No 'Was' Here

My first draft is a splattering of idea; something primal and badly structured regurgitated from the id. This creative vomit resembles a novel, but it needs a careful eye to go through and correct. I am talking, of course, about the muse at work on that first draft.

One of my main problems arising from the first draft is the lack of showing a story. Now, we've all heard, "Show! Don't tell!" It appears to be a cardinal sin; the number one rule of writing. It is a rule of thumb, but not the number one rule, at least, not mine.

The word 'was' appears in my first draft a few thousand times. It is the way my muse works. When he uses the word 'was', it is a sign he is telling me the story instead of showing it. It is a stone to be examined to make sure it isn't a jewel. At the time of writing this, I am reading a published novel which uses millions of 'was'. The prose is as ugly as a princess after an acid bath.

In my second draft, I re-write the story as it is mean to be, then I seek and destroy the word 'was', usually replacing the entire sentence. Here's one I read on the train today: "He opened the door and it was cold". Isn't that a terrible sentence? It doesn't even tell me what is cold: the door, or what lies beyond the door.

In the context of my paragraph, I rewrote it to say, "He opened the door. A wind cold enough to freeze a boiling kettle stabbed through his clothes." There's much more one can say, but it is better than saying, "It was cold". How cold must it be for a person to think it is cold enough to freeze a boiling kettle?

What about, "He was ugly and looked thirty years older than he was." No, no. What about, "He had a face like cracked concrete." More direct. No 'was', picture painted in an instant. In the book I am reading, it describes a simple bridge as, "The bridge was old". It would be so much better for the mind's eye to pick up on this 'was' and describe the bridge. How on earth does the character know it is an old bridge? "The bridge's support beams were as rickety as a pensioner's bones. The remaining slats were weather faded and broken and a brown intestinal rope snaked to the other side of the river."

Sure, we all see and describe things differently, but this essay is not about prose. It is about removing the word 'was' and replacing it with something better; weeding the garden, so to speak. The word 'was' is such a common word, easily over-used, and there is a place for it, usually in dialogue, and even that should be examined carefully.

Why not go through a story you have written and see how many 'was' there are. I find it easy to do a Find Replace in Microsoft Word, replacing the word 'was' with 'zzzzz'. Word will tell you how many replacements (remember to 'undo' the operation and it won't tell you about words containing the word was, ie,wash). If you have more than expected, go through your manuscript and look for the tell-tale 'was' word, replacing it with better material. It is called prose for a reason.