How To Add Life To Your Sentences
What is a participle in English? And how do they make a sentence dance?
There’s nothing more frustrating than forcing yourself through a piece of text because the author has made it hard to follow. When it comes to descriptive writing, this problem is usually caused by a lack of ‘animation’ in the text.
Now what do I mean by ‘animation’?
When we write, we are talking about things taking place in space and in time. And our words reflect this. Verbs tell us what something is doing, adjectives describe how something is, nouns tell us what things are, and adverbs tell us how something is done. Simple.
When I’m talking about ‘animation’ I’m talking about the physical movement a word adds to a piece. Adjectives are static but verbs are full of movement.
Fortunately, there is a word class that combines the two.
Let’s talk about participles, and how they can add life to your writing.
What are participles?
Participles are derived from verbs but function as adjectives. They come in two flavors: the present participle form (-ing) and the past participle form (-ed).
Here’s a few:
- Breaking/Broken
- Tearing/Torn
- Twisting/Twisted
- Flaring/Flared
Now these are verbs, and we can use them as such. But these can also be adjectives or adjective phrases. We call these types of phrases Participial phrases.
A reminder: A phrase is a collection of words with a function. Unlike a clause, a phrase does not have a predicate. There is no main verb.
Why should you care?
Participles have an animating power that is lost on other words. As they are born from a verb, their sense of action is passed on. It’s this quality that gives life to a sentence. A base adjective can be dull, but a participle will always add movement to a piece.
Examples
In most cases a good verb will tell the whole story. If a man dashed across the room, ‘dashed’ tells us exactly how he moved, sparing us an adverb.
Yet many of our sentences use being verbs. Verbs such as is/was, are/were, has/had etc. These verbs state what something is, what its being is. However, sentences that use is/are, was/were etc. have a chance of sounding stiff.
This presents an opportunity to play. Swap out your dull adjectives/phrases for a participle.
There was a red cloth on the table. > There was a table draped in red.
There is a girl with long hair. > There is a girl with flowing hair.
He was full of anger. > He was enraged.
She had a lot of energy > she was energized.
There was a bright light. > There was a radiating light.
Notice that once we swap our common adjective for a participle, we’ve managed to sneak in the life that our verb lacks?
If you can’t swap your verb, sneak in a participle.
We can also use participial phrases to add animation to a complete sentence.
These phrases can come before a sentence, after the subject or at the end of the sentence.
Imagine the complete sentences below by themselves, then read them with the phrase attached. The participial phrase adds definition to the sentence. It is an adjective.
Twisted and broken by the sea, the ship lay on the sands.
Gathering for a storm, the clouds moved swiftly over the house.
(Note that if the phrase is modifying the subject, we separate the phrase with a comma; if it’s modifying the object, it is restricted to the object, so we don’t add a comma.)
The ship lay on the sands, twisted and broken by the sea.
The clouds moved swiftly over the house, gathering for a storm.
Here are some restrictive cases:
The figure was framed by columns wrapped in ivy.
A young girl found the bottle drifting on the tide.
She gazed at the sky changing from blue to a wild violet.
If your sentences are dead, sneak in some participles and bring them back to life.
