Watch for hidden verbs

You’ve probably heard the advice to eliminate wordiness in your writing. But what does that actually mean? Sometimes writers think that means long sentences need to become short sentences. But it’s not really about sentence length. Long sentences might be exactly what that particular scene needs (a lot of it is about pacing, which I’ll write about in future posts), so you shouldn’t just assume that cutting sentence length is what is meant by eliminating wordiness.

Instead, think of wordiness as unnecessary phrases that meander for no reason. That’s the key—for no reason. In this post I’m going to discuss “hidden verbs” or phrases that meander with a weak verb plus a noun instead of a stronger verb. This is one example of wordiness that can often strengthen your writing by eliminating it.

Side note: Sometimes you might want to use these hidden verb phrases. For example, perhaps a character is trying to make themself look extra smart (even though they really aren’t), so the character intentionally speaks in meandering phrases. Then you might want to actually use some of these hidden verb phrases for that character. Like I said above, if you have a reason for using the wordy phrase, then it doesn’t need to be eliminated.

What is a hidden verb?

So what do I mean by a hidden verb? It’s easier to understand by looking at an example.

Sarah made a decision about what she was going to eat.

Look at the phrase “made a decision.” The verb “made” is a fairly weak verb and then we have the noun “decision.” Why say “made a decision” when you can use the strong verb “decided”?

Sarah decided what she was going to eat.

This allows the reader to get straight to the point and not get lost in a wordy phrase. Let’s look at a few other examples.

The king made an announcement about the rules of the tournament.

The king announced the rules of the tournament.

She was in possession of the golden ring.

She possessed the golden ring.

Note: The use of hidden verbs is also called nominalization, which means to make a verb into a phrase with a noun. 

List of hidden verbs

Although this is by no means an exhaustive list, the following gives you a good start for phrases to watch out for in your writing.

made a decision —> decided

made a plan —> planned

was in possession of —> possessed

breathed a sigh —> sighed

let out a laugh —> laughed

took a look —> looked

took into consideration —> considered

gave consideration to —> considered

made an announcement —> announced

made an application —> applied

undertook the calculation —> calculated

made a negotiation —> negotiated

conducted a review —> reviewed

performed an analysis —> analyzed

Notice how often the verbs “made,” “took,” and “gave” show up in the examples and how the noun often ends in -sion or -tion. Those are clues you can watch for as you try to find other hidden verbs in your writing. And to fix the wordiness, most of the time you just need to change that noun into the verb.