Melissa Maygrove

Sorry for the unoriginal title, but it fits. I'm blending grammar, writing and editing today, addressing 'be verbs' as they relate to fiction. Many writers have lists of words they search out and often edit out of their manuscripts when they go back to polish their prose. These lists include everything from filter words to -ly adjectives, and they almost always include forms of the infinitive to be .  It's fair to say any fiction writer who's been at it long at all will be mindful of am , was , and were . The question is, when on a mission to search and destroy, where does one draw the line? Over the last couple of years, I've come across several writers who are highly sensitive to this group of verbs. I've known some of them, when doing critiques, to mark virtually every form of to be in the entire submission. Don't take offense. I'm not scoffing or singling these critters out . E very writer has his or her hypersensitive areas (goodnes...

Today, I'm tackling the subject of conjugating verbs. If you're like me, you write more properly than you speak. The problem is: we often hear things that aren't grammatically correct, and then translate them into our writing without realizing it. Conjugating English verbs is fairly simple. Most verbs add -ed to for the past and past participle tense. Let's take the infinitive 'to play' as an example. Now in sentences: Today, I play.  ~  Yesterday, I played.  ~  In the past, I had played. That was easy, right? Problems usually arise when dealing with the pesky verbs that don't follow the rules. Ex: Swim, swam, swum. Let's start with one that many people — even the fairly grammar-conscious — often get get wrong: properly conjugating the infinitive 'to drag.' The present tense is 'drag.' Ex: Drag that chair over there, would you? The past tense is 'drug,' right? Nope. It's 'dragged.' (And don't worry. I'm not ...