Writing Exercise Six

(Participles)

Write your story but add participials to give a better sense of the activity, the action, involved. Now your story should be at least three paragraphs long.

You have used participles many times; you are already something of an expert in using them. Now all you have to do is pay a bit more attention to how you place them in your sentences. Participles are made by taking the basic part of the verb and adding -ing (for an active participle) or -en or -ed (for a passive participle).

EX: You use the verb "walk." Walking is the active participle.

EX: You use the verb "drive." Driven is the passive participle.

EX: You use the verb "stun." Stunned is the passive participle.

Here is an example of a sentence that has more than one participial phrase, illustrating how and why you make choices about where the participles are to go in your sentence.

EX: The man staggered down the hall, crazed by the voices he heard in his head, weaving from side to side, parting the crowds of students who were exiting from the classrooms.

It makes more sense to put the first participial phrase in the first place of the sentence since he staggered because he heard the voices.

EX: Crazed by the voices he heard in his head, the man staggered down the hall....

That participles can move around in your sentence is both an advantage and a possible disadvantage. You have already seen an example of one advantage; you can move them to make their appearance in your sentence correspond to what happens in reality (you put crazed" first because the man was crazed, which caused him to stagger). A disadvantage is that this movement of the participle can cause it to become completely unconnected to the word it is supposed to explain. When this happens you have created a thing called a dangling participle.

EX: Crazed by the voices in his head, the crowd stared at the man staggering down the hall.

(Note: The crowd is not crazed, the man is.)

Meta-narrative: Write a paragraph explaining how the addition of a participle has improved your story. Pay special attention to how it has increased the action, vividness sense of movement, etc.

Go to Examples from Students

Go to Examples from Edwin Way Teale

Go to Exercise Seven

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