“ing’ Words Revisited

Writing your first novel-Some things you should know,

gerund_onlyA while back, I revised my novel and noticed something that should have leaped off the page during past reviews, but didn’t. I was having a love affair with ‘ing’. These ‘ing’ words were all over the place.

I stopped the revision process and did some research on ‘ing’. I remembered reading somewhere, that the overuse of ‘ing’ words was not a good thing.

Opportunities to overuse the ‘ing’ word are boundless. There are nouns, adjectives, verbs, and even verbs masquerading as nouns called gerunds, all ending in ‘ing’.

So what’s the big deal? What’s wrong with ‘ing’ words?

The overuse of ‘ing’ words mark you as an amateur – Don’t be alarmed if you see more than a handful on one page. Do take a closer look if you see more than a handful in a single paragraph.

While wrapping a soothing sling around the fledgling’s broken wing, Diana was humming, dreaming of her prince charming. Yet troubling thoughts about his depressing friend Starling kept intruding, interrupting her very entertaining daydreams. There was something intriguing and alarming about him.

‘ing’ verbs weaken your writing and make it clumsy and hard to read .                                                                                                                                                                    Abigail was walking along the bike trail. There was a boy riding his bike. He was smiling up at her as she passed. She started wondering what the boy was so happy about.

Abigail walked along the bike trail. A boy smiled at her as he rode passed. She wondered what he was so happy about.

Starting a sentence with an ‘ing’ word is the weakest way to begin a sentence.

Hitting the thug in the face with her purse, Josie reached for her phone.

Josie hit the thug in the face with her purse and reached for her phone.

To identify overuse of ‘ing’ words in your writing, try this:

  1. Use the “search” or “find” function in your word processing app(usually under editing).
  2. Use ‘ing’ as your search term.
  3. Examine each ‘ing’ word you find.
  4. Ask whether the ‘ing’ word is essential to meaning.
  5. Determine whether a simple past or other tense might work better.
  6. Decide if a stronger word choice might be the way to go.

Once you identify ‘ing’ words, replace weak or common ones with specific, stronger word choices. Your writing will become more concise, clear, and engaging.

Remember, not all ‘ing’ words are bad. The issue is whether or not you have made the best word choice.

So much info on the internet. You get the cliff notes. Hope they help, or at least get you thinking  🙂

-Jan R

“ing’ Words Revisited

24 thoughts on ““ing’ Words Revisited”

  2. I talk about “ing” all the time. Those sneaky little parasitic letters are always attaching themselves to my words! I use the find and replace feature to mark all ING in a bright colour. like pink, so when I do my readthrough, they POP on the page. I do the colour swap for the key filter words too.(using different colours for different filter words)

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  10. It’s important in dialogue creation to remember that the use of forms such as the gerund become institutionalized in some areas. For example, Hiberno-English usage is replete with gerunds, which lend a subtle Irish flavor to a character’s speech, without the illegible, phonetically misspelled words which smack of the “stage Irish” fake dialect that many writers mistakenly believe they need to use.

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