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The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Verb Your Enthusiasm: Transform Your Writing With Stronger Verbs With Sarah Kaufman
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Welcome to the Creative Penn Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 863 of the podcast and it is Sunday 10th May 2026. As I record this in today's Writing Craft Show, I'm talking to Sarah Kaufman about her book Verb youb Enthusiasm how stronger verbs can transform your writing. We discuss how upgrading your verbs can transform flat writing into vivid page turning prose and how to fix writing problems with with verbs. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing. Well, first up, a lovely chat between Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Don King about writing as a caregiver and different forms of grief over on the Stark Reflections podcast. I know how much Don's interview on this show last November touched people. It got some of the most personal comments that we've ever had to the show and it was clear that caregivers of all kinds valued it. Now, since then, Don's daughter Hannah has died and he talks about prolonged grief as he and his wife have been grieving in different ways for many years and as well as how to separate the emotion and the intellectual side of things and how writing helped his depression. And one thing that also struck me again was the idea of extreme prioritisation. If you only have one hour a day or 30 minutes a day or whatever you have, that's a tiny amount. If that's all you have for creativity, your writing, your business, how do you spend that? And obviously Don's situation in your situation, if you're a caregiver is one way. But also there are people who have chronic illnesses. And this really came home to me when I had very bad Covid a few years ago. It was really the first time in my life I had weeks of not being able to do much. I really my brain only worked for an hour a day. It was quite a shocking experience for me because I'd never hit that before. And I know many of you listening, listening know exactly what I mean. And it is, I mean many people live with that all the time. I'm very grateful that I recovered. But if you only have this short amount of time, you have to learn to prioritize whatever it is. And Don says you just have to get used to the idea that if you try and do all the things you want to do, and they might all be good things, you will end up doing none of them. You have to give up the things you really want to do in order to achieve your top priority. And this, your top priority might, for example, be making a living with your writing. So I remember Lindsay Baroka. Many of you will read Lindsay's books or have heard her on this show, or the six Figure author back in the day when that podcast was around. But I remember Lindsay telling me it's probably, probably almost 20 years ago now that she gave up gaming in order to write. And my husband's a gamer. I know many of you love gaming and so that's giving up something you love for something you love more. And this is this idea of extreme prioritization I think is something perhaps we need to revisit whether, perhaps even if we don't have all of those things going on, although everyone's got family and life stuff and all of that. But the opportunities for authors now are almost endless. There was a point when I started back in 2005, 2006 when there was no even option to do most of this stuff. And now there is so, so many options that we can do everything, but in trying to do everything, we end up potentially overwhelming ourselves. So please consider what might you have to give up in order to achieve your top priority. And all of the things on your list might be good things, but you just can't do them all. So yes, publishing and marketing and writing just look at simplify, simplify, simplify. And then also Don talks about how to talk to someone who is grie saying people would hesitate to say anything about Hannah because they were afraid they would make me sad. But even saying to someone that you don't know what to say is better than avoiding it and don't avoid things because of your own fears or your own discomfort. Lots more in that interview on Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing with Mark Lazy Lefebvre and Don King. Then on more business focused things, there's a great discussion on the Self Publishing Advice podcast about bulk sales. This often gets overlooked and is a great angle for non fiction authors in particular speakers, although we've also had Dave Hendrickson on the show to talk about doing bulk sales into schools. I think Karen Inglis has talked about this too, but I've covered this a few times over the years and it's basically selling books in bulk in the hundreds or the thousands or the tens of thousands to companies or schools or organizations, sometimes doing custom print runs for them. Things like including their company company information on a page inside it can be extremely lucrative even if those sales never show up on a bestseller list. As they are essentially untracked sales. They're usually done directly with a printer and you're paid by an invoice with the company. It could be part of a speaking deal, that kind of thing. So the episode to listen to it's called Beyond Bulk Sales, Gifting and Alternative Distribution with Anna Featherstone and Andrew Griffiths on the self publishing advice podcast Self Publishing with Ally and a couple of things that also stood out for me. Andrew says I'm now only doing hardcovers because they're expensive, but I love them. To me, the reader experience is so much more than the words. Now this is something I've been thinking about a lot. Obviously I've just finished my Kickstarter Bones of the Deep. I have a couple of the beautiful hardbacks here. Now of course, they are more expensive to make and print than ebooks. Ebooks are basically free. If you don't pay for editing and you don't pay for cover design, you can do an ebook for free. And that is of course why there are so many more ebooks out there than there are high quality hardbacks, for example. So you're playing in a very different field. And I'm not obviously I'm not saying don't do ebooks or audiobooks or digital or normal print on demand paperbacks. I do all of those things. But the gorgeous hardbacks can really separate us from the so called book slop, which is bad quality AI generated books, which are often just ebook only. And you know, I'm pro AI in many contexts, but it can be used in in an AI slop way. We don't do that obviously. But if you have high quality hardbacks and you've gone to even more human effort than most traditionally published books. Most traditionally published books don't have like a foiled hardback gorgeous print edition. Most of them have either a cheaper hardback or a cheaper paperback. So you need a sales strategy. Of course, don't just spend too much money printing beautiful books, but it can be a real differentiator. And Andrew talks about in the podcast, he also talks about physically handing books to people and using that connection as leverage, saying I give away about a thousand books a year. That's my marketing budget. And again, those personal connections with the gorgeous hardback can be really worthwhile. People will throw away a gorgeous hardback less often than they will a cheap paperback. I mean, it's just obvious they're more likely to give it away or give it to a secondhand shop or whatever. They also last longer. I'll always remember Dean Wesley Smith saying at one workshop that a hardback, like a premium hardback, will go through seven pairs of hands in its life rather than a cheap paperback which someone might read and then might just go in the landfill, for example. So yeah, really consider the options around doing beautiful books in terms of the marketing as well as just the, the printing side of things. But of course the pricing is very interesting. And Andrew does discuss pricing poverty mindset and how indie authors have occupied the bottom levels of pricing. Now we did that originally like back in the day when Kindle launched 2007, like indies came in and did cheap and 99 cent deals. And then Kindle Unlimited and subscription models came along five years after that. And essentially, or maybe even more than that, maybe it was 20, maybe it was seven, eight years, like 2014, 2015. I think these unlimited digital things came in and people's idea of pricing just completely changed. But I think it's time to rethink pricing. And in fact I just got Claude as I was preparing this. I was like, okay, Claude, go and do some research on all of my books and pull up all my pricing and do a strategic review of my pricing, because it might, it's time I revisited some of my stuff in my backlist, like where am I positioning myself? So that's very interesting. Pricing is very much a mindset issue. Of course you can't just say oh, my books £99, whereas other books in the niche are £9. But we do need to think about what we're doing. I also love Andrew's attitude about selling books. He says, I started looking at everyone around the world who had sold a million books or more and deconstructed what they did. And this is non fiction particularly. I started to realize they were using books for things other than selling, they were leveraging tools. And he mentions Tony Robbins in particular. And I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins or at least I guess I in the early 2000s, I mean I still am. I, I still listen to him occasionally and buy his newer books, which are often on money. But back in the early 2000s, I read all his mindset books and listened to his tapes when my mindset was stuck in scarcity and I didn't feel creative American self help stuff is really good for that. So if you're listening and you're not American in particular. Like being a Brit, our money mindset stuff is particularly scarcity and also class related. So who are you think you could make money that kind of. If you hear that in your mind then you definitely need some money mindset help. So definitely have a listen to that interview that's on the Self Publishing with Ally podcast and also I will link to my money book so thecreativepenn.com moneybooks. There are lots there if you do need to change your mindset around that. So yeah, but of course I will just go back to Don's interview and say all of these things must be based on your idea for your life. Like what do you want your life to look like? What do you want your days to look like? How much time do you have? You have to practice discernment, weigh up all your possibilities, be honest with yourself, choose your path and choose what you do with your time. I mean like yes, I am recording this on a Sunday morning because I've been away. I'll talk about that in a minute. But it's like how do you spend your time? I spent some time this morning combing my cats. I have two British short hair cats and brushing my cats is a pleasure and a joy and the purring and the chatting and all of that while we looked out at the garden, at the flowers and sometimes that's more important. So yes, choose your path, whatever works for you. Practice discernment over what to listen to and what to ignore. And that includes me. My personal news. So my Kickstarter finished for Bones of the Deep. I really love these short term campaigns. They just, they're so, I don't know, just great to know that I have done that campaign now. Now I can fulfill it. I love fulfillment. It's like, okay, I can just get on with things. So you probably saw my marketing during the campaign was a couple of emails mentioning it again on this podcast and also like a couple of social media posts. I really didn't do much. I do most of my marketing in the pre launch. You know, obviously I've been talking about it for a while and I have that redirect and so mostly the campaign sort of hits its targets within the first day and then I kind of relax. So anyway, we did finish at eight and a half thousand pounds or around $11,500. So thanks to everyone who backed the campaign. Please do your surveys and if you do back Kickstarters, remember to check your banking as sometimes things don't go through and also check for your surveys because that really helps us as creat to get everything ready for fulfillment. So the ebook, the audiobook, all digital rewards will go out within the next 10 days. After the payment's clear, I'll be putting the print order into Book Vault. I'll be heading up for the signing in a couple of weeks and funnily enough, so Bones of the Deep, it is a thriller, so it was originally going to be a horror, but it's not. It's a thriller and my mum would never read a horror. But my mum came and cat set for me for a couple of days while I was away and she read it so and I was quite surprised really and she said it one of her favourites of my books, which is quite unexpected as she enjoys women's fiction, sweet romance. So while it is a thriller, it is possible that Bones of the Deep is more mainstream than I thought. It is a merfolk thriller. These are not your Disney mermaids. But anyway, if you missed it because right now you can't get it. But I will be selling it from my store jfpenbooks.com in probably July and then from all the stores in August there is a pre order up on Amazon Amazon for the ebook as well. But yes, that will be everywhere by the end, I guess by mid summer, let's say mid northern hemisphere summer. So yes, I. I did have a couple of days off this week. I went to an event in London, met up with various friends. The weather's been pretty nice and there are some pictures on Instagram from a lovely morning walk I took from the Tower of London over Tower Bridge, which is the gorgeous old one, and then along south bank, one of my favourite parts of London. If you've never done the walk along south bank from kind of Tower Bridge to Waterlo, it really is one of my favourite and the inspiration for my Brooke and Daniel thrillers which starts with desecration. It's all set along that stretch of London, well, mostly and the Thames were sparkling and it was early and there weren't any crowds and I was just struck by how grateful I am that I can live this creative life and you are part of that. So thank you for supporting the show and buying my books and webinars and being a patron and of course I was also aware of of all these other ideas that come as as I was walking and I just wanted to sort of share again that when I'm out walking I have my phone and I put things into my things app. Now the app itself doesn't matter. What matters is the process. So I will stop, generally stop walking and type into my phone or dictate a one liner or something. And our thoughts are so fleeting. And when I'm out walking, I could walk like that, which probably was by the time I, you know, got coffee and went in the bookshop and all the different things that you do, it was like three hours. And that walk is only like 5km or something. But I did lots of pootling around. And if we don't capture our thoughts, then they fly away. And sometimes it's fine if they fly away. But many of the things I capture never become anything. But sometimes they are worthwhile or they somehow embed in my mind and then come back years later. I mean, I guess Bones of the Deep in many ways is one of those amalgamations of a trip I did back in 1999. And I've thought about how I would use that trip in my writing four decades and yet it kind of came in with a spark from the master's degree in death. And then something else I'd written down merfolk thrillers, for example. I write down stuff like I really want to write something with merfolk. That might just be something I write down. Anyway, I just wanted to mention how I capture ideas and also capture how grateful I am because out on my walk, I look back at my notes when I got back to my hotel and I was like, wow, I really was very grateful today because I always write that down. I guess it's almost like a prayer. I'm not praying in any particular religious sense, but I do say thank you. Thank you is one of my prayers. So thank you indeed. I've also been prepping my webinars and exploring all the new things we can do with AI tools, which literally expand every single day. Right now, this is the last call for my AI assisted artisan author webinars. Coming up this Saturday, 16th of May 2026 for the basic session and the 23rd of May for the advanced session. And to be honest, the basic session is, I would say, more than basics. And then the advanced is if you want to learn more about Claude code and MCPS and business process redesign, that kind of thing. And the 16th will be a lot of prompts you can use in right now in your business. So ticket holders get the replays, the slides and more. And if you missed these and you're listening later, I will probably do another batch, maybe September, October links@thecreativepen.com forward slash live. And if you're a patron or you've attended previous webinars. You get a coupon for discounts, so make sure you check your email. Or you can always email me joannathecreativepen.com so oh and I also got this comment on YouTube from ravitasentropy said on Nadine's interview which is relevant to this webinar. Which is this is what I need AI for. Not to write, but to help streamline the business so I can devote more time to writing. I don't think outsiders understand what a heavy load the business and marketing stuff can be. I usually usually work at least 10 hours a day, six days a week trying to keep up. And I hear you there because I've been doing that for many years now. Having AI there to help research keywords and categories or technical details for stories or evaluate marketing plans has been such a time saver. This is the stuff I need help with, not the writing itself. So that comment is exactly my point. That's exactly why I'm doing these webinars. So if you come along to the basics webinar, for example, I'm going to start with marketing because because that is one of the biggest challenges for authors and go through all the different ways AI tools can help you. It is basically 99% of these webinars is all the other things because we want to write. That's why we're writers. So yes thecreativepenn.com live so thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Dinah said on Sky's interview about translation Fantastic interview. I'm just beginning my English to German translation journey and I feel like I've already learned so much in order to put my best foot forward. Excellent. And Tim Gallows Books on YouTube said this was a valuable episode. I'm still working on getting my first book out, yet not in a position to afford translations. But it forced me out of my USA bubble thinking about other countries and how marketing there is different. Some places may be better for libraries, some better for Kobo, some have their own systems like Tolino and price is important. Some economies are stronger than others. So thinking about pricing in different markets, markets make sense. So this was a valuable episode in that it opened my eyes to global selling. Thank you for that. Tim. I do agree with you. I think Americans, particularly because you have the biggest English speaking book market and the one we all focus on, you do think that it's the same for everyone else everywhere else. But of course it's not. So I'm really glad that this opened your eyes and also as you say pricing per market. So important, so important. Don't default your price based on the US dollar price because you'll just be too expensive in countries like India or some of the Latin American countries, some of the Asian countries. So yes, thank you for that. And then finally I wanted to also share another comment around Nadeem's interview. So Jim said for me, AI has become a genuine blessing, making the impossible a reality. My dear friend is a 92 year old retired physician and nonfiction author who has had several strok strokes and with macular degeneration can no longer read or type. He has two books he wants to finish but couldn't until now. And I just on a personal note, I have very high risk of macular degeneration and so this is something I am very aware of. I have, I do a lot with eye health and that kind of thing. So this, this really hit me. Anyway, this 92 year old has two books he wants to finish but couldn't until now. And Jim helps him with AI. I use Plaud to record and transcribe our daily phone calls. Super Whisper lets me create documents and notes hands free by transcribing my voice. Claude acts as Project Manager. Working from three pages of detailed instructions we created for Claude. He keeps us organized and on track by documenting our concerns and to dos, flagging issues such as missing examples and redundancy. After more than 100 hours of collaboration, we now have 39 well drafted chapters and a hopeful goal of a polished manuscript by the 4th of July. Jim, that comment means so much. And again from all the health stuff we've been talking about, people with little time, people with chronic issues, health issues, caregivers. This is what we want AI for. I mean for me personally, I've also spent many, many hours doing things with my own arm clicking stuff that now I don't have to. That is why we want AI to help us. Not with the writing, not with the stuff we love, it's with all the business stuff. So yes, amplifying, unlocking enable us to do more. That was the message that Nadeem's interview was about. So yes, we focus on stuff we love and use the tools for things we can't or don't want to do. Right? Leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes atthecreative pen.com or on the YouTube channel. Or you can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening, your favourite cemetery or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So Today's show is sponsored by prowritingaid because however you choose to publish, whether you go indie or you want a traditional deal, you need to make your book the best it can be. ProWritingAid is one of my absolute must use tools in my writing process. Yes, it still is after all these years. Firstly to go through my first draft before printing and hand editing and then again after I put in my edits since I always make mistakes. So I do that before sending to Kristen. My editor. ProWritingAid knows all the rules of editing and helps you apply them. And of course you can choose not to make changes as you like. It helps with making your writing more active. It can help with verbs. It can also find repeated words, sentences and words you could improve. Add sensory detail, sort out your sentence structure, grammar, punctuation issues, typos, spacing and more. More I don't accept all the changes of course, as I don't when I get my edits back from Kristen as well, but it does help me find lots of problems. ProWritingAid also now has a set of useful reports including story strengths and weaknesses, areas for improvement, and other analysis using AI tools to help you improve your writing. So why use software to help you? Why don't you just learn all the grammar and writing rules and apply them yourself? Well, we all use tools to improve our writing process and we are also often blind to our own writing issues. It helps to have another pair of eyes, even if the eyes are software. So won't a human editor do all this? Well, yes they can, but I'd rather pay my editor to fix the things the software can't. I use ProWritingAid as my essential editing tool before sending to my human editor. Check out the free edition or get 15% off the premium edition using my link prowritingaid.com Joanna that's J-O-A-N-N-A prowritingaid.com Joanna this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreativepenn thanks to the eight new patrons who've joined this week, and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio on writing, craft, author, business and AI tutorials. Last week I shared the Patreon Q and A, which is around an hour of me answering questions from patrons, so basically an extra solo episode. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me A black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com forward slash, the creative pen. Right, let's get into the interview. Sarah Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic, an award winning author and a writing teacher. Her latest book is Verb youb How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform your Writing. So welcome to the show, Sarah.
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B
Well, thank you so much. I'm delighted to be with you.
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A
Yeah, so this is such a great topic, but first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.
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So I got into writing kind of a backwards way, I guess. You know, the romantic, wonderful thing about writing is the freedom that it gives you. Right? That's what we all think about, is just this freedom to just address the world. But the practical wonderful thing about writing is to develop a focal point, which I had to do in order to write in the first place. And I'll explain a little bit about that. I became a dance critic, which is what I did at the Washington Post for 27 years, to have something to write about. And that was necessary because though I've always known that I wanted to be a writer ever since earliest childhood, you know, I just didn't really find things to write about when it came time to actually try to make a living at it. As I was approaching leaving college as an English major, I was getting very anxious about what I was actually going to do. And I didn't have this burning desire to write about any certain thing. But I happened to be working as a full time secretary at a ballet school because I had been a ballet nerd all through my youth, and I knew quite a bit about doing ballet, about the steps and about the lingo. So I was a suitable candidate to work at a ballet school. But I was learning so much from the teachers there who had all been professional dancers, about the aesthetics of ballet and how you shape the steps into art and into a performance. So I, you know, was getting more and more interested in dance. And one day the director took me out to lunch and she said, you should write about dance. And I had never, I had seriously never considered that before, but she knew that I was an English major, that I wanted to write. And she said, look, you know, so much, et cetera, et cetera. She really encouraged me. And so I said, well, okay, I'll give It a go, because I had been reading dance criticism. So I just started picking it apart and seeing how critics put their reviews together and called up a local paper, took on some freelance assignments and. And did a lot of freelancing for years and eventually landed at the Washington Post. But the point I want to make is that I had that thing to write about now. I had a focal point, and my books grew out of that, because the first book I wrote is the Art of Grace on Moving well Through Life. And that was an exploration of aspects of grace stemming from physical grace, which I knew about from dancers, and looking at connections there with social grace and spiritual grace. And then this verbs book likewise grew out of my work as a dance writer because my goal in writing about dance was to capture the experience of it. So I didn't want to be a scholarly type of critic, though I do love that kind of criticism, and I read it and learn so much from it. But I knew that was not going to be my style. I wanted more to primarily recreate the experience for the reader as well as then coming in with analysis of it. But I just was so fascinated by the look and the feel of what I was seeing on the stage. I wanted to be able to share that with the reader. So I had to lean on verbs to capture the action. And. And people occasionally would say, oh, you're so good with verbs, Sarah, which I thought was kind of interesting. It's like, oh, so this is a strength I had developed. Didn't really realize it. And then that, coupled with my teaching experience, is what led me to think I have some things to talk about regarding verbs I'd like to share with the world. Because as a teacher, I often see that writing issues my students have are actually verb issues. You know, they. They get into kind of. They write themselves into a corner with a lot of explanation or clauses on top of clauses, and they sort of get lost. And where is the point that you want to make here? What is the meaning? What's. What is it you want me to take away from your work? Well, if you. If we pair that back and pair it back and look at the verbs and try to get some direction in the sent sentences, that often brings clarity. And suddenly the student will say, I was thinking more about adjectives and nouns. I didn't realize that verbs were really something to focus on, and I thought that would be an interesting challenge to bring that out.
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A
Yeah, it's so fascinating. I love how your career has kind of emerged and that you've leaned into different Things. It has a kind of dance to it, to itself. I guess we're going to come back to your career, but I wanted to. Let's just start with that, because mentioned that with many of your students, you're reading their work and you think, oh, well, we can fix this with some verbs. So let's get into that, because you do talk about weeding and this sort of verb first editing process. And most of the listeners will have some kind of writing already. So, you know, either they've got a lot of books already or they've got a draft in progress. So this is the kind of thing that we struggle with, like, how do we make our work stronger? So talk about why you're so obsessed with verbs and what we can do, like some tips. Tips for making our work stronger.
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B
Yes, I am obsessed with verbs.
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A
I will.
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B
I will cop to that. I mean, they're so interesting, and I felt like they were a little underrated as far as a writing tool. And verbs, as we learned in school, they drive your sentence forward. They're the engine, really. I feel like they are kind of the secret soul of language because they're so versatile, they're so essential. First of all, they hold it all together. They're the only part of speech that on itself, in itself is a full sentence. You can have a full sentence that's a verb. You know, watch, look, continue. You could go on and on. That is a full grammatical sentence. You can't do that with any other part of speech. They're so essential. The word verb itself comes from the Latin verbum, which means a word. So verbs became that name for all words. Our literary ancestors understood this, that they're really the beginning and the end as far as words go. But what they can add to your work, when you start thinking about. About verbs in this way, and you start thinking about, how can I elevate my writing? Well, verbs are very efficient and very evocative, and so they can add not only clarity to your work, but a kind of elegance. They can say so much in such a little amount of space. So, for example, say here's a kind of a clunky sentence, but say you have something like this. The cook was facing the dinner rush, and so she decided to put together something quick and easy so no one would know how nervous and unprepared she was. So in that sentence, I'm doing a lot of explaining and describing, right? I'm just explaining to you the situation, but I haven't really brought it to life much. And so a Better way to do. It might be something like this. And you can see it comes. It's a little bit more active. If I say, say. The dinner rush pressed upon her to hide her nerves. She whisked eggs and milk into omelets, shredded parsley with her bare hands, and flung it all onto plates, like Jackson Pollock splashing his canvas. So I show you what her nerves and the pressure resulted in. I show that manifesting. Or you could even shorten it and just say, dinner rush loom. She whisked and whipped, chopped and dripped and masked her nerves with glistening omelets. I mean, those are various. There's stylistic differences there, but it's just to give an example of how you can take something that, on the face of it, sure, it makes sense. It's perfectly fine as a sentence, but it just kind of lies there. It's flat. Maybe it's not very exciting. It doesn't really move the story forward. Word. And you can bring it to life by explaining. Yeah, by. By showing us. And you show us with the action.
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A
Can you Just. Because you haven't really specifically said what a verb is that sentence you just had around whisked and all of those. Those sentences were actually quite different. In a lot of the different words you used, you didn't just swap out for stronger verbs. Could you just point out what were the verbs in that, in case people are even just confused or about which words are which?
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B
Right, right. Great. So in the first inferior example I have, the cook was facing the dinner rush. So then I amended it to the dinner rush pressed upon her. So I'm giving the dinner rush itself a verb. Press. Weighed on her. It pressed on her. I also, in. In the third example, the dinner rush loomed, so that's even quicker. Shorter loom. Wonderful verb. I love it because it conveys a sense of threat. Right. That. That's what I mean by verbs can be so efficient and evocative in one word. You know, a storm loomed. The dinner rush loomed. You convey the emotion around the whole event. So. So, let's see, to hide her nerves, she whisked eggs and milk into omelets, shredded parsley. So hide. She's hiding her nerves. Nerves. Rather than just saying she felt nervous, you give it a little bit more action. You give her a little bit more character by saying she's doing this to hide her nerves and then whisking the eggs, shredding the parsley, flinging it onto plates. That shows how she's being creative and kind of surmounting this problem. Right. Instead of simply describing. So she decided to use her expertise and create a nice dinner. You show that in motion with things like whisking and shredding and flinging it onto plates and however it is that you want to shape it. But that's an example of how the verbs can really. You can slide in upgraded verbs to. To lend a sense of energy and life.
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A
I think this idea of motion is so great. And you tie this in a lot into your work. Like you mentioned, the Dance critic, you've written a lot about physical action. And in the book there is a chapter on physical action. And I think this is so important because many authors will say, use the word said without thinking about dialogue within a pattern of action. So your chef there could say something as she flung the parsley on the plate or something, rather than the chef said this. It was, you know, get moving as she flung the stuff onto the plate. So I feel like the action verbs are so important. Could you maybe talk a bit more about that and the physical action side of it?
- [38:37]
B
Yes, and that's so right. When you have a scene really rolling, you don't need to do so much explaining about the way a person says something. With those dialogue types, it's very interesting. I mean, I feel like words are alive, they're living, breathing things. And the more that we let them come to life on the page, the more you can draw your reader into the story. The reader gets a sense of that life and wants to come into the story with you. You've really created a scene that your reader feels immersed in. And that's so exciting as a reader to discover. So writing about movement is part of that. I mean, and of course writing is very vast, right? It's hard to say. Well, you should always write about movement. You know, that would. That would be silly. But if we think about movement and action and action verbs as being effective not only for the actions that we see around us, but for inner actions, the subtle feeling things, thinking non action, but internally, what's going on. That's also space for effective verbs, for churning emotions, for metaphors about fright and what that feels like in the body or despair or regret. I have a lot of examples of that in the book. And it's a. It's another beautiful use of verbs where instead of explaining what someone is feeling, you can show it through metaphors, metaphorical verbs, in fact, and actual physical changes and things. Roilings inside the body, body.
- [40:37]
A
So for example, someone in their draft has she was afraid. So how could they make that much stronger and use a lot of those things you were just talking about.
- [40:49]
B
Yeah, that's an excellent, excellent question. So instead of she was afraid, for example, you might say something like, she felt her chest fill with ice, freezing her lungs and choking her breath, and her heart bashed around as if to tear itself from her body. I mean, we could get very dramatic about it, but you can play with that. And in fact, what I like to encourage readers to do is open their minds and open their imaginations. So when you have a pretty standard phrase like she was afraid or she felt too frightened to move, well, put yourself in that position. What does that feel like? What does that really feel like inside when you're too frightened to move? Is it an icy feeling or is it a burning? Is it a numb, a numbness? And what verbs might. Might help with that? You know, is it thrashing? Is it raging? Is it. Is it paralyzing? How can that type of expressiveness fill in the picture and make it palpable to the reader as to what it's like to be in the room with this person?
- [42:14]
A
Do you recommend using a thesaurus? Because I try and do this myself and I often use power thesaurus, which I just find so useful, because as writers, obviously, and when we're writing novels or books in a similar genre, we often do reach for the same words. So are you a big thesaurus user?
- [42:34]
B
I am a huge thesaurus user. I have a stack of actual book type thesauri. Thesauri, maybe. I do have a lot of them around. But I do like, as you mentioned, power thesaurus. I like One look, which is an interesting resource. I think it's one look.com and you can kind of go in the other way. You can go in. You can use it as a thesaurus. You can also use it to find, for example, one word, that one verb that combines a couple of words, like walk clumsily, for example. You could put that into power thesaurus and it would. Or I'm sorry, into one look. And it would come up with lists and lists and lists, and among them might be hobble and limp. And you can come up with other words to. To say what a sort of weak verb plus an adverb can say. But yes, online thesaurus is a wonderful resource. I like Merriam webster dot com. That's what I rely on a lot. Cambridge. But yes, a thesaurus is wonderful. Now, the caution with the thesaurus, however, is I would like to urge people to be mindful about just swapping in one word for another or one Verb for another, because there are. Even though they may appear in the same groupings, there are going to be subtle differences among them. And I find it fascinating to really investigate the subtle difference between say, limp and hobble and stumble, things like that. Those all mean slightly different things. Things. So you'd want to really, the kind of finishing tip is just to make sure the word you choose is going to be right for the context.
- [44:34]
A
Yeah. And also perhaps the audience because as you said, you, I mean, you are a Pulitzer Prize winning critic, which is amazing. And. But writing for an audience who wanted dance pieces, so the audience for dancing, in terms of, terms of the words you would use. I mean, I, I'm. It's not really something I'm into, but I would know the word. Say pirouette. I would know that word. But I imagine there's a ton of words that you would know and use in your writing that wouldn't be so relevant for an. Or a wider audience, perhaps. So we have to think about the audience as well as, I guess, our own thoughts on. On the words.
- [45:11]
B
Yes, absolutely. I mean, we want to, to be just very thoughtful in our choice of words. I mean, I think that's probably, if you distilled my book down to one single message, that it is to just think carefully. Not that in the first draft, perhaps, and not, certainly not when we're speaking because we speak so spontaneously, but. But in writing where you put your thoughts down and then hopefully, if you're not under too much deadline pressure, you can come back, give it another look, shape it, shape it, refine it, and really make sure that you've chosen your words with care. Because I feel like that's really what writing is all about, is communicating one mind to another through this magnificent medium of language. But language is intentional and having that intention in mind about what you want to share and what you want to communicate and how you want your readers to approach your work. Well, that's up to you. And that's the freedom I hope to be able to present to people who check out my book is that, well, here's some ways it's all going to be up to you. This is really a book about you. But here's some ways, here's some suggestions, here's some techniques and tips for issues that can arise. And really, once you've taken these in, I hope to fire your imagination and inspire you with being able to communicate what it is that you really have inside that you want to share.
- [47:10]
A
Yeah. And I think it is a book for falling in Love with the joy of the words again. And you did mention deadlines though then, and the pressure. And especially with those of us who write genre fiction series, which is a lot of people who are listening, sometimes we might feel that maybe we don't have the time, time for that. And do our readers, do our readers appreciate that or do they want story first and sometimes is it too much? So where do you come down on that? I mean, in terms of balancing, getting story over words, I guess. Do you know what I mean? How long can we spend on finding beautiful words when we're writing another 70,000 word book? Book.
- [47:56]
B
Oh, I think that's an excellent point. I think that story comes first. That's probably what first drives you to your desk, right? Is telling a story, although it may not. I mean, and again, I think that the realities of writing are so vast and unlimited that it's very hard to, to come out with rules. And I don't write about rules. I really want to give suggestions and examples and insights. But I do think that story is absolutely tops and storytelling. And that's the power of verbs, in fact, is that they can help us tell the stories just with clarity and with efficiency. Now, I do want to make sure that I'm being clear that it's not, I'm not advocating, oh, before you ever sit down and write or you write one sentence, but then please go back and check every single word because that wouldn't really make any sense at all. The idea is just, you know, free yourself, free yourself, your imagination. This is just a way, these are ways to open your imagination up that maybe you haven't thought about before. But I do think that storytelling is primary and then it's the way that you tell it is going to be. Well, that's going to be individual to every writer. But it's useful to bear in mind that there are a lot of avenues one can take in terms of creating a scene or building a character and even evoking the landscape and the atmosphere. And that we can look at verbs to help us do that.
- [49:54]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the biggest problems I think, especially for new writers is the passive voice versus more active voice. So can you maybe give some examples of passive voice? And I mean, often in editing we're told to get rid of passive voice, but of course you do need it sometimes. Time. So maybe can you give some examples around that?
- [50:15]
B
Yes. I mean, there's understandably a lot of confusion about passive voice. And I guess just to have a little, just a tiny tidbit of grammar nerdery here. So the voice of a verb refers to a very specific construction. So it doesn't simply mean in passive voice that the writer is expressing something in a boring way or taking. Taking on a dull subject. The voice of the verb tells you how it relates to the subject of the sentence. So when the subject does the action, when it's doing the verb, then you have a verb in the active voice. But when the subject of the sentence is receiving the action, then it needs a verb in the passive voice. And so here's an example. Example. If I said, hey, Joe, guess what? My grandmother walked on the moon. That's active voice. My grandmother walked on the moon. And it's kind of interesting, right? It's kind of an interesting sentence. So if I said, hey Joe, guess what? The moon was walked on. You know, you might be left kind of thinking, what? Like, what am I supposed to take away from that? What does she really mean? Is, Is that. Is there more to the story? The moon was walked on? Well, that's the passive voice construction. There's no subject who did the walking? It's not there. I haven't told you. And yet the subject was actually pretty darn important, right? My grandmother was the one who walked on the moon. So that's the frustration that comes when, often when we read the passive voice and we don't know. Know the full story and we might suspect, are they hiding something? Do they not really know who did the thing? It brings up a lot of questions. And especially in official situations, you know, the classic example is mistakes were made. Officials love to say that because it puts nobody on the hook. Nobody is responsible. Mistakes were made. Well, who were they made by? They're not telling us. And I hear this, I heard this just recently by one of the representatives here. I mean, this phrase is still being used. Mistakes were made. And I think most people understand there's a bit of obfuscation. There is something being hidden. Now, there are times when the passive voice is perfectly fine, fine. You know, it's not necessary to say who did the action necessarily. So if you say Joe Blow was arrested and charged with murder, you pretty much have the full thing there. You don't need to say the police arrested him. The lawyers, you know, the prosecutor filed the paperwork. I mean, it's kind of assumed. If you just want to get to the point, he was arrested and charged with murder. Murder. Maybe further down in the story, you'll explain the circumstances, but you don't need them right there. It would be very clunky to say police arrested Joe Blow and the state prosecutor charged him with murder. You know, you wouldn't need to say all of that or say fires are still being reported throughout the region. I mean, in a news story, that's perfectly fine. We need to just know that fires are still happening. We don't necessarily need to know. Know who's reporting it, or more details may come later in the story, but right then, it's perfectly fine. So in news reports, in historical situations, when we're giving a history, data, scientific data, scientific reports, you often see the passive voice. It can be a perfectly good and oftentimes even more efficient way, way to tell something, but you don't want to lean into it and overuse it because it becomes very dull when you don't have someone doing an action. It becomes very dull.
- [54:33]
A
Yeah, I feel like a lot of, as you mentioned, the sort of legal side of things. I'm reading a lot of academic papers at the moment. I'm doing another master's degree, and I'm like, goodness me, some of the. I. I feel like sometimes it's designed to turn you off, you know, that kind of writing.
- [54:50]
B
You're exactly right. I've come to that feeling too, and especially in seeing student work. Oftentimes where I feel like there is so much of that in academic writing, which students are reading and digesting, it naturally comes out of them. And it's a kind of cycle, you know, that's hard to break. Break.
- [55:13]
A
Do you think it's a form of hedging so mistakes were made or anything legal? You're hedging it so it can be ambiguous, whereas a strong verb. And you mentioned there your grandmother walked on the moon. You're really making it very clear. So if you want to hedge things, then using passive voice might be more appropriate. But if you want to make it stronger, that the active ness is important.
- [55:37]
B
Yes. And it makes such a difference. And I. I discovered this in my own work. I mean, I would read other critics, for example, I would think. I feel like the piece I've just written is kind of flat. Doesn't really have the effect I want, doesn't have any zip. And I would go and read other critics, not just dance critics, but other critics. You know, it's so useful to just read other people in any type of writing that you're doing. I advocate doing a lot of reading. And I would see that the pieces that really touched me, that really inspired me, had a lot of active voice constructions. They're not saying they're not turning things around passively, which I think as a young critic I may have been doing because I was a little bit afraid to take a stand.
- [56:29]
A
Yeah.
- [56:29]
B
I think I see that in student work that sometimes we don't want to take a stand and so we hedge. But the thing is, writing is intentional and readers can pick up on that hedging. So if you don't intend to hedge, in many cases it can be perfectly appropriate to be fuzzy for an effect that you want to give or something like that in the context. But if you are hedging and you're trying to get away with it, like you don't want anyone to notice that you don't really want to give an opinion on this matter. Matter, it's going to be very clear. So it's better to address something directly.
- [57:08]
A
Yeah. And make it stronger. Well, I also wanted to ask you more about the writing career because I, I perhaps like many people listening were like, I didn't even know you could make a career as a dance critic. Now I know you're, you're not at the Washington Post anymore, and it's possible that that role is no longer. It maybe doesn't exist like a lot of writing roles. But how has your writing career changed over the years? And do you have these various aspects of a portfolio care? And we often talk about multiple streams of income on this show and how as writers, we can't necessarily rely on one thing.
- [57:42]
B
Yes, exactly. And it's true. There is no longer a dance critic at the Washington Post. The position was eliminated. It's a shame. And it's happening to critics in all fields, in all media organizations, sadly. But, but that's where for me at least, having that focal point was very key, a thing that I became comfortable writing about that I could then spiral out and use my. The eyes and the brain that I had developed from writing about this certain focus for a while. Well, where can I take that? Oh, athletes. They also move. I began writing stories and pieces and essays about athletes that moved beautifully that, you know, beyond racking up statistics about winning, just were gorgeous to look at, just were so pleasurable to watch. And I started writing about the body language of political candidates in debate situations and social media forth. So using my focal point to then widen my lens to mix a metaphor, I guess. But having that subject matter and then broadening it out beyond the limits of the actual subject matter, just broadening it out imaginatively into where I could find other places to use this perspective upon on was really key for me. And Say you're writing historical fiction or you're writing thrillers. I would imagine that you would develop a kind of expertise in things that I would find very difficult. Suspense maybe and political or, or police procedure or what exactly were the was the weaponry in 17th century France? And just how can you take that expertise and use it either in an aesthetic way or an actual factual way. I mean to addressing other topics. I think that there's so many people that would be interested in what writers who have have a knowledge and an expertise in anything can then use that expertise to show us something that we've overlooked, that we always thought we knew, but that really, when you look at it this way, it's really reminiscent of how the scabbard was used in 17th century France and that kind of beauty, whatever it is, in whatever way. But people just are craving a new perspective on something they've overlooked or taken for granted. And that's where writers who have a body of work or are interested in pursuing a certain topic, that's the promise that they have is that they can work towards being able to enlighten us on so many other things that maybe even only have a tangential connection connection. But they can make that connection for us.
- [61:18]
A
Fantastic. So where can people find you and your books online?
- [61:22]
B
Well, I am@saralkaufman.com that's my website. My books are available on any website or bookshop that you want to order them from. Verb youb enthusiasm comes out April 28th and I'm not much on social media at the moment but I do enjoy hearing feedback from readers and there's ways to do that on my website.
- [61:48]
A
Well, thanks so much for your time Sarah. That was great.
- [61:51]
B
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it.
- [61:56]
A
So I hope you found the interview with Sarah interesting and that it encourages you to strengthen your use of verbs. Let me know what resonated from the interview or the introduction. You can leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel channel or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also please send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday I'm talking to James Taylor about super creativity and keynote speaking with a non fiction book. So happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes at the Creative Pen and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint if you'd like to connect. You can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook. Fpenauthor. Happy writing, and I'll see you next time.