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I'm editing my book and have found that I use a lot of "be" verbs to help tell the story in past-tense. What else can I use without (egads!) using adverbs?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
2 comments:
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I'm an English major and I would have to see some text to really be able to tell you,however, if you want to show past tense- the easiest way is to change the verb to past tense- run to ran, shift to shifted, thinking to thought...ect.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Summer. It's descriptive passages such as "...the doors were covered with...." I could fix it by getting very poetic, but I'm not sure if there's a genre of Middle-grade Literary Sci-fi? So, I would re-write as "The doors, covered with ...., enhanced the appearance of...." Possibly too literary and YA for an MG?
ReplyDeleteI'll look for other places where I could simply use the past-tense of the existing verb. That's a great tip. :-)