The wonderful wizard of was

Published by neil on February 20th, 2009 Leave a comment »

There are a multitude of texts covering self editing, but few extend their landing struts and come right down to earth with simple, practical techniques. Here is one very simple technique to give your writing more punch.

I regularly read about the danger of too frequent use of passive language in writing. We use passive language extensively in everyday speech as it dampens the danger of sounding aggressive. In dramatic prose, this style is fatal.

During those moments of full flow, instinctive writing, I tend to get overly passive, even in the heat of the action. That is just fine, as the writing is in the editing. Returning to the text months later, I discovered a copious splattering of passive verbs; time to dust off the scythe and and scrub the text into

Some examples

Spotting active and passive verbs is relatively straightforward. Here is an couple of examples:

• Brian was offering his hand in greeting. [passive]
• Brian offered his hand in greeting. [active]

The key to spotting the passive verb is, in most cases, the use of “was”. This led me to a straightforward method of activating my passive texts.

Kill the was

I searched for every instance of “was” throughout my text, each time reworking the sentence to remove it. Sometimes a simple matter of removing the “was” and changing its associated verb, other times a more colourful word replaced it.

Is it really that simple? Yes. Though some sentences will be tougher than others to adjust, I managed to remove the majority of “wases” which resulted in a far snappier and active form of writing.

Here are some genuine examples from my texts (I really don’t need to tell you which are passive, do I?):

• The opportunity to move was approaching
• The opportunity to move approached

• The sound was echoing as though behind it there was a vast, empty cavern
• The sound echoed as though behind it stretched a vast, empty cavern

• Jack was beaming from ear to ear
• Jack beamed from ear to ear

It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But when wrapped up in the editing process, trying to remember all the advice on what one should and should not do, simple, straightforward techniques such as this cut through the waffle and achieve marked improvements.

Tags: editing, process, style
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