What's Wrong with Using "THERE"?

Over the years, I've often done recap posts after the annual spring LDStorymakers Writers Conference, which is always a highlight of my year. In my opinion, it's THE best conference in Utah, and likely well beyond. That's saying something, because Utah has an unusually strong writing community that puts on a lot of conferences.

I hope to do a full recap at some point, but today I want to talk about something I posted on Instagram during the awesome Chris Crowe's 2-hour intensive class about micro-revision.

For those who haven't followed me and my blog ramblings over the years (or as a refresher, seeing as I'm not here as often as I once was), I've been editing professionally almost as long as I've been writing professionally. I've worked on books ranging from first attempts by beginners to pros' books that went on to win awards and become best-sellers. (I could totally name drop but won't; you'll just have to trust me on that one.)

Whenever I'd had returning clients, they mention how much they learned from the previous edit. That is hugely satisfying! It also means that their next book is better than the last one because they've learned new skills, and in turn, that means that my edit can take that next book to an even higher level.

(Important side note here: I'm not taking on new clients right now. I have a few friends and one old client I'll still work for, but typically, if you ask me to do an edit for you, I'll probably have to refer you to someone else. It's a matter of time, balance, and priorities. First and foremost, I'm a writer, but I reached a point where I was an editor who sometimes managed to sneak in a little writing, and I had to change that!)

Above you'll see a slightly cropped version of the picture I posted, which shows a portion of Dr. Crowe's class handout.

The responses to my post varied from those who cheered Dr. Crowe's advice to those who were genuinely confused as to what the problem is with using THERE. And thus this post was born.

The most important thing to keep in mind about writing is that there are no hard and fast rules. For every so-called rule, you can find exceptions. If someone ever says ALWAYS do this or NEVER do that, you can safely assume that they're wrong at least part of the time.

About the only guiding rule I follow as a writer is this: 

Anything that separates my reader from the deep experience of being immersed in my story—anything that holds them at a distance, pulls them out, or otherwise reminds them at they're reading a book—defeats my goal.

In my two-plus decades of professional experience, stronger sentences are one of the best ways to reach that goal. Words and sentences are the tools we use to create a story world and make it come so alive that it immerses the reader.

For those wondering about my passion for grammar and how that fits in, consider this: 

A big part of creating stronger sentences includes all of my grammar, usage, and punctuation rants from Word Nerd Wednesdays.

Why? Clunky, ungrammatical, ambiguous, and otherwise troublesome writing automatically makes for weak and confusing writing that pulls the reader out, making for a shallow reading experience.

All of that leads to my main point: 

The vast majority of the time (note I didn't say always), sentences beginning with THERE WAS, THERE WERE, and variations, are weak. Such sentences tend to TELL instead of SHOW. Other times, they end up wordy and redundant. They may even have a strong verb, but it's buried inside the sentence.

The Good News Is Two Fold: 

• You can easily do a search for phrases like there were and there was to find those weak sentences.
• Strengthening those weak sentences is almost as easy as finding them.

There Were: Weak Examples

I made these up on the spot, and I make no claims about their brilliance, but they should do the job:

• There was the teacher lecturing at the front of the classroom. 
• There were many streets leading to the cemetery.
• There were dozens of couples waltzing around the dance floor.

None of those sentences is grammatically incorrect. None is wrong from a technical standpoint. But none is great, either. They could all certainly be stronger, and stronger writing should be every writer's goal.

Okay, so we've figured out how to identify the weak constructions. Now what?

STEP ONE: DELETE THE OFFENDING WORDS

Just cut off THERE WAS/WERE from the front of each sentence. Using the example sentences above, let's see what we have left:

• . . . the teacher lecturing at the front of the classroom. 
• . . . many streets leading to the cemetery.
• . . . dozens of couples waltzing around the dance floor.

Check it out: Each sentence already has a strong noun we can use as the subject instead of the weak THERE. Plus, the verbs are already a whole lot stronger than WAS or WERE: 

• teacher lecturing
• streets leading
• couples waltzing

So if we already have strong subjects and verbs, why on earth would we want to fall back on something that will water down the image? The phrase there were is so bland on its own that it literally requires an explanation to be understood.

Yet chances are good that the explanation already following the THERE opening is pretty strong. In which case, simply cut the dead wood before the explanation and let it stand alone.

To show just how weak THERE can be, try this: Imagine your eyes are closed and you hear someone begin a story with, "There was . . . "

The storyteller pauses. What do you picture?

I'd wager that your mind would be blank. You couldn't picturing anything, because those words don't tell us anything. We have to wait to hear more before becoming part of the story. We've started with garbage words. They do nothing.

Just Cut to the Chase

Let's take the strong subjects and verbs we already have. The only real other change needed is tweaking the verb so it makes sense, and that's easy:

There was the teacher lecturing at the front of the classroom

BECOMES

The teacher lectured at the front of the classroom. 

BOOM. See how we're immediately in the classroom, listening to a lecture? Before, we were being held at arm's length as someone else points out what we're supposed to notice. (Over there is a classroom . . .)

We can then expand on the image and experience, building the rest of the scene with other writing building blocks.

Here's another take on that same sentence: Flip the order and start with the location to orient the reader right away: 

At the front of the classroom, the teacher lectured.

Depending on the context, tone, pacing, and other factors of the scene, that might work even better.

You could come up with a hundred other ways to change it up, and almost all of them would be stronger than starting with THERE WAS or THERE WERE.

Another One of Our Example Sentences: 

Original: There were many streets leading to the cemetery.
Deleting first two words: . . . many streets leading to the cemetery.
Changing the verb tense as needed: Many streets led to the cemetery.

See? So easy, it's almost like a game. Let's Fix the Third Sentence: 

Original: There were dozens of couples waltzing around the dance floor.
Deleting the first two words: . . . dozens of couples waltzing around the dance floor.
Changing the verb as needed: Dozens of couples waltzed around the dance floor.

Tada! 

This kind of revision is one of my favorites to make: it's very effective and oh-so-easy to implement! 

Tightening sentences by cutting the dead wood such as THERE makes a huge difference, especially when you're talking about a novel-length work.

Don't make your reader slog through wordy, meandering sentences. Experiment with cutting THERE, then see how much stronger your scenes become.

WNW: Changing Names Doesn't Change Attitude

I've talked many times about how English (and all languages) evolve. Today's Word Nerd Wednesday is taking a slightly different angle.

Many people believe that language is power, that by changing how we refer to something, we'll change attitudes. That's just not true at all.

An easy example is the word toilet.

The word used to mean the place where a person (usually a woman) would primp: do her hair, spritz perfume, add her jewelry.

But when we got indoor plumbing, people wanted to refer to our, well, business in a manner what would sound nice. So they called the place where we do something entirely different than primp by the same name, the toilet.

Instead of thinking about bodily functions in a pretty, primping sort of way, the new word, toilet, took on the connotations of what we do there. (In other words, it adopted the ick factor.)

Dang. Toilet didn't work. We needed a new term. How about bathroom?

Well, sure, we bathe there, too, but we all know what it really means. That term took on the connotation toilet already had.

Trying again. What about restroom?

Okay, first off, no one rests there, and we all know it. The term is a somewhat a more formal version of bathroom, but it certainly has the same general connotations as toilet. Same with water closet, powder room, and any other term you come up with.

You can change the term all you want, but until we as human beings stop thinking of that particular behavior as anything but a bit gross, any name we give it will take on that same meaning.

A similar thing happened with language during the Civil Rights era. Black had a negative connotation, probably thanks to the bigotry of the day. So activists started using the word colored.

The problem: a change in term didn't change anyone's existing prejudice.

Later we went on to African-American, back to black, possibly back to colored at some point, and today I'm not sure what the politically correct term is.

But the point: anyone who was already prejudiced didn't change their mind based on whatever black people were called. Bigots needed to learn about black people and clue in from experience and education that they're deserving of respect just like anyone else. That doesn't happen from a change in name.

I've watched the same thing happen with handicapped people. Activists seem to hate the term handicapped, or at least the baggage associated with it.

Their predictable response: Let's change the term and thereby change people's attitudes!

You can already predict what's happened, right? We've ended up with things like differently abled and handi-capable. But have any of us changed our attitudes based solely on those terms? I doubt it. If we've changed, it's because of other types of social education, like being exposed to people who use wheelchairs and learning that they're people with hopes, dreams, and feelings (and intelligence!) just like the rest of us.

Chances are, the name didn't do a dang thing. Worse, the new terms are taking on the baggage that handicapped always brought with it.

I believe that the way to create social change is not to change a name or a term. All that does is carry people's baggage from the old term to the new one.

Instead, progress can be made far more quickly by focusing efforts on education and exposure, and possibly even by embracing the name. An example from the past is the way Mormons embraced that nickname, which started out as derogatory. They called themselves Mormons and showed people what that meant . . . through educating them.

Fighting a name is a waste of everyone's energy.

My Dickens Confession

As a BYU English graduate, I had the opportunity last week to speak to a group of English majors. I always love speaking opportunities like that; it's quite different than discussing dialog or plotting at a writing conference. (It's also a bit weird to look out at the class, feeling like I just graduated, and realize that most of those in the audience are half my age. Ahem.)

In the intro that Brother Spotts, the academic advisor, gave for me, he mentioned that my senior course (a semester-long required class where you focus on one author) was on Charles Dickens. I was impressed; he had to research that one out.

I had a great time speaking to the class, and afterward, I had the urge to pull some Dickens off the shelf.

I absolutely loved my Dickens course. We didn't read the typical Great Expectations and such that most of us were already familiar with. Instead we read books like Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House. Our professor led fascinating classroom discussions that challenged me, revealed layered themes Dickens used again and again, and helped me think in new ways. In fact, some of the "tests" she gave were nothing but small groups discussing the reading with her listening in.

(Talking and giving my opinion? Now that's my kind of test.)

The same semester, I also took a general Victorian literature class. (I tended to gravitate toward literature written between the Romantic and Victorian eras any chance I got.)

I was also expecting my first child and therefore heinously exhausted. All. The. Time. I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

That semester, I also had more reading to do than any other, often 1,000+ pages a week (of small, itty bitty text). And I'm a slow reader.

More than once, I opened a novel to read my assignment, only to find myself waking up two hours later.

Whoops.

To get my reading in, I resorted to pacing our little apartment and reading aloud. I made slower progress that way, but hey, at least I didn't fall asleep.

Side note: My son turned out to be a natural, reading at age three and decoding at a fourth-grade level when in kindergarten (as the youngest in his class, no less). I've always wondered if hearing classic literature in utero helped his brain form extra connections or something.

Meanwhile, for my Victorian Lit class, we were to pick any book written during that era and write a 2-page paper on it. Very simple, right? Except that I simply had no time to read one more book. I almost cried when I heard the assignment. How could I possibly squeeze in anything else?

And then it dawned on me: I'd just finished Bleak House for my Dickens class, and hello, it's a Victorian novel. It's also something like a thousand pages long, has dozens of characters, and is one of Dickens's darker works. Not nearly as easy to read as Oliver Twist.

So I killed two birds with one stone by using the novel I'd just read for my senior course and writing about it for my 2-page Victorian Lit paper.

The class period after we turned our papers in, our professor wrote the titles of the novels we'd chosen and did hash marks for how many students picked each book. Most of the books had several hash marks next to them. But he paused significantly before writing one title (Bleak House) and turned to the class, eyes wide.

"Can you believe it? One student read Bleak House for this assignment. Bleak House!"

I sat there feeling a bit sheepish. He didn't identify me as the student who'd chosen it.

And I didn't dare admit why I'd written the paper on that book . . . especially since I'm pretty sure his admiration was the reason he gave me an A on it.

WNW: Grammar as Currency

On last week's Word Nerd Wednesday, Jordan McCollum made a comment about how the "needs washed" usage can be considered standard if you live in an area where it is, well, standard.

We exchanged some emails about what constitutes "standard" and acceptable as far as English goes. I don't want to put words into Jordan's mouth, and she can always write about her opinion on the issue, but I thought the topic was worth addressing in a WNW post.

Here's my basic opinion on standard English and the "rules," keeping in mind that while I love language and am a total nerd about it, I am not an expert, nor a linguist. And Jordan has studied linguistics.

However, my dad is a linguist (I think word nerdery is genetic). We talk about this kind of stuff a lot, and I think it's largely thanks to his influence that I don't get overly annoyed by a lot of so-called grammatical mistakes in conversation or other casual settings, like emails and blog posts. I don't even care that on Twitter, there's a search feature for "Who to Follow" instead of "Whom."

For that matter, sometimes I find myself enjoying differences in speech patterns, as it's a peek into a different culture.

There was the time Dr. Oaks taught about how some people pronounce an R sound after an A, resulting in words like warshed instead of washed. I'd never heard anyone pronounce it like that, but lo and behold, just a few months later, I met a family who did. They warshed their warsh rags in the warshing machine.

I was fascinated. Dr. Oaks was right! How cool.

Jordan has a point that what's acceptable usage varies from area to area. I'd say that since such a huge portion of the world speaks English as a native language, you'll find variations within every country (and state) that speaks English. There's bound to be a wide range of what's considered okay in any one place.

On top of what's considered standard, most people speak in several "registers," meaning they slip into and out of various ways of talking depending on the context. So I'd use far more formal language when teaching a writing workshop than I would when chatting with my sister.

Another example: While we were dating, my husband mentioned how differently I spoke when I was around my high-school friends. At first I balked at the idea, saying that I didn't just change who I was when they showed up. But I watched myself after that, and his observation was right. My group of friends from that era had its own tone and even slang. It was natural to slip into it when around them and then slip out of it like a light jacket when I walked away. So natural I didn't notice I was doing it.

I've heard of corporate professionals who speak one way most of their days but then visit their parents back in the Bronx (or the Deep South or some other place) for Christmas and by New Year's, they're talking with a heavier accent again and using colloquial phrases they'd almost forgotten about.

This is normal. This if perfectly fine.

AND YET. (You could hear that coming, couldn't you?)

The standard exists for a reason. It's a collection of agreed-upon rules that marks what is expected of educated people in our culture. If you are educated, you're expected to know these rules.

In a social (and even economic) sense, standard English is the currency we use in our interactions.

That means it's valued. If you decide not to use it, fine. Just know that your language may prevent you from using the same currency, communicating (and succeeding!) in a way others who do use the standard will by default.

Because the standard is such a huge currency, it's a good idea to follow any rule in a situation that values the currency.

If you used their as a singular possessive pronoun in a resume, you may know that it's gradually becoming accepted usage, but a potential boss may not, thinking it's still a standard rule. The potential employer, knowing the currency of standard English, may well assume you don't know correct grammar and therefore aren't as smart or capable as you really are.

Just like you'd never wear a swim suit or pajamas to a job interview, you need to use the right language in the right settings to be taken seriously.

I've mentioned this idea before, particularly how a student called Dr. Oaks out on it, asking why we couldn't just turn in our papers using our regional dialects if they aren't inherently any more inferior or "wrong" than the standard.

Dr. Oaks just laughed and basically said, "Because you're at a university, that's why. Part of your education is to learn how to communicate using the standard dialect and then prove you know it in your writing."

In today's technological world, where pretty much everyone is required to communicate with the written word in virtually any job (even at McDonald's), knowing the rules and expectations goes a very, very long way.

As we shoot forward into the electronic future, it's going to be more and more important for our kids to have the currency they need to succeed, and that means knowing the standard language so they can communicate effectively, be taken seriously (as smart and capable!), and, frankly, to get ahead in life.

I've seen too many cases where someone uses their regional dialect in a setting where it simply isn't appropriate or welcome. The person is brushed off as incompetent or even unintelligent.

Sure, you can always fight back by saying that the people who judge you based on your language are wrong, narrow-minded, and not so smart themselves.

And you may be right.

But being right isn't going to get you the job.

WNW: Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

How fun that Dr. Seuss's birthday lands on a Wednesday this year. Let's celebrate, Word Nerd style! (Fun word nerd bit at the end, I promise.)

(If it's all the same to you, I think I may celebrate with chocolate rather than green eggs and ham . . .)

When I think of Dr. Seuss, the former child in me remembers "Gertrude McFuzz," "Yertle the Turtle," and "The Big Brag." We had a collection with those three stories in it when I was a kid, and I loved, loved, loved it. To this day, Gertrude is one of my favorite Seuss characters. (I've since bought a new copy of that collection for my kids. Of course.)

The mother in me thinks of a few other things, like how stinkin' LONG some of his books are, and how your child will inevitably insist on hearing The Cat in the Hat Comes Back when you're exhausted and would prefer something nice and short, like a Sandra Boynton book.

(Note: The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, when read aloud, fast, takes a solid 9 minutes. Yes, I timed it. On several occasions. Trying to beat my record and get a child to bed. And as friends can attest, I can talk really fast.)

But the mother in me also appreciates how much he's done for childhood literacy. I cannot even guess at how many millions of children he's touched with his stories. How many have laughed at his pictures and puns? How many decided they liked books after hearing a teacher read one of his? (And that's not counting his cultural impact with the Grinch and so many other things.)

Because I'm a word nerd, English major, and writer, I probably also think of few different things that the average (read: normal) person doesn't when I hear the name of Dr. Seuss.

One is the sheer brilliance of his meter, rhythm, and rhyme. His work is best read aloud, and if you do it right, which isn't hard, the stories almost sound like songs.

This is one reason I hate the board book of Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? For the sake of space (a must for a board book), it cuts out huge portions of the text. That also cuts out all personality and rhythm, leaving a torn, bleeding mass in place of the original. It's choppy, jumpy, and all around obnoxious to read.

The writer in me thinks about how so many people dismiss Dr. Seuss's work as simplistic, or think they can copy his style and sell their own rhyming books for children. They have no idea how complex his poetry is and how hard it is to produce. That is, they don't know until they get a bunch of rejection letters.

And of course, my inner word nerd loves how he played with words and totally made up random ones that sound real and fun (much like Lewis Carroll and "The Jabberwocky").

Some of my favorite Seuss word inventions include sneech, fiffer-feffer-feff, lorax, zax, and wocket. A bigger (although incomplete) list is here.

One word on that list jumped out at me, and my initial reaction was to think it was a mistake: nerd.

But a little digging shows that both Merriam-Webster and the OED agree: If I Ran the Zoo, by Dr. Seuss, is the first time the word nerd showed up in print. He may well have invented the term.

And that gives me a new reason to rejoice in being a word nerd.

Happy birthday, Theodor Geisel.

Jane Austen & My Inner English-Major Nerd

It's no secret that huge numbers of readers (mostly women, granted) adore Jane Austen, and Pride and Prejudice in particular. (The A&E version and Colin Firth have nothing to do with that, right?)

Today, more than 200 years after her books were published, Jane's popularity is greater than ever. We've had more movie adaptations (you probably know Emma Thompson's Sense & Sensibility, but if you haven't seen the 2007 version of Persuasion, you're missing out.).

Many readers fall for Jane's romantic story lines. While I enjoy those, the English-major nerd in me enjoys other parts, too. I love knowing what society was like then and seeing how Jane's books are often pointed attacks on less-than-desirable elements of that society. (P&P is an excellent example.)

I could go on about the witty dialogue, which I find hysterically funny, but others, who can't stand Jane, find dry. (Chances are, if you don't think Jane's laugh-out-loud funny, the jokes are slipping by you. They're in 200-year-old language, so it's not like watching a sitcom.)

Jane Austen often wrote comedy, but many of her stories are built on social outrage. The opening line to P&P is a great bit of satire in and of itself. I believe it’s that uncanny blend of humor and angst that made and keeps her books classics.

So here's the total English nerd coming out in me: One of my favorites is Sense and Sensibility because of how brilliantly it uses two literary styles of her day. Jane straddled two periods, the Neoclassical and the Romantic.

The Neoclassical side of the fence was very much into science, logic, and reason. Those who clung to this side of things (not just in literature, but pretty much anywhere: politics, science, education, you name it) viewed emotion as a fickle thing you couldn't trust. But science and measurement and logic! Those were put on a pedestal. Being objective and dispassionate was highly valued.

The Romantic movement came largely as a backlash against the Neoclassical view. It embraced emotion above almost all else. (A modern example: Keating in Dead Poets Society embraces emotion and passion for life . . . and quotes mostly from the Romantics.) So we get Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and other guys who did drugs and wrote poetry while high on opium and who viewed that level of emotion as almost a religious experience.

And then there was Jane, watching the two sides battle, with Neoclassicism dying out on one side and Romanticism rising on the other.

It's no surprise to me that she wrote a novel lambasting both. She used a great story to clearly demonstrate how neither extreme is healthy. She created one character who embodied reason ("sense") and another who embodied emotion ("sensibility").

See where I'm going here?

In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Marianne represent the two sides Jane saw each day in literature, the newspapers, and society in general.

Elinor holds back emotions to an unhealthy and destructive level, using reason and logic to the point that she almost loses her one real shot at future happiness because she's closed off her heart and refuses to feel.

Her sister Marianne, on the other hand, is so caught up by Romanticism--emotions and passion--that when true happiness shows up right in front of her, she can't recognize it. Since it's not draped in iambic pentameter and glowing sunsets, she doesn't recognize the good, down-to-earth (logical) reality right in front of her that will make her happy.

Of course, by the end of the book, both sisters learn to adopt a bit of the other's way of seeing the world, learning that neither sense nor sensibility exclusively is a good way to live your life.

In further nerdiness, I'll point out that American literature also had a Romantic period, but it came a bit later than the one in England and featured a slightly different kind of passion and emotion (think Whitman and his barbaric yawp).

The two periods were similar enough for Mr. Keating to use both kinds of Romanticism with his students at Welton Academy and get himself into trouble.