Whether you write in third person past tense (e.g. Maggie stubbed her toe on the lip of a paving stone and belly-flopped onto the grass) or first person narrative (e.g. Drake looks at me like I’m nuts, but I know what I saw) forms of the verb to be<\/em> screw with our writing. Was, were, been, is, am, are.<\/strong>\u00a0 AKA, my nemeses.<\/p>\n When I’m writing a first draft I type scenes and dialogue as fast as it pours out of me so I can get the framework down, from the first meet to the happily ever after. But that means I lose my critical eye for a few weeks and open the door for all kinds of sloppy, lazy writing to squeeze through. One of the worst–the word was<\/em> and his brothers,\u00a0were<\/em> and\u00a0been.<\/em><\/p>\n Before my first read through I use my find & replace tool to bold all the forms of\u00a0was<\/em>. Like this:<\/p>\n Martin was<\/strong> tired.<\/em><\/p>\n This is weak and lazy and just plain telling, not showing. Instead, I want to use stronger verbs and better phrasing:<\/p>\n Martin<\/em> yawned<\/em>. Or,<\/p>\n Martin yawned into his fingers.<\/em> Or,<\/p>\n Martin’s head bobbed, startling him so badly he kicked the side table into Sarah’s shins.<\/em><\/p>\n It’s one of the easiest problems to find, but often the hardest to fix. It’s so tempting to write\u00a0Martin was tired<\/em> and hurry to the next action scene or romantic turning point. It’s a lot harder to dig in deep and immerse the reader in a complex and engaging world. So, roll up your sleeves and replace those devilish\u00a0to be<\/em> verbs with vivid and fast-paced action verbs that keep us all hanging on the edges of our seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or, How I Kicked the Word ‘Was’ Right off the Page Whether you write in third person past tense (e.g. Maggie stubbed her toe on the lip of a paving stone and belly-flopped onto the grass) or first person narrative (e.g. Drake looks at me like I’m nuts, but I know what I saw) forms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[12,17,5],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","tag-craft-2","tag-verbs","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Wkl2-1y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annaabner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}