I do like my adjectives and adverbs, me. And I forget sometimes how well a good strong, vivid verb can pack in a world of description.

At the moment, I happen to be idly re-reading Winifred Holtby's 'South Riding'. (As you do.) How about this for a great little example, from an early chapter?

Two miles south of Kiplington, between the cliffs and the road to Maythorpe, stood a group of dwellings known locally as the Shacks. They consisted of... five huts of varying sizes and designs. Around these human habitations leaned, drooped and squatted other minor structures...

It's that last sentence - it's brilliant, I think. You might be tempted to describe the 'minor structures', to use adjectives and nouns. But in those three active, visual verbs ('leaned, drooped and squatted' the scene is perfectly conveyed. Fab.

Um, that was it, really.

R x

Those are just brilliant, aren't they. I keep meaning to read South Riding - I loved the TV series, and I love that period of fiction.

And it's brilliant how using the verbs means that the 'other minor structures' have some kind of energy of their own - they have some kind of animate life. It actually reminded me immediately of my sense of the Thirties, with millions of men unemployed with nothing to do except stand around as minor structures...

Talking of that date, great minds think alike, because the little bit of Elizabeth Bowen I analysed on the blog last week is almost completely built from brilliant, brilliant verbs:

dragging, drumming
drawing
nosing, pausing, turning,
fascinated
banged, coughed, retched
rocked.
swung whistling.
yawped
bellied
danced
ran
dulled

The only really 'ordinary' verb there - 'ran' - is used in a very un-ordinary way.

And as far as I can see, in exactly 100 words there's one adjective and two adverbs of which only one is the sort the CW fascists call an adverb. Not that I disapprove of such things in the least. But it just shows you don't always need them, to be powerfully evocative.

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2012/08/an-education-in-writing.html

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I, on the other hand, am obviously quite incapable of dispensing with the adjective "brilliant"...

Brilliant, Rosy! And Emma I loved your post on that piece from EB - so much so that I got it down from my shelf to re-read.

Great post, Emma - thanks for linking to that.

R x

Interesting that Holtby has structures doing things that inanimate objects can't really do - drooping and squatting - and that similarly Bowen has, e.g. bottles dancing. I suppose it's a well-worn conceit to have buildings crouching or looming, sunlight dancing and skipping, blah blah. But it does occur to me that if the scene you are describing is pretty static and inanimate, then attaching active verbs to objects that are actually inactive is a very good way to inject some energy and dynamism, as long as it isn't overdone.

R x

I think I'd argue that the bottles are more actually dancing than the buildings are drooping, IYSWIM.

But yes, verbs like "squat" and "droop" are verbs of motion, and yet we also use them for non-moving, if that makes sense - so they can work for static things. "I squat on the the floor" could imply the process of squatting down, or it could just be a statement of your posture. And you couldn't quite say "the shack ran towards the river" without seeing something with legs, but you could say "the shack drooped towards the river".

One of the things about that Bowen passage, too - as the comment trail points out - is that actually almost nothing is happening, physically, inside the bar. They can hear things, outside, reflections of the lights rock, the bottles dance, "a distortion runs through the view"... how's that for abtractness?

It is only through inanimate things becoming sort-of animate, that the brute physicality of what's going on beyond the walls, comes into the bar.

And did I mention that Elizabeth Bowen is a great writer?

Hope you're enjoying it, Jem!

Thanks for the reminder of the power of verbs, Rosie. It's something I'm trying to remember to add into my writing at the moment.

And thanks Emma, I read your post recently and that passage you analysed keeps popping back into my mind - it shows to me how strong an impression a few choice verbs can make.