The Right Verb

Everything begins, so we usually need to know the action, not that the action began. Not only did it begin to rain, it poured and kept on pouring, but could it ever be so hard that it rattled?

Some great words from False Memory by Dean Koontz:

Fat drops of rain—at first in fitful bursts but soon more insistently—began to rattle on the roof that covered the landing.
Finally, they stepped across the threshold, outside. Martie pulled the door shut and locked it.
The extraction phase was behind them. Worse lay ahead, however, and Martie was unable to see most of it coming.

What we might see for an improved version:

Fat drops of rain—at first in fitful bursts but soon more insistently—rattled the roof that covered the landing. When the pounding ceased, they stepped across the threshold to the puddles outside.
Martie pulled the door shut and locked it.
The extraction phase was behind her. Was this deluge a precursor of something worse ahead? She trembled at her inability to know what was coming, because the threat was real, as if demons were hiding in every shadow.

Some logic for making improvements:

1. We have the sense of beginning in the first fitful bursts, which ended with heavy rain. We don’t want “began to rattle” when our focus is on what continued, the pounding on the roof.
2. Rain can’t rattle. Because of the rain, the roof rattled, so we should say “rattled the roof,” not “rattled on the roof.”
3. The point of focus shifts when Martie pulls the door shut, so we need no paragraph break after “landing,” but we do need one after “outside.”
4. What does “finally” mean? It’s an adverb we could do without, unless we understand that “finally” meant that the rain had sufficiently abated for them to step outside. In that case, we might write, “When the pounding ceased, they stepped across the threshold to the puddles outside.”
5. Someone was with Martie, so the beginning of the last paragraph is correct in referring to “them,” after “they” stepped across the threshold. However, when Martie pulled the door shut, the focus tightened to Martie alone, how she was feeling, what she was sensing. Therefore, “The extraction phase was behind her” is better than “behind them.”
6. The last sentence reveals the future that Martie can’t know, which forces readers into an omniscient reporter’s point of view. To engage readers more effectively, we need the sentence to shift to her point of view, showing what her anticipation is.