An author friend of mine, on review of one of my early works, chided me that I used a lot of gerunds. Unfortunately, at the time, I had to go look up what the heck a 'gerund' was (to keep you from doing it, a gerund is generally a word ending in '-ing'). Then I started looking at my work looked at my work and noticed that, indeed, he was correct. Since then, I've been on the hunt (during review) for places I can cut them out. I'm a better writer for it. But they shouldn't always be cut; they're part of our language for a reason. Here I find myself in a quandary. Which of these do you think is best? “I can see Pula in the distance, past those two small islands,” said Marko, pointing to where the ships had gone. “We can find help there, I think.” “I can see Pula in the distance, past those two small islands,” said Marko, and pointed to where the ships had gone. “We can find help there, I think.” “I can see Pula in the distance, past those two small islands,” said Marko as he pointed to where the ships had gone. “We can find help there, I think.” ...or do you recommend something else?
I think it depends heavily on how many (gerunds) (instances of past continuous tense?) are used nearby. Edited to add: And other elements of the nearby text--to me this is a matter of how the text flows. I'd use either the first, or if there are too many nearby, I might go with: “I can see Pula in the distance." Mark pointed to where the ships had gone. "Past those two small islands. We can find help there, I think."
"Pointing" in your first example isn't actually a gerund... Gerunds do generally end in -ing, but not all words that end in -ing are gerunds. A gerund is a word that's usually a verb but is being used as a noun. In this case, "pointing" is being used as a verb. If you wrote "pointing is rude," then "pointing" would be a gerund. That said... if you're using any construction often enough that someone's noticing it, it might be worth cutting back? ETA: I think "pointing" in your example is a present participle. Don't know if that term is useful or not, but... for what it's worth!
How embarrassing; I just accepted the term gerund. I usually look up these terms when they aren't firmly lodged in my brain. My response remains essentially the same. I tend to overuse this sort of thing, which I mentally label as past continuous tense though now I'm uncertain about my labelling, and I do tend to rewrite it depending on the flow of the surrounding text and whether I've already used it recently.
Writing in Third Person you'll naturally have a lot of words ending with -ing and -ed. I dedicate one round of editing to nothing more than replacing as many of those words as possible. Sometimes it's easy, other times you can restructure the sentence. And of course most times you just leave them be.
You seem to be combining a dialogue attribute or tag (who is speaking) with a dialogue beat (a character's action while speaking). While a simple dialog tag would work: "I can see Pula in the distance, past the two islands." Marko said."We can find help there, I think." The dialogue beat would be better: "I can see Pula in the distance, past the two islands." Marko pointed to where the ships had gone. "We can find help there, I think."
Those are present participles and not necessarily gerunds. (Pres. Part. is a verb + ing). Present participles can be nouns (gerunds), adjectives, adverbs, verbs of continuous tense (back to verb again), or can head a participial phrase. And there's lots of combinations. They're very useful, so sometimes they show up in swarms and should be scaled back. Not because they're bad, but because you're using repetitive sentence structures. Unless you're writing a grade school primer, you don't want to do that. You're 100% right though. Don't try to delete them all. That's an over-correction. Every part of the language is useful. I'd choose this line as my default, but I might go for any of your lines instead based on what the surrounding text says. “I can see Pula in the distance, past those two small islands.” Marko pointed to where the ships had gone. “We can find help there, I think.” That's because I like to reduce words that are just functional. They're like binding for the sentence and aren't really an asset in themselves. I kill them off and then add different words back to areas where I can say something new. Since Marko pointing already explains who's talking, I prefer to kill the said. But not always. Like I say, that's just my baseline and yours can be different. It seems like a lot of crutch structures use present participles. You'll run into authors who go to town with certain phrases, and it kills the flow of their writing. Here are the two abuses I see most: Running like a lunatic, Harry hurdled the asylum fence. "Incendio!" Malfoy cried, crisping the half-wit into smoked jerky. Which are fine until you start seeing 2 or 3 in every paragraph. Go check out some Amazon self-pubs and you'll see the weaker authors really favoring these two patterns.
I've purchased a few, regrettably. Every time I re-read a part of this story, I find some new sentence that seems to need a little trim. Once I wrote a short story, about 12K words, in four days, then spent more than a year agonizing over every sentence. It was evidently worth the effort, though, as it sold a few hundred copies through the Kindle Worlds program before they shut it down. This novel/novella will finish at around 50K words, though, maybe twice that if I don't get impatient and cut out early. I hope I don't spend a decade agonizing over it before I publish.
I like the first example, 'pointing'. Sounds more active, immediate and to the point. And less 'explainy' (sorry, I don't have the vocab). I don't feel the presence of the narrator telling me what he's doing, he's just doing it.
I've decided to go with the first one. I read the rest of the section, found and killed another "-ing" (now I'm reticent to use the word 'gerund', as, even with the above descriptions, I'm not clear that I know what they are). But two others were left in. Balance.
Balance. Yep. I'm new to this here writing, though not to reading. When I'm reading I typically want the narration to be as unobtrusive as possible. I want to see, hear and feel that stuff. Repetition of the same or similar sounding words usually sticks out quite quickly and I feel the unwanted intrusion of the intercessor. Repetition can work of course, though it's got to be artfully done. It works when you have a skilled storyteller dipping into classic storytelling stylings (folk tales frequently use this approach) but can be very badly done by an unskilled storyteller. Watch out, or you might get an extra hump on your back like Jack Madden.
