First 10 Verbs: A Meme

Owwwww! Next time you tag someone, Mr. Crymes, try Post-It notes instead of nails, mmmkay?

Where were we? Ah, yes, verbs.

Sometimes we writers get lazy. We assume that verbs are helpful for such crucial endeavors as screenwriting, sudoku, or graduating from college, but this is not always the case. In her first-year composition class at Penn State, my wife had the pleasure of doing peer reviews for one of her, well, peers. Thing is, the fellow wrote his essays without using verbs. Nary a one. He’s now making millions as a professional basketball player.

But I digress. Here, then, are the first 10 verbs of my action-figure epic, Disaster Man.

1. roars
2. billow
3. looms
4. fire
5. explodes
6. glances
7. looses
8. sweeps
9.shifts
10. whines

Wow, I like these. Wagnerian, indeed almost Bruckheimerian in their operatic majesty. Now let’s see what the list would look like if I had followed the aforementioned sportsman’s stylistic technique:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Plainly, I cannot match his economy of language. In fact, I suspect that even Hemingway or Carver would be up against the wall. I wonder if either had a good outside shot.

And now, a crisp bounce pass to The Moviequill.