Using "Find" to Find Weak "To Be" Constructions

I'm still in the process of editing my new novel manuscript, The Dance of Rotten Sticks. One of the things that amazes me while editing is how stylistically weak sentences can continue to survive on read-through after read-through.

I call them "first draft sentences." They are the sentences we turn a blind eye to while we are trying to get down the bones of our story. If we sweat every poorly constructed sentence as we are writing the first draft... well, many of us would never finish the first draft.

But, eventually, it's time to get tough with some line-editing. We must turn, not a blind eye, but a keen eye.

As I was going through a fourth read-through, I came across a scene where my main character comes through the back door of his cabin, which gives him an immediate view out the cabin's front window, which looks down on the beach. He sees his mother-in-law standing on the beach. Here's the sentence I stumbled across:

    Helen was standing down by the water's edge.

Right away, my mind said, "What the hell, how did that weak "to be"/"was" construction get in there?" I immediately changed it to:

    Helen stood down by the water's edge.

Now the main verb is the much stronger "stood."

In a recent post, I mentioned how the "find" function in Word can help authors find troublesome areas without having to read the whole manuscript. What I want to do right now is use the find function to find the word "was" and see what I can turn up in terms of changes. If your novel is in present tense, of course you'd search for "is."

Okay, let's see what happens...

Here's one:

    Fortunately it was his son, the five-year-old, that discovered him.  

I ended up making some tweaks that made it fit in better with the other sentences... and still nixed the "was":

    Fortunately, Carson, the five-year-old, had discovered him, and not one of the older kids. 

Here's a more classic example of what I mean:

    Even in its new position, his leg was stiffening painfully again. 

To:

    Even in its new position, his leg stiffened painfully again. 

The sentence that precedes this next one mentioned that Isaac checked the weather app on his phone:

    Sure enough, the forecast was calling for an all-day rain starting at about four o’clock in the morning. 

To:

    Sure enough, the forecast called for an all-day rain starting at about four o’clock in the morning. 

Some aren't just a matter of taking out the "was" and re-conjugating. Like this one:

    She was getting bigger and would soon likely draw closer to Ashley. 

I changed that to:

    Getting older, she would soon likely draw closer to Ashley. 

Here's another:

    Whatever animal was on the ground began foraging again.

That's just an odd construction. It's nighttime, and the reader already knows that Isaac hasn't identified the animal that's making noise out in the yard. No need to repeat that he doesn't know. So...

    The animal on the ground began foraging again. 

In a subsequent draft, I might even get rid of "on the ground"... well, in fact, I just did because there's no other place the animal could be foraging but "on the ground." So...

    The animal began foraging again.

For this next one, I included the preceding sentence:

    He and Gwen had talked about a bigger house, but had decided instead to purchase a vacation cabin of their own. It wasn’t long after that that everything fell apart.

To:

    He and Gwen had talked about a bigger house, but had decided instead to purchase a vacation cabin of their own. Not long after that everything fell apart.

A final example:

    He put more ice in his glass and topped it off with the rest that was left in the bottle. 

I found this to be so much better:

    He put more ice in his glass and topped it off with the remainder of the whiskey.

I am embarrassed to report that the changes that I've included above only took me to page 20 in a 208-page manuscript. I have a lot of work yet to do! This post would go on forever if I kept including the changes I'm making. I'll be honest, too, that many of the "was" and "wasn't" constructions that I came across (up to page 20) ended up remaining. They sounded fine and would have even been clunky if I tried to change them. I'm just changing the ones that are obviously lazy, first-draft constructions.

I hope this approach helps you tighten your own manuscript when you get to the line-editing phase!

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