Mary Rosenblum, your web editor, has published three SF novels, four mysteries as Mary Freeman, and more than 50 short stories in multiple genres, as well as nonfiction! She also teaches writing, and has for many years.   She ruthlessly hunts down those pesky To  Be verbs in her own prose every time she turns on the computer.  They’re sneaky little critters!

 

 

Editing 101:  Part One

To Be or Not To Be

By Mary Rosenblum

 

 

 

            You’ve finished that first draft.  That is such a great feeling!  Done, done at last!  But wait a minute there.  Are we really done?  Well, sort of.   We’re done with that right brain, creative part of the job…you know, coming up with the story and writing it down.  Now we put on a new hat – our right brain Editor’s Cap. 

 

            Yes, we need to edit.  No matter how wonderful that story seems, your creative brain has been calling the shots here. You have been worrying about character behavior, dialogue, the twists and turns of the plot.  Most of us simply can’t keep track of all that and the nuances of language, too.  So now, in draft two, we can give the creative side a rest and concentrate on those words for awhile.  Everyone, pros and beginners alike, myself included, has used at least some soft, flabby prose in that first draft.  It’s almost impossible to avoid it as those ideas tumble from that creative well.  But flabby prose is like fog…it shrouds our story, making it unclear, fuzzy, hard for the reader to make out.  We want that crystalline, razor sharp landscape that will suck the reader right in and convince him that he is living our story right along with the characters.

 

 

To Be?

            So where do we begin?  Well, to start with, let’s begin with the to be verbs.   You know…is, am, are, was, were, will…those verbs.  Your teacher probably called them helper verbs or auxiliary verbs.  I call them flab.  Why?  Well, what do you see when you say the word was?  Not much, right?  What do you see when you say the work slouched?  Hunched?  Hovered?  Loitered?  You see someone doing something, right?  He was doesn’t show us much.  He slouched does.   Every word you use that creates no picture in our minds adds to the fog that obscures the landscape we are creating in the reader’s head.  Some ‘fog’ words are unavoidable…the, a, an, and so forth.  But was…is…are… we don’t have to use them. 

 

Passive is… Passive!

            The to be verbs are also culprits in the crime of passive voice.  Passive voice…as your high school English teacher probably told you…is when the subject of the sentence does NOT perform the action of the verb.  Dresden was bombed by the British.  Let’s see…Dresden is the subject of the sentence, but Dresden didn’t do any bombing.  The British did the bombing. 

 

            The active voice version of this sentence is:  The British bombed Dresden.   Well, gee, you say.  I’ve read tons of narrative that used the first construction.  What’s wrong with that?  Nothing if you want that ‘told’ voice and you want a slow, leisurely pace. But if want to create a strong clear image in your reader’s mind…which is what strong writing does…look at what each sentence does.   First of all, our passive sentence is 6 words long.  Our active sentence…same information!...contains four words.  Gee.  That’s thirty percent shorter!  Say you have a six thousand word story, and the magazine won’t take anything longer than five thousand.  If you simply convert that story from passive to active voice, you might get it down to four thousand words!  Wow!  Now that’s a nice reduction.  And you haven’t changed your story at all…you’ve just removed a lot of was, by,  and a host of articles. 

 

            But length doesn’t matter, you say, and hey, the magazine pays by the word…  Okay, but you have to sell that story to the editor before you get paid for it!  Let’s take a closer look at our passive and active sentences here.  Dresden was bombed by the British.  We tend to see images as we read the words.  We read ‘Dresden’ and see the city, we read ‘was bombed’ and see bombs falling, but we don’t know yet who is doing the bombing!  Finally we see ‘British’ and that answers our question…they did it!  We have had to assemble the full meaning or image of that sentence after we read all the words. 

 

            When we see The British bombed Dresden, we see British aircraft and then bombs falling onto the city.  No reassembly required.  We can drop each word into the growing jigsaw picture and move on.  We don’t have to rearrange those images later in order to get the full picture.  So your active voice sentences will convey the picture to the reader more directly, and in fewer words. Since the to be verbs are nearly always involved in passive voice, if you remove the to be verbs, you have solved the passive voice problem even if you’re still not sure exactly what it is!  J

 

Not To Be!

           

            So okay, we’ll get rid of the to be verbs.  But…what do we replace them with? 

 

            Well, it’s not that simple.  Sometimes you can simply drop in a more vivid verb:  She was in the hall can become She fidgeted in the hall.   We replace ‘was’ with a verb that indicates not only her actions but her state of mind.  Often, however, a bit more rewriting is required.  Let’s take a look at the following paragraph: 

 

            She was in the living room waiting for Herbert.  Anne Marie was a very patient girl and she didn’t mind waiting.  There was a cat on the sofa, a big, fat, black cat, and after awhile, she went over to it and started stroking it.  The cat seemed to like the stroking.  It was arching its back, purring, and smiling at her, Anne Marie thought.  It was a very nice cat! 

 

            She was in the living room waiting for Herbert.  Anne Marie was a very patient girl and she didn’t mind waiting.  There was a cat on the sofa, a big, fat, black cat, and after awhile, she went over to it and started stroking it.  The cat seemed to be happy with the stroking.  It was arching its back, purring, and smiling at her, Anne Marie thought.  It was a very nice cat!

 

            Wow.  Five instances of ‘was’ and one ‘to be’ infinitive!  Yikes!  This paragraph needs help.  And as you notice, not all those verbs can simply be replaced with a ‘drop in’.  We’re going to need to rearrange some words here! 

 

            In the living room, Anne Marie waited patiently for Herbert.  A

 big, fat, black cat stared at her from the sofa. When Herbert didn’t come, she went over to it and started stroking it.  It arched its back, purring and smiling at her.  Nice cat, Anne Marie thought. 

 

            Notice that our new paragraph is not only quite a bit shorter, but it paints a more vivid picture for the reader.  We have less fog.  The view is clearer!  We see Anne Marie waiting patiently while the big cat stares at her.  After a bit, she starts to stroke it, and it arches its back, purring and smiling at her.  Finally, Annie thinks ‘nice cat.’.   Both these paragraphs convey exactly the same information, but if you were an editor with a limited amount of money to spend on a story, which version would YOU buy?  You’re paying by the word, remember?  Why pay for those extra words?  We don’t need them to tell the story well!

 

            So how often do you suffer from the To Be’s?  Try an experiment.   Use your ‘find and replace’ option on your word processor to replace was, is, are, were with XXXX in your story or article.  (Save this as a separate file…do NOT overwrite your original file!)   Now print out a copy or look at it on the screen. How many XXXX do you see?  A lot?  A few?  Start fixing ‘em!  Find another way to say it.  Do as I did above, and combine two sentences into one.  I simply used the information  from our fist two sentences to make our opening sentence in the second example.   No reason to use two sentences if one will convey the same information.  Here, those sentences told us two things:  Anne Marie was patient and she was waiting for Herbert.  Why not combine them? 

 

            Clean It Up!

 

          If you go through your manuscript and get rid of all those ‘to be’ verbs, your prose…either fiction or nonfiction…will really shine.  It will stronger, speak more directly to the reader, and will be much more likely to hook an editor’s eye!  Our little search and replace exercise will also open your eyes to what may or may not be a problem for you.  If it is a problem….well, this is a good time to fix it!