CATPAW
Computer-Aided Thinking, Primarily about Writing
Three Strategies for Shifting to Specific, Active Verbs
- Set a target.
- Pick the low-hanging verb fruit.
- Verbs can be bringing energy to sentences.
- A strong verb is giving clarity to the relationships among ideas.
- Clear ideas are building good experiences for the reader.
- Verbs can bring energy to sentences.
- A strong verb clarifies the relationships among ideas.
- Clear ideas build good experiences for the reader.
- Work your core.
- Writers, when they are composing sentences, often find themselves beginning with the first word and, though they might tinker along the way, writing the end last.
Constraints breed creativity. In my own writing, I have done some of my most productive and helpful revision with the simple inspiration of word limits. If I need to cut an article from 10,000 words to 8,000, I bring a different kind of attention to my words, and I always find new ways to trim and improve my prose—often by shifting away from “to be” verbs.
My students have found similar inspiration when they limit their use of “to be.” Take a block of your writing and give yourself a target: you might try for one use of “to be” per paragraph, or ten per thousand words, or even none at all! The constraint will feel awkward, but the awkwardness can inspire creative approaches to revision.
Once you have hit your target by revising your sentences, step back and think about the techniques you have used. Which instances of “to be” felt especially appropriate and necessary when you tried to change them? What sentences improved the most when you switched to other verbs? Most importantly, what techniques do you want to remember in your future writing?
This is the easiest singly method I know for eliminating unnecessary "to be" verbs: change be+ing structures to simple verbs.
The be+ing structure combines the “to be” verb with an “-ing” form (a present participle). The pattern looks like this:
Revising be+ing structures often comes easily because the “ing” part already gives you a verb to work with:
The first and third examples simply transform the “ing” form into the main verb. In the second example, that approach would produce “A strong verb gives clarity,” which the revision further simplifies to “A strong verb clarifies.”
The old sentences’ main verbs “be,” “is,” and “are” have become “bring,” “clarifies,” and “build.” Each of these revisions puts more of the sentence’s weight on the verb.
Generally, writers compose their sentences in order, from first word to last. You might tinker with your phrasing as you write, but I do not know any writers who usually start with the ends or middles of their sentences.
As you revise sentences, however, or think about their structure, begin with the middle. Establish a core subject and verb that define the sentence’s main action, perhaps also with an object. As Richard Lanham puts it in Revising Prose, you can build your sentences to answer the question “Who’s kicking who?” (Or, more formally, “Who kicks whom?”)
Anchoring the center of your sentence, that subject-verb-object core boosts the clarity and energy of your writing. The core signals the main action of the sentence to the reader. With the core established, you can add information to the beginning and the end without losing focus.
I have used subject-verb-object cores many times already in this section. For example, I could have begun with something like this:
That sentence has no errors, but I find it wearying. The subject and verb live far from each other, and the sentence’s main action happens outside of the subject, verb, and object: “Writers find themselves.” If the main subject, object, and verb give the reader no sense of the sentence’s meaning—it’s not about writers finding themselves!—then revision time has begun.
I chose instead to write “Generally, writers compose their sentences in order, from first word to last.” That sentence puts its core meaning into “writers compose their sentences”--a subject, verb, and object, living comfortably together.
When you compose the sentences of an essay, any strict pattern will become boring after a while. As a starting point for building habits of energy and clarity, however, you can go a long way by working your core.