“Weak” verbs aren’t

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

I thought the nonsense about “weak verbs” in fiction died some time during the pandemic. Apparently, I was wrong; somebody helpfully forwarded a list of “weak verbs you should never use in your writing” recently. Which inspired this post.

The first problem with talking about “weak verbs” is that it’s actually a grammatical term, not one of writing craft. Grammatically, a weak verb is one that ends in -ed, -t, or -d in the past tense.” (In English, anyway.)

In other words, “weak verbs” are regular verbs. One of the most interesting things about this definition is that the verb that is most commonly cited as being the ultimate “weak” verb—to be—does not fit it. Grammatically, “was” fits the definition of a strong verb.

Yet “to be” is almost always at the top of the “forbidden” list. Some places list every verb form explicitly—not just “to be,” but is, was, were, am, are, be, been, being… Honestly, people, “to be” covers it. The do-not-use list also regularly includes “to have,” “to do,” and often “to go,” “to become,” “to give,” “to look,” “to feel,” “to make,” and “to get.”

In other words, these lists of “weak verbs” include a lot of the most common verbs in English. (I suspect that’s part of the issue, but more on that later.) These verbs are variously termed “repetitive, passive, wordy, boring, generic, and too general.” No one ever seems to point out how useful they are…

In their eagerness to banish the copulative, these folks nearly always either forget that “to be” is a necessary part of the progressive tenses, or else they include all progressive tenses under their idiotic prohibition. “When she walked in, he was shrieking at his cell phone” is not the same as “When she walked in, he shrieked at his cell phone.” And just try removing all forms of “to be” from Hamlet’s soliloquy…

It’s a little more reasonable for these folks to banish passive voice (which also requires using a form of “to be” along with the main verb) but only a little. Most of the time, “Many people stole the Baseball Diamond over the years” will be fine…but you can pack a lot more information in more elegantly by using passive voice in a string of phrases: “The Baseball Diamond was stolen four times over the years—once by the dwarves, twice by the goblins, and most recently by the Queen of Arabia.”

Passive voice is also necessary in certain sentences. “He was murdered” is passive voice. Rephrasing it in active voice would either weaken the impact (“Someone murdered him” is just not as dramatic) or reveal the murderer (which would be a problem in most mysteries). And the sentence structure of “The tycoon, having been insulted, stormed out” requires passive voice in the subordinate clause, because it’s the only way to make “the tycoon” the subject of both clauses (which it has to be, because the tycoon certainly didn’t insult himself).

I think that what the anti-weak-verb crowd are actually on about goes back to the fact that their list of “weak” verbs includes some of the most commonly used words in the English language. They’re ordinary, and because they’re ordinary, they end up being almost invisible.

That ordinariness is useful, if you want the reader focused on what’s happening in your fast-paced action scene, but it’s a huge drawback if you’re trying for a memorable turn of phrase or an evocative description. Also, something like “Grace looked at the ring” gives very little hint of how Grace is reacting. You pack a lot more into the sentence by changing the verb to something more specific, like “Grace glared at the ring” or “Grace studied the ring.”

And that last is, I think, what the complaints about “weak verbs in fiction” are really about. Whoever came up with this idea wanted to get the biggest stylistic and informational bang possible out of every word they used. (Obviously, they were not of the generation of writers who were paid by the word.)

Most of the time, writers get more metaphorical bang out of specific words than general ones, (as long as they’re not simply showing off their vocabulary). Frequently, that more-specific word is less commonly used than the general one. From that observation, it’s a small step to making prescriptive “rules” about general versus specific verbs (and adverbs, and adjectives, and…).

Personally, I am extremely skeptical about rules that include either the word “always” or the word “never.” (OK, I am skeptical about a lot of rules, period.) I prefer things like the 80/20 rule—80% of the outcome derives from 20% of the causes.

In my case, 80/20 means that when I’m looking at my default search-and-destroy list, my goal isn’t to eliminate all of them. (And nothing on the list is there because somebody decided it was “weak.” Verbs and phrases get on that list because I have noticed myself using them too often in my rough draft.) My goal is to find the crucial 20% where I really need an extra bang. The other 80% of the time, the “boring” commonplace words do the job and don’t get in the way.

In my experience, the lower the word count I have available, the more freight every word needs to carry. If one is writing haiku, every syllable is vitally important, and every word has to be carefully chosen. A 100,000-word novel needs a different level of attention.

Yes, “Maria walked through the parking lot” is not quite the same as “Maria strolled (or passed, ambled, hiked, plodded, sauntered, strode, or wandered) through the parking lot,” but at least 80% of the time, saying “Maria walked” says all that needs to be said. Using a different verb every time Maria goes anywhere can be, at best, distracting. At worst, the reader can’t tell whether the specific way Maria is walking is important. And if Maria always strolls, ambles, hikes, and saunters everywhere for a hundred thousand words, readers are very likely to get annoyed.

So there really isn’t a need for writers to get exercised about purging “weak verbs” from their work. Because give, look, have, do, and most definitely be are not weak. They’re the solid, everyday workhorse verbs of the English language. And while you probably don’t want to enter a workhorse in the Kentucky Derby, you also don’t want a thoroughbred racehorse pulling your vegetable cart.