PLZ HELP ILL GIVE BRAINLIST You will revise your narrative with three or more strong verbs. You will also submit a reflection paragraph to discuss the revisions you have made. View the grading rubric for the assessment.
Print or save the Weak Verb Finder to help you locate weak verbs in your narrative.
Replace three or more weak verbs with strong, vivid ones. Mark your new verbs with a (V).
Make other revisions suggested in your Discussion-Based Assessment.
Write a reflection paragraph discussing changes you made during the revision process. Explain how you feel each change improved your narrative.
Submit your final draft and your reflection paragraph.

Do you ever wonder why a grammatically correct sentence you’ve written just lies there like a dead fish?

I sure have.

Your sentence might even be full of those adjectives and adverbs your teachers and loved ones so admired in your writing when you were a kid.

But still the sentence doesn’t work.

Something simple I learned from The Elements of Style years ago changed the way I write and added verve to my prose. The authors of that little bible of style said: “Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs.”

Even Mark Twain was quoted, regarding adjectives: “When in doubt, strike it out.”

That’s not to say there’s no place for adjectives. I used three in the title and first paragraph of this post alone.

The point is that good writing is more about well-chosen nouns and strong verbs than it is about adjectives and adverbs, regardless what you were told as a kid.

There’s no quicker win for you and your manuscript than ferreting out and eliminating flabby verbs and replacing them with vibrant ones.

Your first hint is your own discomfort with a sentence. Odds are it features a snooze-inducing verb.

As you hone your ferocious self-editing skills, train yourself to exploit opportunities to replace a weak verb for a strong one.

At the end of this post I suggest a list of 249 vivid verbs you can experiment with to replace tired ones.

3 Types of Verbs to Beware of in Your Prose

1. State-of-being verbs

These are passive as opposed to powerful:

Is

Am

Are

Was

Were

Be

Being

Been

Have

Has

Had

Do

Does

Did

Shall

Will

Should

Would

May

Might

Must

Can

Could

Am I saying these should never appear in your writing? Of course not. You’ll find them in this piece. But when a sentence lies limp, you can bet it contains at least one of these. Determining when a state-of-being verb is the culprit creates a problem—and finding a better, more powerful verb to replace it—is what makes us writers. [Note how I replaced the state-of-being verbs in this paragraph.]