From the examples that follow -culled from Ian Fleming’s novel Doctor No–you will realize that in all cases, Fleming uses an abundance of intransitive verbs, and many of them as sentence openers.
In a novel where the hero is an action hero, this is understandable. By definition, ‘intransitive verbs’ express a doable action. And the action hero is always doing something–never inactive.
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 these intransitive verbs (as shown above). In other words, the sentences lack objects.
Why would this author continuously use this pattern of sentences? The answer is simple: he uses the sentence that follow as the object of the brief intransitive sentences.
Bond could feel it questing amongst the first hairs. It tickled. The skin on Bond’s belly fluttered (65).
The pithy, intransitive sentence, “It tickled,” has no object. But we can infer that its object will be found in the sentence that follows. We observe this pattern throughout the novel. Here are a few more examples:
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).
They could certainly kill animals, but how mortal to men were these giant spiders with the long soft fur or a borzoi? Bond shuddered. He remembered the centipede (195).
The machine gave a sideways lurch. The kiss ended. They had hit the first mangrove roots at the entrance to the river (222).
‘Superintendent, you will know what to do.’ The Governor rose. He inclined his head regally in the direction of Bond.
By using intransitive verbs, Ian Fleming makes his narration agile, quirky, athletic, befitting his action hero, James Bond-007. Less experienced and less artistic authors, unlike Ian Fleming, resort to the use of fragments, a trick that detracts from an even-paced and elegant narration.
Visit Mary Duffy’s Sentence Openers’ website: http://sentenceopeners.com
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