First, a note from our sponsors: imagination, mischief, and creative noncompliance.
Here is something I wrote down once.
analytics? no. what i do with analytics is i say: ew. that smells! go put it outside or something. i’ll be over here planting more lemon feathered cookie flowers and letting all the balloons go at once. see you never, bye!
Anayltical stuff can be a challenge for me. Especially when it comes to making things, I'm a true-blue chalanter and would almost always rather be off chalanting. But there's an exception: There is one particular thing that I love to analyze and (surprise!) it's WORDS. Last week we nerded out about it pretty hard, specifically in relation to VERBS. This week, I have an experiment for us to try. We're going out looking for action! And to hopefully get into some interesting trouble. We're verbing.
If you get stuck or feel creatively curious or sluggish, try the verb game! I made it up. You’re welcome!
Find a passage, chapter, section, etc., of text with relatively plain or straightforward writing, your own or someone else’s.
Go through your source text highlighting or circling all the verbs. Even the little rinky-dink ones like different tense forms of the verb “to be”. Remember these can be pretty sneaky!
Swap out all the marked verbs for better, more alive and more interesting ones. (But don’t overdo it, either! Or do overdo it—what would totally overdoing it be like?! Experiment & play!)
Try some nouns as action words (a little linguistic trickery I think of as “nouns misbehaving”), or even adjectives, using those to sub out for the original verbs, instead of new verbs. Nouns are people places, things! you might think. How can a noun or an adjective be subbed for a verb? Easy. Just sub it out. Because you’re always chalanting.
Eleanor tried ham-sandwiching the phone away from her brother, but he had the better grip.
A riot of relief and love hurricanes through me when he opens the door.
The horizon purples, her profile shining violetly in the day’s last light.
Gary was just Garying around all day, surprising exactly nobody.
I don’t know, I just made those up on the spot. Do they work? I don’t care. I’m playing! I can hold space another time to consider that more, to think more intentionally about it. Right now I’m busy with the balloons.
Like I’m always banging on about: Writing is spell-casting. Words are magic. Honestly, probably the most important rule of creativity club?
You can do whatever the hell you want.
Let it get far-out! You’re safe in your notebook. And like I said last week, it’s only when you let your imagination go wild and sideways and weird that you’ll have something interesting to think through and tinker with later. And maybe eventually develop and tune.
As a few drops of light for the creative well this week, here are some fantastic examples of verbs behaving beautifully from Molly Prentiss’s lovely and evocative novel, Old Flame, wowingly margin-starred by yours truly when I read it a few years back. (She’s particularly good at this!)
✨ the outline of Wes crisped as the truth came into view.
✨ [Evalina] blusters up to us from across the piazza
✨ I . . . climbed out of the shower and twirled my hair up in the towel
✨ [I] smacked a square of toilet paper on the cut
✨ A rush of love and terror wipes through me
And lastly but definitely not leastly, a CAVEAT!
Be very careful, though, with dialogue tags (a.k.a. verbs that indicate someone is speaking). In this case, the plainest, most ‘boring’ verb (to say = “said/says”) is almost always the right one. The dullness (or omission, depending) of the tag holds the appropriately shushed space for its dialogue to sing. If you feel the need to get cute with your dialogue tags (“exclaimed”, “replied”, “commented”, etc), it’s probably because your dialogue isn’t resonant or evocative enough or in the right way(s).
But we’ll talk dialogue another time! Promise. And okay, okay. I’m analyzing the nature of dialogue tags. I guess I do like analytics. I like them a little. But they make me itchy if they get too close to the center; I’m way more committed to chalants. 😉💫
If you action your way into anything you like (or even just find interesting!) this week, please share a line or two in the comments. I always love to see how other people play—especially when they’re open to misbehaving.
Love & light from the margins,
ali ✨
Star in the Margin is free and open to all, but does require lots of time, love, and energy! If you’re into the vibe and want to cheer me on. . .
Related reading:
Theft by Finding, part I
·
November 3, 2025
Happy November! It’s time to put some of these Creative Reading ideas into action.
Theft by Finding, part II
·
November 10, 2025
So last week, I introduced the idea of “stealing” things we like by finding them, trying them out loosey-goosey, and eventually breaking them down like the little machines they are to get more information, to see how they work. Do you remember the line we were using? It’s from Jessica Fechtor’s memoir,
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.