Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Habitual use of -ing follows -ed -- is this wrong?

I don't see anything wrong with the construction per se. It's just how English works for a structure that is action followed by consequence. It is far more important that your prose should seem nat...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23845
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:25:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23845
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:25:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
I don't see anything wrong with the construction per se. It's just how English works for a structure that is action followed by consequence. It is far more important that your prose should seem natural than that it should be varied in structure.

That said, the passage you present as an example strikes me a overwritten. This kind of stuff may be okay in very small quantities, but it gets very tiresome very quickly. Remember that focus is key to storytelling. Where is the reader's focus supposed to be directed? The number of times it is desirable to direct the reader's attention to "deep valleys and crevices of his worn fury relaxed into dry rivers along the landscape of his weathered face" are few. They may not be zero, but they are few. You probably don't want to indulge in this kind of writing unless you are very sure it is essential to the story you are trying to tell.

Your sense that you may be overusing the ed/ing construction may come more from overuse of this kind of description rather than from any fault of the ed/ing construction per se.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-07-17T16:33:12Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 1