located at a particular place and time did, and thought, and believed.
Sometimes, as in the passage you quote, a writer will go so far as to personify the text in order to imply that the writing itself is taking action ("invaded by tropes that invite"; "narratives envision their objects"). This is a tic of contemporary academic prose that I personally detest, because it is deceptive -- and often ridiculous. Invading tropes? Load your musket, Sir Laurence, here come those pesky sentimental tropes again... To avoid giving your readers fits of the giggles when you are trying to be serious, just remember that texts do not act: people do. Writers who forget this get lost all too easily in the misty stratosphere of jargon. A student of the humanities should keep his or her eye on the humans, I think.
I think your quest for verbs is the right quest, by the way: verbs keep your academic prose feeling light and active, while too many adjectives and adverbs will weigh it down.
posted by philokalia at 6:10 AM on May 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
For what it's worth, idioms and metaphors are something it's better to either make up on the spot, or not use at all; idioms and metaphors that I've heard before turn me off to a person's writing, academic or otherwise. It comes across as cheesy -- distractingly so -- and it makes me think the rest of the writing will be more of the same stuff I've heard before, and therefore not worth my time to read carefully. After about two metaphors I've heard before I'll start skipping around just looking for whatever facts I wanted to know and be done with an article or paper in a few minutes.
Coming up with original metaphors isn't easy and it's outside the scope of an AskMeFi answer -- there are entire chapters of writing books about that sort of thing -- but if it's not something that comes easily and you need time to practice, really, it won't hurt your writing to not have metaphors; you don't really notice they're gone, whereas unoriginal metaphors stick out. Don't feel pressured to use metaphors, and if you find yourself putting in a metaphor you didn't make up, just leave it out. Your writing can be plenty engaging just by using better verbs, and there's already some good advice here so I'll leave it at that.
posted by Nattie at 6:36 AM on May 15, 2010
Coming up with original metaphors isn't easy and it's outside the scope of an AskMeFi answer -- there are entire chapters of writing books about that sort of thing -- but if it's not something that comes easily and you need time to practice, really, it won't hurt your writing to not have metaphors; you don't really notice they're gone, whereas unoriginal metaphors stick out. Don't feel pressured to use metaphors, and if you find yourself putting in a metaphor you didn't make up, just leave it out. Your writing can be plenty engaging just by using better verbs, and there's already some good advice here so I'll leave it at that.
posted by Nattie at 6:36 AM on May 15, 2010
"...Even in the eighteenth century, keys were needed to unpack the identities of all the persons, places, and things satirized therein. At times, however, this satiric prose is disconcertingly invaded by sentimental tropes that invite the reader to contemplate the emotional life of property, the affective bond between things and their owners. It is a measure of Sterne's influence and popularity that around 1760, these narratives began to envision their objects as sentimental travelers, out to accrue affect rather than profit."
Possibly this is not the best person to emulate. In three sentences, she’s conjured at least three images, (travel, (unpacking), warfare (invading), accounting (accrue)), not one of which has anything to do with the other.
And she has been sloppy in the usage.
First of all, keys unpack nothing - they unlock locks. These sentimental tropes that are inviting satirical prose disconcertingly – I think she means the effect of the invasion is disconcerting to the discerning, but it ain’t quite written that way. Property, unless we are talking about human or animal chattel, has no emotional life – it’s just a bunch of stuff. Narratives do not envision, people do (though some people use envision in this way, so reluctantly I’d mark it half wrong – but still wrong). Accrue is a technical accounting term, but need not be, and so the “rather than profit” qualification is unnecessary, even wrong. That is to say, the phrase “rather than” suggests that profit could be accrued here, though clearly it makes no sense in this context.
Mix metaphors much? I could go on….
For you – and I sincerely admire your desire to write a better prose – I would recommend The Reader Over Your Shoulder (Graves & Hodge) for tips on clarity, and your fellow Philadelphian and 18th century satire scholar Paul Fussell, both his varied academic work and his popular work. Good, clean, clear solid prose, whatever you might think of what he has to say.
More to good writing than jazzy verbs. If that were all that is required, all you’d need is a thesaurus. Best of luck – not easy at the best of times, and the academic milieu does nothing to make it easier.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:46 AM on May 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Possibly this is not the best person to emulate. In three sentences, she’s conjured at least three images, (travel, (unpacking), warfare (invading), accounting (accrue)), not one of which has anything to do with the other.
And she has been sloppy in the usage.
First of all, keys unpack nothing - they unlock locks. These sentimental tropes that are inviting satirical prose disconcertingly – I think she means the effect of the invasion is disconcerting to the discerning, but it ain’t quite written that way. Property, unless we are talking about human or animal chattel, has no emotional life – it’s just a bunch of stuff. Narratives do not envision, people do (though some people use envision in this way, so reluctantly I’d mark it half wrong – but still wrong). Accrue is a technical accounting term, but need not be, and so the “rather than profit” qualification is unnecessary, even wrong. That is to say, the phrase “rather than” suggests that profit could be accrued here, though clearly it makes no sense in this context.
Mix metaphors much? I could go on….
For you – and I sincerely admire your desire to write a better prose – I would recommend The Reader Over Your Shoulder (Graves & Hodge) for tips on clarity, and your fellow Philadelphian and 18th century satire scholar Paul Fussell, both his varied academic work and his popular work. Good, clean, clear solid prose, whatever you might think of what he has to say.
More to good writing than jazzy verbs. If that were all that is required, all you’d need is a thesaurus. Best of luck – not easy at the best of times, and the academic milieu does nothing to make it easier.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:46 AM on May 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
I've found this previous question helpful. I've copied down a bunch of the suggestions and put them up near my desk for when I'm writing.
posted by pised at 10:58 AM on May 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by pised at 10:58 AM on May 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks, everyone, for your word lists as well as your advice on writing.
IndigoJones and others, you wisely point out that what I'm struggling with is not the quest for "jazzy verbs" but rather the more ambitious goal of forging a clear, expressive prose style. That's definitely my ultimate project here, although I often feel that my mental lexicon is too limited. I grope for words to say what I mean and there's just not there in my head. That's why I thought an explicit list of words might help (passive reading doesn't seem to help-- I read a ton and I absorb little on the level of style). But you're right, Festa and her mixed metaphors aren't the best role models here.
posted by ms.codex at 11:16 AM on May 15, 2010
IndigoJones and others, you wisely point out that what I'm struggling with is not the quest for "jazzy verbs" but rather the more ambitious goal of forging a clear, expressive prose style. That's definitely my ultimate project here, although I often feel that my mental lexicon is too limited. I grope for words to say what I mean and there's just not there in my head. That's why I thought an explicit list of words might help (passive reading doesn't seem to help-- I read a ton and I absorb little on the level of style). But you're right, Festa and her mixed metaphors aren't the best role models here.
posted by ms.codex at 11:16 AM on May 15, 2010
Response by poster: belated typo alert: they're just not there, not there's just not there.
posted by ms.codex at 9:45 AM on May 16, 2010
posted by ms.codex at 9:45 AM on May 16, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
invoke, evoke
pervade, suffuse
elide, conflate
adduce, marshal
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:28 PM on May 14, 2010