How Ian Fleming (James Bond Author) Uses Intransitive Verbs

From the examples that follow —culled from Ian Fleming’s novel Doctor No—you will realize that in all cases, Fleming uses intransitive verbs as sentence openers. In a novel where the hero is an action hero, this is understandable. By definition, ‘intransitive verbs’ express a doable action. Bond stiffened. M snorted. Bond persisted. Bond grinned. The drinks came. The food came. The girl smiled. Quarrel nodded. The centipede stirred Quarrel whistled. He stiffened. She blushed. Bond smiled. Silence fell. Bond laughed. She giggled. Bond shrugged. Bond paused. Bond shivered. The Governor grunted. Fleming chooses his intransitive verbs so that they end the sentence. Nothing follows them. In other words, no object follows them. Why is this? Simply because he saves the object for the sentences that follow them: Bond could feel it questing amongst the first hairs. It tickled. The skin on Bond’s belly fluttered (65). Those are the odds against it, one in a million. I lived. By sheer will power I survived the operation and the months in the hospital (164). I wrote offering a huge sum to buy it. They refused. So I studied these birds (168). Bond lurched and his bruised shoulder hit the metal. He screamed. He went on screaming, regularly, with each contact of hand or knee or toes (192). Oxymoron in Action IanFleming's Intransitive Verbs How to Use Similes What is an Allegory? StephenKing vs StephenieMeyer Updike: Use of Infinitives Possessive Nouns Using Zeugma for Humor HowToBegin Your Novel Truman Capote's Techniques How To Create Great Villains War on Adverbs Using Rhetorical Tools Ed McBain Sold 90 million books Hook Your Reader Dante and Writing Derrida and Writing Literature Transforms Us Senada Selmani, model To write great blogs, e-mails, term papers, essays, or fiction - Get Mary Duffy's Sentence Openers Itching to Become a Writer? Visit Mary Duffy's Storefront

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