BUILDING STRONG WRITING ONE LETTER AT A TIME :)

Active verbs are the foundation of strong writing.


Today's post is hosted by:

• the letter A 
• Active Verbs  
• Active Verb Forms 
• and the verb to practise ;)

ACTIVE VERBS STARTING WITH A:


abolish   abandon  abduct  accelerate  accuse   abscond   abuse   achieve   acquire   act   adapt   add   address   adjust  administer   advance   advise   aim   allocate   analyse   answer   anticipate   apprehend   approach   appropriate   arbitrate   arrange   arrest   ascertain   assault  assemble   assess   attack   attain  audit  avert 

Active Verbs Forms 


Simple Present:
Mortimer practises Extra Sensory Perception - ESP - in The Collective.


Present Continuous:
Right now, Mortimer is practising telepathy.


Simple Past:
Mortimer practised clairaudience in the empty auditorium yesterday.


Past Continuous:
Mortimer was practising precognition before The Staff began his patrol last night.


Present Perfect:
Mortimer has practised his telepathic skills on The Staff.


Present Perfect Continuous:
Most frequently, Mortimer has been practising clairvoyance.


Past Perfect:
Mortimer has practised all forms of ESP.


Past Perfect Continuous:
Mortimer had been practising these psychic-skills in his dorm room at night.


Simple Future (WILL):
Mortimer will practise telepathy during school hours.


Simple Future (BE GOING TO):
He is going to practise his psych-skills any time The Staff isn't around to see him.


Future Continuous (WILL):
After the others have gone to sleep, Mortimer will be practising precognition to see when The Staff is going to act.


Future Continuous (BE GOING TO):
After the others have gone to sleep, Mortimer is going to be practising retrocognition to see why The Staff has been picking on him.


Future Perfect (WILL):
Mortimer will have practised every form of ESP by day-break.


Future Perfect (BE GOING TO):
Mortimer is going to have practised his psych-skills until the deadline arrives. 


Future Perfect Continuous (WILL):
Mortimer will have been practising his psych-skills for months until they are strong enough to break The Staff.


Future Perfect Continuous (BE GOING TO):
Mortimer is going to have been practising his skills for months until they are strong enough to break The Staff.


Used to:
Mortimer used to practise ESP in the library.


Would Always:
Mortimer would always practise his psych-skills in the library.


Future In The Past (WOULD)
Fortinbras knew Mortimer would practise his psych-skills any time The Staff was busy and no-one else was around to disturb him.


Future In The Past (WAS GOING TO)
Fortinbras thought Mortimer was going to practise until he was powerful enough to break The Staff.


Active verbs will be cropping up all over, but I don't imagine I'll be using too many of the active verb forms ;)


DO YOU THINK IT MATTERS IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE NAME OF THE VERB FORM YOU ARE USING?

SIX SENTENCES FOR SUNDAY

Six sentences for Sunday :) This is the shortest kind of post.

When I started working on writing in a more minimalistic style I decided to write a different story. It seemed more sensible than changing my wip half way through.

I'm in Chapter 4 (CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING) of my Sci-fi MG and loving it :) 

Mortimer makes a friend, handy when he has just made an enemy too.

Mortimer looked at the other boy. He wore the same pale pink synthetic suit Mortimer had seen on all the pupils in the facility. Tucked into black boots, belted at the waist and with a tight roll at the neck, the suit made even the thinnest wearer look like a string of sausages. This boy was no chipolata.

                 “My name is Fortinbras,” he said.

                Mortimer could see that he might have to.

200 WORD FLASH FICTION - for the first Campaigner’s Challenge

Is it Sunday? Does it feel like Sunday to you?

I’m posting early, for Sunday, because I wanted to attempt the First Campaigner’s Challenge (from the Third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign), which is hosted over at Rachael Harrie's blog.

Challenges have rules, and here they are:

Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title.

It can be in any format, including a poem.

Begin the story with the words, “The door swung open”  (remember that these four words will be included in the word count.)

An optional challenge is to end with "the door swung shut" (these words must also be included in the word count.)

The greatest challenge is, of course, to make your story exactly 200 words.

Camille Renshaw says: "Micro Fiction, by nature, is defiant. It defies length, boundaries, and expectations. But tight, provocative fiction requires analysis and editing. Taking an idea and distilling it into a “micro”- cosm of its original self is challenging."

If you are planning to join in the challenge, it will close on Friday, September 9th (at 11.59pm EDT,) to be eligible for a prize, click and follow the Linky’s instructions before that time!

This is my entry, it is complete in 200 words :)

“WHY DOES EVERY LET DOWN HAVE TO BE SO THIN?”

The door swung open, I held it and hoped. The scratching sounded distant, not Paul’s nails on the door. 


        I stepped forward. The door closed behind me with a chill sigh. 

        The knife the stranger tossed from hand to hand glittered in the thin moonlight piercing the overgrown bushes. I’d meant to cut them back in the summer, but we’d had better things to do.        

        “Open it.”

        Opening the door struck me as a bad option, “What if I don't?”

        “Die here. I'll find my way around without you.” 

       Passive face and dull eyes, the stranger gave me no hope. I reached behind and gripped the handle. If the catch was up, how long would it take to spin inside, slam the door and bolt it? Maybe, my calculations showed.

In and out, the slice of steel through skin shocked me. While he rubbed ruby into blue jeans, I pulled the handle and moved.

                              ***

Dizzy… smiling, I slid to the ground. I felt safe. The hardwood was behind me with its impenetrable lock.


                          
                               ***

Pale fingers dipped into the dark liquid pooling around me. He lifted my keys and shook them dry. Unlocking the door, he dragged me into bleeding darkness.

My thanks to John Ward - he suggested reading "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. I found the story an inspiration.

On the subject of Sad Reject, I missed joining any of the 59 Campaigners' Groups.

I write MG/YA Sci-fi or Paranormal. If anyone would like to 

be my Buddy I’d be happy to be rescued from what feels like a lonely, isolation corner ;)

Let me know where your 200 word story is so I can be certain not to miss reading it.

Happy Sunday ;)

HELPING IS NOT ALWAYS HELPFUL - OOPS!

I am writing an MG sci-fi adventure in my new, minimalistic, style ;)

This week, I have spent part of my time researching human hair:

Hair is found exclusively on mammals (and this will be significant later).

It is, apparently, made mainly of the protein keratin.

Keratin in human hair forms into rope-like filaments as this structure provides its strength.

Sadly, in a series of unfortunate events (some deliberate and others purely accidental,) my MC makes an enemy.

The pungent smell of burning hair is due to sulphur compounds.

All the MC knows is that now someone wants to compound him pretty bad.

Helping is not always helpful.

ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR CURRENT WIP?

SEPTEMBER! SEP-TERM-BER

SCHOOL, FAMILY AND BLOGGING :)

I love September, it's the time of mellow fruitfulness and the new school year. 

Don't you love school? I think it's great! School is the one place the kids can go... even when it's raining ;)

The good news is I have, finally, proved to my partner that he spends more time running his football (soccer) club than I do on the various essentials involved in my writing.

Now the bet has been won, and the pattern of my life has resumed, I will be able to write my blog posts. During the weeks I was unable to post regularly, I realised how much time I have been spending on the blog - oops *blushes ;)

Paying more attention to my work, family, and life balance, I will be posting on this blog on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

Now I’m sleeping more regularly, I’ve taken to waking up with ideas that seem totally inspired. Depending on how quickly it disappears, I write down the idea, character, setting, phrase or word, convinced that in the morning I will be able to conjure them into fully-original masterpieces.

What usually happens is in the brighter light of morning my incoherent scribbles couldn’t translate into a word document let alone a Carnegie/Greenaway Medal.

Even more frustrating is when the scribbled almost-something blurs to the point where I can’t recognise it any more.

Creativity is hard to capture between commas and the odd full-stop. It is not logical, uncontrollable and wilful it hates to be tamed.

When I write, I want to see the page invaded by dramas of soap-opera dimensions – long lost family members, life-and-death situations, aliens and the paranormal.

What do you want to write?

DO YOU SURF, SWIM OR SCUBA DIVE THE WEB?

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, has suggested that the web is making us more stupid – that we are distracted and unable to concentrate on one thing long enough to engage with it properly.

With the information in the headers and the sidebars constantly changing - and the links there to tempt us and encourage side-tracking - most websites actively discourage concentration.

Carr suggests everyone is skimming over the glittering surface of the web. 

Trying to save time and find more information, my style is more like a swimmer: I dip a little deeper but push a lot of excellent information behind me. 

Nicholas Carr’s point is valid, I don’t have enough time to be much of a scuba diver.

When it comes to recreational reading, I cling to real books; this is literally true. 

If the story is gripping, my fingers ache from clutching the cover and I resent the time it takes to turn over. I hold the pages higher and I peep around before I’ve actually finished reading the end of the page.

The reader exists on two plains - there in-body but in-spirit somewhere else instead.

"The novelist is inviting the reader to watch a performance in his own brain." ~ George Buchanan

Do you see yourself as a surfer, a swimmer or a scuba diver, when it comes to the Internet? 

THINNER WRITING

MY HOLIDAY HOMEWORK 1

Precision

I’ve been working on writing with greater precision. 

I learned to focus on the information I intended to convey to the reader, not how I was going to do it.

The more creative the style of writing the greater the chance of vagueness.

For the writer who can stretch imagery like they're made of elastic ;) this was hell.

Do you have a new writing goal?