The Thing with ‘-ing’ Verbs

Reflections from a fiction writer

Image created by the author using Adobe Express

Write long enough and you’ll hear the advice that all ‘-ing’ verbs must die. It’s not quite as popular as the ‘kill your darlings’, or ‘show don’t tell’ credos, but it’s not far off. It’s one of those pieces of writing advice that’s thrown out there by people who don’t understand the reasons behind it.

I’ve been mulling this over lately as I seek to improve my own fiction writing. You can’t get away from using words that end in ‘ing’, but how much is too much, and what precisely is the rule, anyway?

First, what are ‘-ing’ words and what do they do?

“ing” words do three things:
(Taken from D. Wallace Peach — Why to avoid ‘ing’ words in fiction)

They express ongoing action when combined with auxiliary (helping) verbs:
She was washing her hands.

They act as nouns:
Vacuuming kept the dog hair to a minimum.

They act as adjectives:
The falling apple bonked her on the head.

Part of the confusion is the many functions they carry out. But why can they be a problem?

They can be annoying