A vivid verb means an action that you can see. Instead of saying, “The man was happy,” you can replace the “was” with “The man beamed.” Now you’ve got a visual and the writing comes alive.
Think of the verb as the heartbeat of your sentence. Whenever you have an “is” “was” “am” of other “to be” verbs, you can almost always replace them with an action verb.
Let’s try a few others:
“The puppy was sad.” Can’t see anything here, can we?
“The puppy moaned.” Now we can hear something, and the action is alive.
“Tom walked to the front of the room to write on the board.”
OK, so we have some action here. But no one walks the same way — especially in this situation. Is Tom nervous? Confident? Cocky? We can show all of that by picking a strong verb.
“Tom strolled to the front of the room. . . .
“Tom stumbled to the front to the room. . .
“Tom skipped to the front to the room. . .
All of these different verbs convey a different mood and also a different characterization of Tom. That’s how powerful verbs are.
Here’s a good exercise that takes about five minutes. Go through one or two paragraphs of your writing and underline the verbs. When you find “is” “was” “were” “am” or ordinary verbs like “walk” “walk” “sat” “said”, write down a few verbs that can replace them. You will see your writing come alive. You can also take two paragraphs from a favorite piece of writing and concentrate of the author’s use of the verbs. You’ll see how the pros so it. You can do it this way, too.