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I want to talk about a time warp in writing that I see fairly often: participial phrases that seem to suggest impossible, simultaneous action. Good grief, what does that mean? It means it’s a good opportunity to talk about grammar! It also means I see sentences where characters are performing multiple actions, but one of those actions must obviously take place before the other can happen, and in the sentence, they don’t.
Example:
Taking off his jacket, he threw his keys on the countertop and poured himself a whiskey.
What’s gone wrong in that sentence? Well, first let me back up and explain a couple of things.
A participial phrase is a phrase that acts like an adjective and starts with a participle. “Whoa there, cowboy,” I hear you say, “what’s a participle?”
First of all, I’m not a cowboy. Second of all, participles are verbals—they look like verbs, they smell like verbs, they sound like verbs, but they are not verbs. Yes, they have identity issues, but they’re a little easier to pin down than Keyser Soze. A participle is a word formed from a verb that can be used as an adjective. That doesn’t make a lot of immediate sense so check out this cool chart:
| The Verb | The Past Participle | The Present Participle |
| to fall | the fallen hero | the falling hero |
| to heat | the heated oven | the heating oven |
| to ring | the rung bell | the ringing bell |
Visit this page for much more detail on participles (and gerunds).
Note the irregular verb in the last example. Now we’re cooking. The two types of participles are the present participle, ending in –ing, and the past participle, usually ending in –ed, –d, –t, –en, or –n, but there are irregular forms too such as rung which is the past participle of the verb to ring in the phrase the rung bell.
Participial phrases contain at least one participle. (A phrase is a group of words, without both a subject and verb, that functions as a single part of speech.) A participial phrase acts like an adjective phrase. So, going back to our examples, here they are again, used as participial phrases:
| The Verb | The Participial Phrase |
| to fall | Falling from his mount, the hero clutched his wound.
Falling from his mount is the participial phrase telling us about the subject, the hero. |
| to heat | The blade glowed orange, heated in the smith’s fire.
Heated in the smith’s fire is the participial phrase telling us about the blade. Note that the participial phrase doesn’t have to be at the beginning, it can come last in the sentence. |
| to ring | I saw the pastor ringing the bell.
Ringing the bell is the participial phrase telling us about the pastor. |
Here’s one last example:
Blasting fireballs from his hands, the wizard attacked.
What is the noun being modified? The wizard.
What is the participle? It is blasting.
What is the participle phrase? It is blasting fireballs from his hands.
Next: Learn About the Time Warp
Dangling Participles
Also, be wary of creating a situation where the participial phrase doesn’t actually modify anything. When this happens, it’s just left hanging there.
It becomes a dangling participle. What this means is that sometimes it becomes difficult to determine what noun the participial phrase is modifying—and sometimes that noun isn’t even in the sentence! Let’s go back to our wizard and give him a dangling participle.
Blasting fireballs from his hands, the enemy was vanquished.
Blasting fireballs from his hands no longer modifies anything. Its noun has vanished! It doesn’t modify enemy, it still modifies the wizard.
To fix this, change it to Blasting fireballs from his hands, the wizard vanquished the enemy.
The Time Warp
Now, back to our original example that warped time:
Taking off his jacket, he threw his keys on the countertop and poured himself a whiskey.
Identify what’s wonky there yet? How can he be taking off his jacket while he’s throwing his keys on the countertop and pouring whiskey? Unless you’re writing Shiva or Dexter Jettster, this just isn’t possible. Many authors don’t realize they have multiple, separate actions taking place at the same time when they aren’t precise with their language. Make sure that when your characters are performing actions, they complete their first action before moving on to the next. I also see this a lot with the conjunction as.
Back to our example. This is clearer:
He took his jacket off, threw his keys on the countertop, then poured himself a whiskey.
The sentence also offers an opportunity for including sensory information, using more specific language, and using language that isn’t so neutral. So, you could write this:
He shrugged out of his jacket, leaving the creaking leather where it fell. His tossed keys clattered across the stained countertop, and he grabbed an open bottle of Wild Turkey by the sink. He gave it a quick pass under his nose, enjoying how it burned away a few hairs, before sloshing some into a smudged glass.
You get the idea.
So when you’re writing, mind your dangly bits, don’t warp time, and remember to include specific information to bring your writing to life.
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Joshua Essoe is a full-time, freelance editor. He’s done work for best-seller David Farland, including editing the multi-award winning novel, Nightingale; Dean Lorey, lead writer of Arrested Development; best-seller, James Artimus Owen; and numerous Writers of the Future authors and winners, as well as many top-notch independents. He is currently the copy editor at Urban Fantasy Magazine.
Together with tie-in writer Jordan Ellinger, indie success-story, Michael J. Sullivan, and traditionally published author and NY Times best-seller, Debbie Viguie, he records the weekly writing podcast Hide and Create. You can find his interview episode here.
When not editing . . . ha ha, a joke. He was a 2014 finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, and lives with his wife, and three horrible cats near UCLA.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.