Verbs do ... pretty much everything

 Thanks to the 10-12 people in the room today for Jacqui Banaszynski's webinar on verbs, via newsu.org. She covered so much ground about what verbs can do in your writing that she buzzed through some of her 10 verb tools too fast for us to take notes. Fortunately, the webinar replay is already up at the link above.

The 75-minute webinar was full of great stuff; if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, scroll to the part where Jacqui starts going through the 10 tools. She ends with a way you can vet your own copy for verb use -- print it out and highlight each verb/verb form in your story; see the patterns; revise as necessary. (There's much more to it -- scroll to about the one hour, 10-minute mark of the webinar and hit 'play.')

The group talked a bit after the webinar. Couple thoughts from me (and anyone who was there, please add your thoughts in comments):

•  I was really interested in Jacqui saying that verbs can "bend time" -- you can change tense and tone to accomplish time changes in a story without losing clarity, as she put it. I need to go back into the webinar to focus on this part. I suspect some of you/us do that without realizing it, but if you don't realize you're doing it, you're probably not using it to its maximum advantage. 
• I was struck by several examples she used that showed a paragraph crammed with action verbs -- so that, physically, there is a lot of activity in the graf -- followed by, or ended by, a line with a more "quiet" verb or verb form. The effect was almost physical for me -- a flurry of action and then a soft settling down of the language, of the story. Again, that is something worth learning how to do, learning to master.

Spot news as narrative

We've talked a lot about this over time, but it's worth mentioning again: Spot news doesn't always have to be written in traditional news-story format. A narrative can work as well or, in some cases, better.

The key, of course, is thinking about doing narrative before you get to the scene, so you can do the reporting (including both observation and interviews) that will allow you to write a tight narrative. If you only have a few details and a broad or loose chronology, it's probably not going to work.

 I thought of this after reading a piece by Lauren Fitzpatrick, who did work for us as a Medill correspondent several years ago, in the Southtown Star in Chicago, about rescuers pulling a woman from her car that was submerged in a pond. Things to note:

• The line that cranks up the tension -- "Then the passer-by calling 911 said the words that set him off: The car is underwater."
• An observed detail about the cop's injury: "The 33-year-old ran to his own car and tore over to the corner where the Rupari Food Services plant sits, he told reporters late Friday afternoon, shivering in a light jacket, his left hand clinging to his bandaged right one."
• Action verbs: "Frausto ignored the chilly drizzle. He shucked his coat and his shoes. He stripped off his clothes and threw away his gun. Frausto grabbed a baton, and in briefs and an undershirt, he dove into the water."

Ted Czech often writes a narrative out of spot news, including recently about a man who went into a burning home and helped an elderly lady escape. To note from Ted's piece:

• He uses a question as the engine to push the story forward: "Sipe often wondered what he would do if there ever were a real fire at the home. Would he get scared and run, or would he stay and help, possibly risking his own safety?"
• Dialogue, reported from his interview with the man, helps capture the feel of what happened: "Ma'am, are you in here?" he called. "You've got to come out of there. You can't stay in there." He heard her say something but couldn't make out the words. Then he saw her. She stood in front of him, motionless. "My pets, my pets," she said. "I got to get my pets."