The Art of Making up Verbs | Verbing Nouns!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ค. 2024
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:47 - The purpose of this technique
5:27 - Rules of thumb
11:58 - How to write it
Types of verbs
13:11 - The noun verbs
14:20 - The adjective verb
15:27 - The simile verb
16:38 - The allusion verb
18:11 - Layering meaning
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the way that verbing in itseld is a verbed noun
Inception !!
It's funny, there's actually a verb in French that's Medusa'd and means petrified (méduser/médusé.e)!
Omg I love this
Shaelin stilettoed chaotically onto the stage. Her face survived - lovely.
I used ship-of-Theseus as a verb the other day. I was really pleased with that one 😁
okay i LOVE this
OH MY GOD. So I just looked this up, and it is A PERFECT thought experiment to explore as a theme in my writing. I hope that’s okay????
@William Alarie (OP please interject if you feel differently) The Ship of Theseus is an ancient philosophical concept so of course you can write about it without needing anyone's permission, but don't steal OP's use of it as a verb unless that's something they're okay with, as that's their own creation.
So interesting-the allusion verb actually pops up pretty commonly in regular conversations with my good friends and it’s always hilarious when it does.
Haha you know you've made a mark on a friend group when your name becomes a verb
Stilletoing across the stage makes sense bc walking in stilletos is an entirely different way of walking than normal, like rollerblading. You wouldn't say "They walked across the parking lot in roller skates", you would say "they roller skated across the parking lot"
VERBS ARE MY FAVOURITE THING I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS
*Ava Krahn's Juicy Verbs*.
If that is not a short story title my name isn't O. Henry !
sunshine "cleaves" through the curtains when you're hungover and it wakes you up lmaoo
Haha okay you found the perfect context for it !!
I'm not exagerating when I say your videos are the best writing resources I can find. I'd love to see a video where you share a series of writing exercises that you feel helped you the most. Just an idea if you hadn't done it yet 😊
It's amazing that after all these years you can still teach us new things. I love the technique of verbing nouns (also used it in my writing) but never thought about it so deeply as you talked about it. I learned so much. Thank you.
What about the noun festival? I used it in a poem in my book.
The garden twinkles with silvery lights,
In the shrubbery festivals a bevy of sprites.
Festival as a verb...I love it
The verbification process is such a great topic. I am currently working on a short story where my usage of this technique helps to marry the setting and the genre in order to enrich the overall atmosphere of the story. That said, I totally agree that a sprinkle goes a long way.
That sounds like a super cool use of the technique!
This, too, is exactly what I’m doing. Character, also.
"Stilettoed" is such a great example ... perfect for a neophyte to get going on it.
my gateway verb drug was a very basic one by robin hobb, which is actually a real verb but more known for its nouniness. "Dragons winged across the sky"
I'm so glad you made this video. I have read some of your stories and you verb nouns in a fascinating way. Glad to be getting a look into your process!
To be transparent, I don't really use this process when writing - I more just think of these things on the fly, but I hoped breaking it down into an approachable theory would help explain some principles! But, I don't really recommend stoping to work through these steps every time you want a fun verb because I think it can lead to some overthinking/verbed nouns in places where it doesn't feel natural.
@@ShaelinWrites I find I can’t intuit this kind of thing, writing it on the fly. It seems there can be a far more abbreviated version of this thought process when actually doing the thing, but if I tried to do it on the fly, I find that I become FAR too unsure of myself, and then I end up scrapping the whole sentence.
Sigh. The joys of being NT.
@@billyalarie929 How about Transparenting? Let's not forget the present participles.
This is this other interesting thing you can do which is to take a normal, regular verb and use it in a completely irrational context. For example: 'We sat for a moment listening to the sunshine roast the pavement on Sherwood Boulevard'. That makes zero rational sense because it is impossible to 'listen' to sunshine. But at the same time, it makes perfect sense. It conveys the experience of hot weather in an urban setting on a sunny day next to a busy street in a kind of a whimsical, poetic way.
Disclaimer: I did not come up with us idea on my own. No, I stole this idea from the great Raymond Chandler. But I can't find the example that he used. My apologies to him. When I saw that he had expressed this idea it completely blew my mind, because one would think that it was impossible, but at the same time, it worked. He used a verb in a way that it was never meant to be used, but in a way that was very powerful and very easy to understand.
Some of my favorites are from PG Wodehouse: “I trousered the key…“, “I ankled down to the club…“
I do this all the time. I didn't realize it was a subject other writers discussed, but delighted none the less. Sometimes you can't find the right verb and only verb-ing the noun will do. Awesome video.
My favorite verb-noun is mushroom
@jackie I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one. Unless I’m hearing about a black-bellied male lead in some webnovel I’m reading
How about *magicked* ?
*Man, I was magicked by those Magic Mushrooms !*
@jackie Boat sails bellying in the wind.
Flaubert describes washing on a line blowing out that way. *Madame Bovary*.
I really like the word "verbing," because you didn't just verb a noun. You verbed a noun, then you nouned the verb (by making it a gerund). And that noun, which was verbed then re-nouned, was "verb." Excellent word there.
Heck, this technique seems so fun, useful and artsy. It's sadly something that mostly doesn't work for me, since I write in swedish (my mother tongue) and the endings don't sound natural on the verbed nouns. I'm jealous. Make sure to enjoy using it, those of you that can!
As you said, you’ve made videos on this topic before. And yet, every time, it’s more and more perfect and relevant in ways I both could not possibly imagine, but also that I very much needed right at that moment.
"Verbing weirds language." Calvin and Hobbes, 1/25/93. Now I'm curious about cycles and trends, whether it's genre-specific or more widespread or what. I bet it's good for voicing child characters.
The work is not for the writer it's for the reader. Serve the story and do what is necessary to accomplish that.
This was insightful & beautiful. Thanks, Shaelin! 😆
Absolutely love this content and your presentation. I'm going to look for this in my draft.
I was obsessed with the verb Rorschach when I first saw it on your blog and I'm obsessed with it now, it's so perfect
omg I was JUST thinking about how well you verb your nouns while I was trying to write yesterday, and now you upload this video LOL. perfect timing!! thank you for making this :) the moment I realized I don't punch up my verbs enough, I've definitely seen my prose slowly improve!
I made up a word yesterday! Thank you for this! Btw the word is spatless aka without argument
*Spatless* takes my fancy: I would not pinch it since it is your coinage.
Keep a small notebook just for made-up words. Acquire dictionaries in other languages, occidental and Eastern.
I feel like I’m discovering the long-held secrets of the universe
Good stuff Shailin. Thanks. Reducing wordy sentences is always a challenge and this adds a tool to help accomplish that. Of course it’s ultimately leading to the Haiku 🤔.
my favourite verb is "ponder"
and my favourite made-up verb BY FAR is Rorschach'd. wow.
Regarding her friend, "the best verb maker" ----an opportunity missed. My friend the Verbinator. /Great subject. I didn't realize its a thing. Thank you!
I like to think of it like a song, the climax of a song hits the hardest, drives the point home. The music swells and theres the one lyric that just HITS you. That needs to be the sentence you speak of... I'd say in every paragraph or so? Really it's up to the writer where that punch needs to be, but if you keep throwing punches, it will absolutely get numb.
gotta say i started off skeptical but now.......... now im itching to try it out.
P.S. very happy that you took a well-deserved youtube break but it's also so motivating to have you back!!
In "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" Eimear McBride verbed the word god, it became something like "he was goding goding goding under his breath".
omg amazing
@@ShaelinWrites in case this made you (or anyone reading this) want to read it, I'll just add some content warnings for grooming, CSA, religious trauma, child abuse, ableism and... pobably more, I'm only halfway through. Engrossing and hypnotic read so far though!
This video just Icarus'd at the perfect moment for me!!!! As someone who needs to cut back and/or vary his similes, this will be very useful. Thanks!
Icarus'd
I really like the more practical tips you provide like swapping a simile for a verb-noun. Do you have any other pro tip to more easily locate the places in your writing where you can apply these techniques? I get so overwhelmed during edits but little tips like this are so useful so thank you so, so much, Shaelin. You are literally the best! 💜
I think the main one would be to look at your adjectives and see if you can do the same thing!
Thanks, Shaelin. I always wanted to turn adjectives and nouns into my writing, but was also too afraid to because it wasn’t proer etiquette.
Not a new thing, Shakespeare did it Richard II. "Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle,"
I didn't say it was new, I said it was currently a trend among a lot of contemporary authors.
My favorite allusive "verb" is when an author references Machiavelli.
I love verbing nouns, even in real life conversations. I didn’t realize it is trending.
yazzz I've only read the title so far, but I'm so here for it
This is a big thing in middle grade! It’s so playful and adds so much to voice. Even out of MG I love to see it
Ooh I don't read much MG so I didn't know that, but it makes so much sense!!
Best part of my Friday
So, you just Buffy’d those nouns? This technique slays me. As in it kills my writing. It can be a crutch but I guess if it can help you walk, crutch away!
"“Atta boy!” Hlond’rik screamed drunkenly in support, Mariusz’ face saliva’d by the hovering dwarf."
Pulled this out my ass during my first editing/writing session since watching this video, this can count as my favourite made-up verb.😅 A long time coming, but thank you Shaelin! You've taught me a lot over the years - I remember the first revelation you dawned on me, somehow getting me out of my head and realizing that not everyone will like my writing - and this video is no exception. Brilliantly described as always, you simply are the best authortuber out there, period! Moreci could learn a thing or two from your newest writing process video, lol, that woman is still out there saying that discovery writing is the hill you're going to die on 🤣😂
Thank You!!!!!!!
I like how I'm coinning the phrase "to verb a noun" we literally verbed the noun "verb"
Good point about polishing your prose too much. Not only does every super polished sentence become an immediate distraction for the reader, but so often writers who do this think they have their other skills down but when you return to flashy piece for a second time, and all the shine of those perfect sentences has worn off, you realize the story itself is quite dull and unimaginative and the writer should have probably spent part of those months/years actually working on character, plot, setting as much as tinkering every sentence to death. Not only that but being that obsessed with prose when you're not an experience writer means you're burdening yourself with having to constantly work to create a perfect sentence only to have to lose it in editing, and for many writers, rather than do that, they convince themselves an edit or rewrite isn't necessary when in fact multiple rounds are needed but they choose to keep the shiny prose and the story itself suffers!
A reviewer dared to make this point about one of Salman Rushdie's novels.
There is a reason why the AP guidelines exist. It is used to ensure journalist write to the 6th grade level which reflects the average reader. Fancy tricks are fun and work in literary fiction but not in the general market. Chestnuts either go over the commercial reader's head or annoys them. Write to your market. "kill your darlings," is about using simple, direct, strong language. If it takes the reader out of the story don't use it.
I'm super excited for this video as usual :* since I'm early, before I even start watching, I'm just dropping something I'd love to hear your advice about --- how the hell can we make morally good characters interesting and not obnoxious?
I feel villains are having a great moment right now and I love this for them, and I love morally grey characters too, but I feel we're missing out on something if we don't "explore goodness". (also I really need a cute and righteous character to counterbalance the bad guys in my story, but every attempt at designing him ends up with me myself hating him because he's Too Good)
@jackie that's great advice!
I’ve got a video on this topic actually!! It’s from a few years ago but if you search “writing morally ambiguous characters” on my channel you’ll find it!
@@ShaelinWrites oo thank you, i'll check it out! i was going for Absolutely Morally Spotless this time but perhaps it's just undoable
The title made me laugh. ‘Verbing’ is a vrebed noun. 🤣
Excellent! 🙏👍
Love the video! Could you please tell us your favorite book of the author you have recommended? Would love to know where to start
The author I recommended only has one novel out, it’s called Bestiary! Her short fiction/poetry published online is also fantastic!
Stilettoed is really cool. danced is my favorite verb, i think, and after looking through my poetry, where I thought I would find one, I am surprised I have not found one there. I don't think I've ever invented a verb. I will get right on that!
*O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?*
Among School Children, William Butler Yeats. Poetry Foundation.
@@johnhaggerty4396 Yeats is an amazing poet. I say, is, because to me, they still exist. :-) Thank you for posting this.
I want some of that verb juice of yours to oasis my day!
Verb Juice. Market is before some clever devil does.
Shaelin, what about this title Smooth Criminal by Micheal Jackson: The word smooth is an adjective and The word criminal is a noun. Now there's something that was created by another person.
This is the closest saying I could find that has a resemblance to the topic if you don't enjoy referencing your own writing!
I feel like the allusion verb could be particularly useful in comedic works, here's an example I thought of:
Normal: "I roasted his a$$ like Shakespeare"
Verbed: "I Shakepeared his a$$"
"Nags the air" for describing pollution
I like to verbify words that shouldn't be verbs because it feels like it helps express a queerness
Yeesss so true!
She said some people liike their prose to be more invisible or hidden, can someone give me an example of that?
I would ask, how long, generally, can it take to find a connection between something like “rain” and “pearl”? Should I abandon the idea if it takes longer than, say, 5 minutes? 10? Is there a limit? Is it important enough that you should try to come back to it at a later point, after finding no solution in the first 5-10 minutes?
That's up to you. Personally, if I'm thinking too long on a verb, I think that usually means it's not necessary or I'm forcing it. Few sentences (if any) *need* a made up verb, it's more just a stylistic choice that can add something interesting if you make the right connection. I think if you're sitting there thinking "I really want a made up verb here but I can't think of one," you're probably taking the wrong approach and the sentence probably does not need it. I find the best way to start is to look at similes you've already written, and see if they would make more sense as verbs. If you're forcing it, the sentence probably doesn't need it, or it's something you should return to in editing.
❤️❤️❤️
English is a truly unique language. If you don't mind me asking, what book of yours was that last excerpt from?
Holding a Ghost !
@@ShaelinWrites Hope it gets published someday
Definitely a good warning to use sparingly, almost on par with (I think) exclamation points. Too much and it can easily become a stylistic distraction that leaks into how all the other prose is received by the reader, making "the writer" the primary focus of the text instead of the story.
Psst. For Rorschach? It’s “roar-shock”. :-)
haha for some reason I just really struggle to pronounce that word! might be my accent lol
Our prose may be joyced or shaelined or rose-moled like a stippled trout that swims upstream (pied beauty: g.m. hopkins).
In Heaney's poem Station Island the ghost of James Joyce counsels the young poet to write for the joy of it.
*And don't be so earnest/ So ready for the sackcloth and the ashes/ Let go, let fly, forget.*
Algae'd carries a soupy clotted taste like a scummy green river skated over by damsel flies in June: children teach us to see again.
Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Globe Theatre, London (DVD) bursts into life with the Duke's speech:
*And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.*
Then the line that lights up everything he has described: *I would not change it.*
*Seamus Heaney: The poet and his tradition* by Suzana Stefanovic. Online thesis.
*Don't Shoot the Book Reviewer; He's Doing the Best He Can.* The New Yorker online 1939.
A God Talking in His Sleep Might Have Written Finnegan's Wake. Clifton Fadiman on James Joyce's problematic masterpiece.
*James Joyce A Life* by Edna O'Brien.
*Ulysses Annotated: Revised and Expanded Edition* Don Gifford.
*Here Comes Everybody: Introduction to James Joyce For the Ordinary Reader* by Anthony Burgess.
*Nora - Biography of Nora Joyce* by Brenda Maddox.
*The World of James Joyce: His Life & Work Documentary (1986) TH-cam.
*Shakesperean - On Life & Language in Times of Disruption* by Robert McCrum.
After recovering from a stroke this literary critic turned to the language of Shakespeare, discovering again why he is so great.
*No Boys Play Here - A Story of Shakespeare & My Family's Missing Men* by Sally Bayley.
The men in Sally's family were absent, out of work and drunk. In her formative years she found refuge in Shakespeare's genius.
*Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human* by Harold Bloom (TH-cam) the critic who taught a generation how to read.
*Sir Laurence Olivier: Great Acting 1966 Interview with Kenneth Tynan (1/5) TH-cam. Olivier played Hamlet, Othello and Lear.
*Paul Scofield - A BBC Arena Documentary*. TH-cam.
Scofield played Lear in the seminal film directed by Peter Brook (1971).
Boris Pasternak told his children that Shakespeare's plays were one vast fairy tale and should be approached that way.
Interestingly, Whitehead"s process philosophy argues that nouns are linguistic failures to understand reality (or, more charitably, a bad metaphor). Instead, everything is in the process of becoming. I wonder how a process short story would sound, where everything is a verb.
watching this as a non english speaker is sad because the technique is basically impossible :( sometimes i do this when writing in english but then i try to translate the verbed noun and go "oh, now i have to turn it back into a simile"
I'm jealous. In my mother tongue, Portuguese, it's not possible to verbify words without sounding super awkward.
@jackie it's because, in Portuguese, all verbs end with a specific kind of suffix: "-ar", "-er", "-or", "-ir". To verbify a noun, we'd need to add one of those suffixes, and sometimes it doesn't work.
@jackie yes
Actually, it can happen in our language, but its just a bit more difficult. Like in Shaelin´s example "gotas de chuva caíram no cabelo dela como pérolas"' can turn into "gotas de chuva perolaram o cabelo dela". On side note, are you brazilian?
@@vitoriaassuncao7716 sou portuguesa
Not getting the appeal until the last sentence. That says a lot.
Medusa'ed with a capital M? It is no longer a proper noun.