Writers Tips #5: Beware the gerund
When you read your story, does it sound off? Maybe you can’t quite put your 
finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong?
Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. I’ll point them out. They’ll come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments. Add comments with your favorite editing fixes.
A gerund is a verb that ends in -ing and functions as a noun.
learning
running
asking
Too many gerunds make your writing passive. You take a wonderful verb, attach it to the passive is or was and water down the energy of your action. Here’s how to fix it:
Wrong: He was learning how to ice skate
Right: He learned how to ice skate, or He took ice skating classes
Wrong: He was looking out the window
Right: He looked out the window
Wrong: He was running down the street
Right: He ran down the street
Wrong: He was asking where the book store was
Right: He asked where the book store was
All gerunds aren’t bad or I would have said: Delete the gerund. Just watch them.
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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade, creator of two technology training books for middle school and three ebooks on technology in education. She is the author of Building a Midshipman , the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com , Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s editing a thriller for her agent that should be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
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