At ‘The Writer’s Club’ we explored how to add action and pace into our writing. This is what we discovered!
Use Strong Action Verbs
Action verbs bring a story to life! Verbs help you paint vivid word pictures.
Choose Your Verbs Wisely
Choose the verb that really matches the action you want to describe. For example, mice nibble rather than eat. When it comes to action verbs – you have lots of exciting choices:
Run or sprint or jog.
Laugh or giggle or squeal.
Yell or scream.
Hit or punch or slap.
Use Short Sentences
When you are writing the exciting parts for your story, use shorter sentences and strong verbs. This is not the time for flowery descriptions and lots of complicated dialogue. You want your readers to keep up with the pace!
Enter Instant Verb Poetry!
Level One:
Instant Verb Poetry proved to be the perfect warm up activity for this workshop. Children each choose a noun and then write six verbs that can be associated with this noun. A sentence to expand on the subject (the original noun) completes the poem.
Level Two:
Level Two is a little harder. Children are divided into teams and using the same noun for each team, they need to create a verb poem.
For each verb they use, they receive a point. They need to really stretch their brains and extend their word knowledge. If they use a verb that no other group has used, they receive 2 points.
We played the game in teams, using the noun - MAGIC.
Magic
By Bianca and Imogen
Escape
Levitate
Trick
Reappear
Change
Amaze
I’m an awesome magician
Magic
By Caitlin and Tristan
vanish
cast
deceive
control
explode
change
Magic is mind blowing.
This is a great activity to encourage teamwork, build word knowledge, explore parts of speech and create interesting word lists! It takes about fifteen minutes, can be adapted to any topic and the results are awesome! And of course, it’s fun way to write poetry.
