by Damon Suede
Fiction is action. Activate is an author’s thesaurus of dramatic possibilities that will galvanize your characterization and dramatization. Verbalizing any narrative requires specific juicy language with the vibrancy readers crave. This handy writing reference focuses on language’s powerhouse: VERBS, featuring 5,300 potent options sorted into three useful contexts.
• ALPHABETICAL: an A-Z catalog of actions and tactics, including antonyms for each to supercharge character chemistry.
• CATEGORICAL: verbal options especially suited for the twelve most popular book types and their tropes.
• DIRECTIONAL: sections sorting verbs by vibe to help you shape the emotional flow of a story for maximum mojo.
…and for anyone new to verbalizing a story, a quick intro and overview to kickstart your process.
No other genre resource of this kind exists. Unlike other thesauri, Activate gets down to the brass-tacks of telling a tale: actions that matter and tactics that fascinate.
Plug into the source! Whether you’re only planning a project or deep in revisions, this Live Wire Writer Guide comes loaded with vibrant, interactive language to amp your voice, blast your blocks, and energize your genre fiction at every stage.
Activate
a thesaurus of actions & tactics for dynamic genre fiction
by Damon Suede
Activate: a thesaurus of actions & tactics for dynamic genre fiction (Live Wire Writer Guides) by Damon Suede.
Copyright © 2019 Evil Mastermind, LLC. Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published by Evil Mastermind, LLC
New York, NY
EvilMastermind.com
First Publication: 16 April 2019
Edited by Lynn West
Illustrations by Evil Mastermind, LLC
Book formatting by BB eBooks
ISBN 978-1-945043-04-8 (Ebook)
ISBN 978-1-945043-05-5 (Print)
Website: DamonSuede.com/livewire
Copyright © 2019 by Evil Mastermind, LLC, All Rights Reserved.
Contents
About the Book
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Verbalization
Usage
Planning?
Exploring?
Drafting?
Revising?
Part I: General
A
Acc-
Ack-
Ado-
Ala-
Anc-
App-
Ass-
Att-
B
Bar-
Bef-
Bes-
Bla-
Blu-
Bou-
Bro-
Bul-
But-
C
Car-
Cha-
Che-
Cir-
Cli-
Coa-
Colo-
Comp-
Conc-
Conf-
Cons-
Cont-
Coo-
Cou-
Cre-
Cul-
D
Deb-
Deco-
Defr-
Dem-
Dep-
Des-
Dev-
Dil-
Discl-
Disd-
Diso-
Disq-
Dist-
Div-
Don-
Dri-
E
Eli-
Emp-
End-
Enl-
Ent-
Ere-
Evi-
Exe-
Exp-
Ext-
F
Fat-
Fid-
Fix-
Fle-
Fol-
Fos-
Fru-
G
Giv-
Gov-
Gro-
H
Har-
Hea-
Hig-
Hon-
Hur-
I
Imp-
Ina-
Ind-
Inh-
Int-
Inv-
J
Jud-
K
L
Lec-
Lig-
Los-
M
Map-
Mat-
Mil-
Mit-
Mon-
Mud-
N
Neu-
O
Omi-
Org-
Ove-
P
Pas-
Per-
Pet-
Pio-
Plu-
Pos-
Pri-
Prof-
Prop-
Prov-
Pun-
Q
R
Rav-
Reb-
Red-
Reg-
Rem-
Repr-
Ret-
Rew-
Roo-
S
Sca-
Scr-
Sec-
Sen-
Sha-
Sho-
Sic-
Sla-
Smi-
Soo-
Spi-
Squ-
Stam-
Sti-
Sto-
Stre-
Stu-
Suc-
Sur-
Swe-
T
Tas-
Tes-
Toa-
Tran-
Tre-
Tur-
U
Uns-
V
Vic-
W
Wea-
Whi-
Wit-
Wra-
Y
Z
Part II: Genres
Action-Adventure
Fantasy
Historical
Horror
Humor
Military
Mystery & Suspense
Paranormal & Urban Fantasy
Romance
Science Fiction
Thriller
Western
Part III: Directions
Push (→)
Pull (←)
Join (+)
Split (/)
BONUS EXERCISE: Reverberations
About the Author
Notes
Bibliography
Foreword
This author-friendly thesaurus supplements Verbalize, the first title in my Live Wire Writer Guides series, by offering thousands of active, dynamic verbs for use in fiction. Plenty of thesauri exist, but not one focused purely on writable actions and tactics for genre stories.
I came to fiction from showbiz, in which story and character cannot rely on traits, backstory, or other personal ad trivia because of the production process. My approach to genre fiction sprang from the idea that writers need tools that can deliver the goods on a deadline and that the “impersonal ad” approach to character is more of a time-suck than a credible method.
While most writing guides encourage the use of characteristics to portray people on the page, writers rarely use a tenth of the ancillary details demanded by popular methods, which is a waste of time and talent.
Working writers need tools that get results.
W
hen most folks start writing fiction, adjectives and adverbs feel decorative and sexy…so many possibilities, so much ornamental specificity. Nouns seem reassuringly tangible and clear until you realize that no matter how solid or how beautiful all those other words are, without verbs, nothing happens. Verbs show, where all other words tell.
Action is all.
When I say a protagonist is “clever,” “freckled,” or “predatory,” I expect you to accept the provided descriptor at face value. If I describe that individual with a noun like “thief,” “gargoyle,” or “politician,” I must rely on your education and visualization to fill in the blanks with generic assumptions about those archetypal identities. On the other hand, the moment I make that character “volunteer,” “slash,” or “optimize” something, their actions paint a clear picture, their energy flows through the pages. Verbs give life to your fiction and power to your prose.
• MODIFIERS tell. Adjectives and adverbs only provide prechewed interpretation to explain other words, relying on preexisting opinion to decorate the story.
• NOUNS suggest. They populate a story’s landscape with subjects and objects by evoking general assumptions, stereotypes, and simplifications.
• VERBS show. They express the energy of characters and direct their story because they relate actual forces shaping the narrative.
A smart writer learns to invest energy and time where it will pay dividends. That means getting to the marrow of the story, the fundamental actions and tactics that bring it to life.
Obviously, a book is more than a string of verbs. All the parts of speech help tell a tale, but a character simply has to take action to inspire opinions and feelings.
Stories are made of action like pigs are made of pork.
Readers look for meaning and significance to engage their feelings, and therefore every detail must work in service of your story. Rather than fumbling with trivia, interviews, archetypes, or psychological theory to create a “fully rounded” character, the author’s task in characterization is to craft action figures, purpose-built narrative devices used to extract emotions from the audience. People read for emotional stimulation, and as a genre professional, you must structure that emotional ride with the precision and complexity of a roller coaster so they can expect a satisfying emotional ride, every time.
Great genre fiction evokes emotions by portraying dynamic characters and their transformations. Audiences show up to experience their actions and interactions as they battle the odds to achieve happiness. As the characters struggle toward their happy endings, they shape the story and impact everyone around them with verbs.
When storytelling, modifiers can encumber and nouns can become obstacles, but by definition verbs have the power to do anything.
Because you want characters to change things and do things, you need verbs that have an impact, known grammatically as transitive verbs. A transitive verb is a verb that acts upon or interacts with an object, impacting someone or something external to the subject.
To verbalize a story effectively, authors need a steady supply of dynamic, transitive verbs appropriate to the task of spinning a yarn.
Most dictionaries and a few thesauri will let you know if verbs are transitive, but not all. For the past few years, my students have urged me to compile a list of verbs specifically appropriate for genre fictioneering to fill the gap in the available resources.
This thesaurus is a compendium of transitive verbs appropriate for use while verbalizing a story via character actions and tactics to facilitate the process of genre writing. I assembled this book as a supplement for working writers looking to verbalize their stories and deepen their knowledge of dynamic verbs in general. Inside these pages you’ll find:
• a very brief recap of the techniques from Verbalize for anyone unfamiliar with my approach to structure and characterization.
• an alphabetical thesaurus of verbs useful as actions and tactics, along with antonyms suited to capturing chemistry on the page and characterizing powerful relationships.
• genre verbs especially useful for twelve categories of popular fiction and suggestive of that genre’s prevalent tropes and subgenres.
• directional verbs sorting actions and tactics along two energetic axes to amplify shifts and complications between scenes.
I wanted to create the kind of resource I’d use daily in my own writing. I’ve used this resource at every stage of its creation, in fact. Obviously verbs will appear in more than one place, but I’ve tried to minimize repetition and maximize utility wherever possible.
Art is a hard dollar and everyone willing to do the job and support their genres deserves all the help they can get. Whether you use my verbalization technique or simply want a quick reference packed with juicy, active verbiage, I hope you’ll find Activate a useful and inspiring resource.
Go write great books, because I want to read them.
“These are the things that matter—experiences that are almost impossible to render on the page. This is the grand project we are engaged in, why we worry about words, and why we must make them dance in our every sentence.”
Constance Hale1
Verbalization
“In short: THERE ARE NO RULES.
And HERE THEY ARE.”
Scott McCloud2
If you’ve read Verbalize or taken one of my workshops on characterization and story planning, feel free to skip past this section to the usage guide, but for everyone else, a word about verbalizing fiction.
As a reference, this book presupposes a passing familiarity with my method of characterization and story planning either from my teaching or writing. That said, I don’t expect you to rush out and pick up another book to make this one useful, so I want to explain this guide’s purpose even for first-time verbalizers. Again, if you know the drill, feel free to dive right into the verbs. If you do not, read on; I promise to make it swift.
In the spirit of “Previously seen on…” television recaps, I’ll offer a quick summary of my book Verbalize and the techniques it covers:
Characters need to do stuff that matters, and for best results that means grappling with their intentions head-on via their choices and behavior in the story.
Characters are not faces, but forces…arcs of transformation revealed by high-stakes choices.
Given the scope and complexity of writing genre fiction, a savvy writer learns to align all of the components of a character so that each component supports and connects to every other to minimize effort and maximize effect.
Because human brains evolved to seek and solve patterns, stories work best when they attract attention and reward audiences with meaningful resolution. Readers discover interesting gaps in a story and fill them in, creating satisfying closure that connects the emotional dots between the characters and within themselves. The reader’s imagination does most of the work, but only if the writer provides fascinating details…like grit for oysters primed to build a pearl.
Since art relies on attention and disruption is the primary generator of attention, significant contrast offers the single most powerful tool in the writer’s toolkit. Opposing forces generate friction, which releases energy in a series of events that make up a story. That energy appears within the story as the actions of characters who must be not personalities, but forces of their own nature.
Stories make readers feel something at a distance via empathetic magic, by “sticking pins” in characters to create audiences’ emotions. In grammatical structure of genre stories, the protagonist and problem of a story mirror the subject and predicate of sentences.
All characters wrestle with a personal, persistent void that drives all their actions and objectives…a persistent need/trauma/wound/error/lack/scar in their past that interferes with their happiness. Their desire for happiness changes them and drives them toward their ultimate story goal, and creates their Goal/Motivation/Conflict, but their essential energy characterizes them.
Consequently, action is the
core of every character, the aligning principle of all characterization: actions speak louder than words. Those character actions are best expressed as active, dynamic verbs…expressive of the character’s energy and impacting the world around them. The most powerful action always arises from the character’s void because it reveals their idiosyncratic approach to life and hope for happiness. In essence, characters are sculptures that carve each other.
The unforgettable moments in any story spring from its verbs, which inevitably and explicitly dramatize energy and flow. Genre fiction is inherently grammatical, drawing power from the structure of language.
Aligning all of a characterization with a clear, dramatic action improves structure, drafting, and revision drastically. Since characters must do things that matter, their actions inevitably affect the world around them. For actions, the best verb options are transitive—taking an object—because they direct character efforts out in the world with meaningful impact.
Character actions will always be a transitive verb: a verb that acts upon or interacts with a person, object, entity, or idea outside the character. Transitive verbs keep your characters subjective by giving them an objective, and they create a subject by specifying an object. For example:
• She writes the novel. (“Writes” is the transitive verb.)
• He revises the chapter. (“Revises” is the transitive verb.)
Genre authors must draw on active, dramatic verbs to make anything happen in a story, but many common verbs make for feeble, forgettable character actions, some by their very nature.
Many verbs cannot impact the world around them, instead depicting the condition of a character without allowing them to do anything. These “simply existing” verbs that do not impact the outside world are intransitive. Intransitives cannot take a direct object because they describe a mood, state, or reflex.
• The assassin sulked. (“Sulked” is intransitive, conveying a mood.)
• Mimi waltzed. (“Waltzed” is intransitive, describing a state of being.)
• The goat yawned. (“Yawned” is intransitive, depicting a reflex.)
Intransitive verbs leave characters marooned inside their own head and heart. Result: passive beat, dead scene, inert character.
To complicate matters further, some flexible verbs can operate as either transitive or intransitive depending on whether a direct object receives the action. In “She drives away,” drive is intransitive because it describes a state, but in “She drives friends away,” drive is transitive because it affects an object.