Ing Disease

Ing Disease is what happens when too many present-participle verbs are used at once. This gives the impression that the acting character attempts to perform all the actions described simultaneously and makes odd things happen in the Word World. The example given by the Turkey City Lexicon runs thus:


 * "Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau." Alas, our hero couldn’t do this even if his arms were forty feet long.

An incident of this in That Series created the creature who later became Laburnum's favourite cloak: "Raketooth the Amazing Three-Armed Fox," who was capable of "grabbing Pikkle's head between two scarred paws" and cutting the ropes on his ankles at the same time.

As Disease
A related affliction is As Disease, wherein the word "as" is used like a catch-all adverb and conjunction, causing symptoms similar to those described above. A particularly vile case of this was observed by Agents Derik and Earwig on their mission to "A Girl and Her Dragon," wherein sentences like the following comprised the entire story:


 * She heard roaring as she saw Luga on her dragon, an Nightmare which made her worry as she ran to the safety of the forest as Luga cackled as her dragon lunged at the girl a few times as Kana was nervous but smiled heading to the forest as she was near the cave but everything went black as Luga saw Ari lunge at her dragon as she scared the Nightmare and the girl as they flew off scared. [Emphasis added.]

A word to the wise: to avoid ambiguity, remember that "as" in the sense of "because" or "therefore" or "since" is not standard, and overusing it may cause your readers massive headaches as they try to figure out how your character is doing all of those things at once.

For an informative discussion of why "as" should be avoided and how to most effectively form sentences in fiction writing, see "Sentence Structure for FICTION" by OokamiKasumi.