Benefits writing

Write in verbs, not other parts of speech

Talk about painting a picture. In City of Bohane, Kevin Barry brings the titular town to life in sentences like this:

“Amputee walnut sellers
croaked their prices
from tragic blankets
on the scarred tile floors …”

And:

“The tottering old chimneys were stacked in great deranged happiness
against the morning sky.”

And:

“Now the city shimmered in the new morning’s light,
its skyline loomed in shadow …”

And:

“The Hartnett seat was a Beauvista Gothical,
a gaunt and lumbering old pile, all elbows and chimneys.”

And:

“He had a blackbird’s poppy-eyed stare, thyroidal,
and if his brow was no more than an inch deep,
it was packed with an alley rat’s cunning.”

Notice what these descriptive passages have in common: They set the scene with nouns and adjectives.… Read the full article