Make Your Nouns Work

Nouns and Verbs. The basics of English. Sure you could argue with me and try to convince me that I'm wrong, but then again, you can't. Without Nouns and Verbs, there is no english language. So how can a nobody from Alabama make such a bold statement and claim it is true? Simple, because it is, and here is why.

Nouns are things, the building blocks of the English Language. Subjects are all nouns (sure, you could try to protect your pronouns, but those are still people, places, things, and ideas, which is exactly what nouns are.) Imagine, if you will, a sentence with no nouns. Here's one, "blah." Kind of boring, stupid, and doesn't make any sense whatsoever. "A sentence tells something." While there are many other forms of speech included in the sentence, the basics can be boiled down to just two words. "Sentences talk." Ernest Hemingway would never have written his classic novella, The Old Man and The Sea, because there would have been no Old Man or a Sea.

If Nouns are the building blocks of the English Language, Verbs are the driving force that helps build it. Sure, there are many other forms of speech that help, but Verbs are the foreman, the overseer of production if you will. It makes sure the job gets done and doesn't ask questions. You can easily imagine a sentence without a verb. "Scott." Okay, what about him? What's he doing? He isn't, because there are no verbs.

So how do you make your Nouns do what you want? How do you use these two powerful allies, or some cases enemies, to do your bidding? It's all a matter of tense. Now I know what you're thinking. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I just started understand those other words and now THIS!" Well, give me just a second.

When I say tense, I don't mean how you feel when you meet your girlfriend or boyfriend's parents. And I'm not talking about the past, present, or future tense. I mean something totally different, as in the happening or happening TO tense. (huh?) Okay, here we go. "Scott worked." So what's happening in this sentence? Scott is actually doing something. He's working. Now look at this one. "The work Scott had been doing...." Okay, now it seems like Scott is still working, but in fact SCOTT is a description of the work. Whose work is it? Scott's. It's Scott's work. To make the sentence move more freely and with more force, you need to clarify what is doing the action. "Scott had been working before he was interrupted." There is no question about who is doing the action and who is having the action done to them.

It's very important to make sure your words move. We've all read a book that just didn't do anything for us, maybe because it wasn't interesting or we found nothing in common with it. But I ask you, why not go back and reread the sentences. See how the sentences are written and who/what is doing the action. You may be able to find it more interesting (or it could still be the most boring thing on earth.) Just my opinion