The War on Was

To be is the most common verb in the English language. It fuels many popular lines in literature.
‘To be or not to be…’
‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

However, early in my writing life, an editor told me to reduce my reliance on ‘to be’ as too many of them can make writing boring and repetitive. I sweated over the task, finding it easier said than done. Year later, after editing multiple manuscripts, I find myself offering the same advice to my clients. Action moves our stories forward, so we need to make our verbs as vivid as possible.

Rather than leaving authors out in the cold, struggling to wage war on the beleaguered verb, I’ve written some tips to manage this nit-picky challenge – when to use it and when to lose it. We can’t eliminate the verb entirely, nor do we need to, but we can interrogate each use of it to look for a more interesting way to express ourselves.

1. Choose More Interesting Verbs

Sometimes, we can avoid ‘was’ or other forms of ‘to be’ simply by replacing it with a more descriptive verb.
eg. She was on the ground. => She sat/stood on the ground.
He was at the party => He attended the party.
She was quiet => She stayed/remained quiet

2. Check Continuous Verbs

To show ongoing action, we use continuous verbs, which depend on the verb to be.
eg. ‘John was eating.’ Often writers use this tense when the active form, eg. ‘John ate’, would be sharper.

Use the continuous only when the ongoing nature of the verb is important, such as when a character is doing one thing when something else happens.
eg. ‘Nellie was walking to work when her phone rang.’ If we change this to ‘Nellie walked to work when her phone rang’, it doesn’t make sense, unless we swap the ‘when’ to ‘then’, which skews the meaning to show Nellie had arrived at work by the time her phone rang.

In other cases, the nature of the verb implies ongoing action without needing the continuous tense.
eg. ‘The river was flowing past the house.’ can be changed to ‘The river flowed past the house.’ without substantially influencing the meaning.

The continuous verb tense serves a purpose, but only use it when necessary.

3. Check Passive Sentences

The verb ‘to be’ is also used in passive sentences. In an active sentence, the subject acts on the object. In a passive sentence, the subject is acted on by the object.
eg. ‘The ball was thrown by June.’ versus ‘June threw the ball.’ Note: Often the word ‘by’ is required in the sentence, so it can be an easy way to identify the passive tense.

In most cases, the active form is more effective because we want our characters to take action, not be acted upon.
eg. I was stopped by a police officer. => A police officer stopped me.

In several situations, a passive sentence is appropriate:

1. If we don’t know or don’t want to specify who is acting on the subject.
eg. ‘I was hit on the back of the head.’ You may not be able to see who or what hit you. Note: To make this sentence active, we could add the actor to the sentence. ‘Mary hit me on the back of the head.’

2. If we want the subject of the sentence to remain as the person or thing acted upon. In the example above, we want to keep the focus on ‘I’, not the ‘police officer’.
eg. ‘She was buffeted by the wind.’ We could change this to ‘The wind buffeted her.’ but we may not want to place the focus on the wind.
This situation also applies in complex sentence with more than one verb.
eg. ‘She hurried down the street, buffeted by the wind. Note: In this case, the ‘was’ is no longer required for ‘buffeted’ even though that part of the sentence is passive. Alternatively, we could make it, ‘The wind buffeted her as she hurried down the street.’

The passive tense has its place, but use it with intention.

4. Watch Overuse of It was/There was

An easy way to start a sentence is ‘It was…’ or ‘There was…’ This usually necessitates a ‘that’ or ‘who’ later in the sentence. In many such cases, those three words can be deleted and the sentence will stand without it, although the focus and rhythm of the sentence changes.
eg. There was one person who cried. => One person cried.
There were tears on her cheeks that glistened. => Tears glistened on her cheeks.

If this changes the author’s voice too much, leave it alone.
eg. The song ‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly’ would sound quite odd as ‘An old lady swallowed a fly’!

Don’t default to ‘it was’ or ‘there was’ out of laziness. Question your choice and remove it where possible.

Final Words

When drafting, I recommend authors write freely, without getting hung up on wording. When revising, cast a critical eye over every use of the verb ‘to be’, and your manuscript will shine brighter for the effort. Remember, I’m not suggesting you remove them all, just reduce the number and use them intentionally.

Good luck!