Vivid Verbs

1. Vivid Verbs

2. The boy walked down the street.Can you picture this sentence?Show me the action of this sentence.

3. Read the top of “Five Hundred Horsepower Verbs”.

4. The boy walked down the street.Replace walked with other, more vivid, verbs.EX: The boy strutted down the street.Which verb paints a more vivid picture in your mind?

5. Your turn…Look at the sentences on “Five Hundred Horsepower Verbs”.On your own paper, read the 8 sentences, and write down all of the verbs that “energize” the sentence.

6. Look back to “You Can’t Just Walk on By”.On the first 2 pages only, find and write down 5 vivid verbs.

7. Imademy strike. As I did so, I found myself balancing forward, so that I didn’t hit him just behind the head, as I had planned. Instead, I cut him almost exactly in half.Replace made and cut with more vivid verbs.

8. The snake was lying at my naked heel. He had come around in the water to where it curved slightly behind the sandbar. He lay in bloodstained water behind me. Even as I looked, his mouth hinged open in that horrible gaping…

9. I clung there and my head was turned still, watching the snake as, leaving a trail of blood, he slid off into the muddy water. Then I managed to climb up the bank until I sat sobbing in safety.

10. I sat on the bank, feeling the sweat damp on my shirt, feeling my body shivering in long, cold ripples of death-dread. When I could get my legs under me, I walked beside the pasture-lane fence.

11. For the first time in my life, I thought about death, knowing I too could die.

12. Your turn…Complete the second half of “Five Hundred Horsepower Verbs”. Write 5 sentences of your own with verbs that “energize” them. Circle the verbs in each sentence.Write on your own paper!Turn your sheet into the tray.