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.

Unlikable Characters: My Take on Craig Mazin's Take

I recently subscribed to yet another podcast, Scriptnotes, which describes itself as a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

If you've followed me on social media or here on my blog for any amount of time, you know that I'm not a screenwriter. (The screenplay I wrote with my high school friend Sam doesn't count, but it sure was fun and a great learning experience.) I'm a fiction writer. I primarily write novels and novellas. Yet I love this podcast and recommend it to writers of all kinds.

Scriptnotes is hosted by Hollywood screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin. After listening to a few episodes, you can't help but like these guys, even if Craig is full of umbrage (and disdain for religion).

Episode 223, from November 10, had a section about the least helpful notes screenwriters get. Turns out that Craig's least favorite (read: most despised) note is to be told that his characters aren't likable.

Craig argues that movies are filled with characters we don't like, and that characters are supposed to change anyway, so it's okay if we don't like them at first. Plus, we like curmudgeons! Unlikable quirks can make a character more interesting anyway. So stop telling us to make our characters more likable! (Totally paraphrasing here. Listen to his rant; your mileage may vary.)

And he has a point . . . to a point.

He's right that flawed and/or curmudgeonly characters are interesting. We enjoy watching characters like that, while characters who seem too perfect feel flat or fake. Even if we don't like a character, we'll hang on to watch more because we're entertained. We often start liking them as the movie progresses.

Besides, a movie is only a couple of hours long, and chances are, you paid to see this show, so you'll probably stick it out to the closing credits to see how it all turns out anyway.

In other words, Craig's advice clearly works for screenwriting.

Alas, that wisdom doesn't carry over into formats like the novel. I've learned this the hard way. Over and over and over again.

Consider this: A novel takes much longer to read than a movie takes to watch. While some people can devour a novel in a day, most readers read a chapter or two here or there, often before bed. They end up spending days if not weeks or more with the same book.

As the author, you don't have the luxury of assuming the reader will hang on until the character is sympathetic, or that the reader will trust you at all to go beyond the first page or two, that eventually, they'll see that they were in good hands all along. (An exception exists for really big names, who can pretty much break every rule and still sell millions because their name is a trusted brand before word one.)

With novels, readers may well toss a book aside if they hate the characters after a few minutes of reading. Not so with a few minutes of a movie. Readers simply won't devote hours and hours (or days) of their lives to your story. No way. They'd rather re-watch their most hated movie and get it over with in two hours or so.

That said, readers don't want perfect characters either. They want flaws and they want growth, just like moviegoers do. (Two groups with a ton of crossover, of course.)

The result is that fiction writers face a double challenge: Create characters who are human and flawed but still likable enough for the reader to hang on and care enough to keep reading, and make all of that happen on page one.

Oh, and be sure to open at precisely the right moment. Starting a even a few minutes (or, heck, seconds) earlier or later in story time could kill the opening.

No pressure or anything.

If you've hooked your readers with the opening, they'll likely turn the page. If you've managed to carry them to the 25% mark, they've invested enough time that you've got a good shot at carrying them to the end even if the characters start making really unlikable choices. Which they often do, of course.

To get to the point where you've earned a reader's trust, you must somehow get them pretty far into the story. And you get a page or two to hook them initially. That's it.

For me, one of the biggest challenges I've faced is beta readers and critique group members telling me that they hate the main character because she's acting so mean or hateful or whatever. And then I sit back and wonder where they got that from, because in most cases, that's not how I meant to write the character at all. I unravel what made it to the page compared to what was in my head in an effort to figure out what's missing and how to get it to the page.

But in some cases, I did mean to show the main character in a harsher light, although I still hoped the reader would sympathize. In one case in particular, the main character has been through a lot of raw, bitter stuff. The book opens with her being angry and upset. She has open emotional wounds. To make a long story short, I needed to open the book at a certain point in her life, show X, Y, and Z, and then get out of that situation, all by the end of chapter one.

Turns out that "wounded" is really hard to write without coming across as witchy (keeping the blog family friendly . . ). I must have rewritten that chapter fifteen times. In each version, she felt weaker and weaker to me because I had to keep softening her edges. But readers were slowly starting to connect with her.

Even though I wanted to show her realistically angry and pissed off in chapter one, I couldn't. Readers had no way of knowing enough about her at that point to have any kind of sympathy for her. You read vitriol and assume the character is a pretty awful person. So anger and even depression in that context only made her look bad.

My theory is that closing a book after two pages and tossing it to the side is far easier than standing up and walking out of a movie theater two minutes into a film, when you haven't even seen the opening credits. No one walks out that early, and few people walk out ever.

Lots and lots of people give up on books, though.

I could have left the chapter as it was, I suppose, but I can guarantee that by doing so, I would have lost a lot of readers in short order. They wouldn't have held on until they sympathized or even empathized with her.

I've been writing for a very long time (writing seriously for over two decades now), so when I first heard Craig saying that this particular note was pure crap, I wanted to cheer. Oh, how I wanted to. But I couldn't, because for a fiction writer, his opinion doesn't apply. (I wish!)

Sometimes I think I've learned how to write a flawed yet likable character who works from word one, yet far more often than I want to admit, I get the rug pulled out from under me yet again. Betas (had-picked readers I trust) point out why the character isn't working. After initially pulling on my hair and muttering things under my breath, I return to the keyboard and revise yet again. Because when everyone is saying the same thing, they're probably right.

I suppose in some ways, reading about a character in a new book is a lot like meeting someone in real life. You don't tell a new acquaintance about every skeleton in your closet, every bump in your road, every emotional injury. Rather, we get to know people a little at a time, and their personalities and characters are revealed gradually through actions and words. The same goes for characters, even those we've got a tight POV on.

Watching a movie is more like people watching; it's easy in real life to watch completely awful people interact and be nasty. We don't walk away from boredom. (Heck, we'll probably pull out our phones and start taking a video so we can entertain our friends.)

I'll continue working on making my characters just likable enough in the beginning for readers to agree to go on the ride.

But I confess that I'll forever envy Craig Mazin and his fellow screenwriters for their ability to ignore that note, even if the note drives them nuts.

Guest Post: Ali Luke on Why Editing Matters

Self-editing must be in the water . . . last week I posted on the Precision Editing Group blog about how I do it, answering questions from TJ, and today my readers get a treat: a guest post by Ali Luke that digs deeper in to the whys and wherefores of self-editing.

Ali is a personal writing coach. She's written books about freelance blogging, and now she's also a novelist. Today she addresses what's behind self-editing.

In short: It matters, and here's why.

Why Editing Matters . . . and How to Stay Motivated to Do It Well

by Ali Luke

Whatever sort of writing you do– whether you’re working on a blog post, a book, or just a short piece for your church newsletter—you’re going to need to edit.

Sometimes, that editing might take just a few minutes. You’ll be looking for typos, smoothing awkward sentences, and making sure that you’ve included everything you wanted to say.

With bigger projects, though, the editing phase needs to take a correspondingly bigger chunk of your writing time. If you’re working on a non-fiction book or a novel, you may well find that you spent as long on the editing as on the first draft (and quite possibly longer).

If the creative bit of writing is what excites you—seeing a blank page fill up with new words and thoughts—then editing may feel uninspiring. You may be very tempted to just call it “done” and publish your blog post or send off your book manuscript as-is.

But here’s why editing matters...

Editing Shows Your Respect for Your Work . . . and Your Reader

It’s very, very tough to produce a perfect first draft. You might manage it on a short blog post (though even then, you’ll almost certainly find at least a word or two you want to change). With anything much longer, you’re likely to have all sorts of first draft problems. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your writing, or with you; it’s just part of the writing process.

First drafts often have:

·        Missing information—sections, chapters or scenes that you realize need to be added in for a sense of completeness.

·         Superfluous information—tangents and digressions that you might have needed to write through . . . but that are now making your work lopsided.

·         Badly ordered information—perhaps chapter 10 would make more sense as chapter 5.

·         Repetitive information—maybe you’ve been working on your project for years, and you didn’t realize that chapter 20 covers rather similar ground to chapter 12.

·         Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, poor punctuation, typos—all of these will distract, confuse and annoy your reader; thankfully, they’re easy to fix.

Careful editing means taking your work seriously. It means respecting the time that you’ve already put into the writing, and the time that you’re going to be spending on publishing, promoting, or sharing this piece with others.

Your editing also shows respect for your reader. Yes, of course the reader can still gain value from a piece of writing that has a few typos, or that’s badly organized—but when they’re investing their time and energy in reading your work, you want to deliver something that’s as good as you can make it.

Staying Motivated to Edit: Start to End

One of the best ways to be motivated is to split editing into several stages: don’t try to do everything at once, and definitely don’t try to edit while you’re writing the first draft. If you find yourself going back to restart every sentence before you’ve finished it, you won’t make much progress.

Whatever you’re editing—from a novel to a blog post—here’s a simple structure you can use:

Step #1: Let Your Work Sit

If you’ve written something short, leaving it alone over lunch might give your mind enough space to come back afresh. If you’ve written a whole novel, leaving it for at least a couple of weeks should help clear your head. While you’re away from your work, your subconscious will keep on mulling over ideas—and you may be surprised what comes up when you dig in on the editing.

Motivation Boost: Often, taking some time out can make you feel much more eager to get back to work! You might want to plan a vacation or a retreat so that you can rest while your writing is resting.

Step #2: Read Through the Whole Thing

Go through your whole post, article, or book in a short space of time—ideally, one day. Jot down any brief notes as you’re going along, if you’re worried about forgetting something. At this point, you’re just trying to get a sense of the shape of the work (something that’s tough to do when you’ve been writing for days, weeks, or months).

Motivation Boost: You’ll almost certainly come across some great passages in your work that you’ve completely forgotten writing. You may find that it’s better than you expected. And even though you’ll notice some problems, you’ll also start thinking of ways to fix it.

Step #3: Edit the Big Picture

This is the stage that I often call “revision”—making substantial changes to a work-in-progress. You’ll find yourself cutting, adding, or rearranging whole sections. If you’re working on a non-fiction book, you might change the direction entirely; if you’re writing a novel, you may add a subplot or cut a character.

Motivation Boost: You can make fast, visible progress at this stage, cutting through swathes of words at a time. You’ll see your book (or post, or article) coming into shape.

Step #4: Get Feedback

Once you’ve gone through step #3, it’s a great idea to get feedback on your piece, especially if you’ve written something in-depth like a book. Ask some trusted friends or fellow-writers to act as your “beta-readers,” testing out your work and giving feedback on what’s good and what might need some further improvement.

Note: Depending on the feedback you get, you might need to repeat step #3 and make some further big-picture changes.

Motivation Boost: Having readers feels great, especially if they get excited about your book. You’ll also get lots of new ideas and suggestions, which can be really encouraging, especially if you were starting to feel a bit stale.

Step #5: Edit the Details

By this point, your piece should be in good shape. If it’s a blog post or an article, all the paragraphs should be in the right order; if it’s a book, all the chapters and scenes should be firmly in place. Now, you can deal with all those little things like grammatical slips, spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, and so on.

Motivation Boost: This stage isn’t very creative, but it can be immensely satisfying to get things right. If it feels like there’s a lot of work before you, try splitting your project into sections; make a chart, and check each off as you complete it.

So, is editing really worth all that work? I was wondering that myself when I got to Draft 5 of my novel, Lycopolis: I sent the draft to a freelance editor, the lovely and honest Lorna Fergusson from fictionfire, and she recommended some substantial changes. I’d hoped for just a few minor corrections . . .  but I took her advice on board, and I cut the novel’s manuscript from 135,000 to 85,000 words.

It definitely was worth the work: the lovely reviews, tweets, and emails that I’ve had confirm that! So if you’re staring at a first draft right now—or even a fifth draft—then don’t be afraid to dig in once again, if that’s what your beta-reader (or your editor) is suggesting.

But once you’ve got that article or post or book as good as you can, let it go. Put it out into the world . . . and trust that the great editing job you’ve done will be enough that your work can really shine.



About the Author:
Ali Luke is currently on a virtual book tour for her novel Lycopolis, a fast-paced supernatural thriller centered on a group of online role players who summon a demon into their game . . . and into the world. Described by readers as “a fast and furious, addictive piece of escapism” and “absolutely gripping,” Lycopolis is available in print and e-book form. Find out more at www.lycopolis.co.uk.

How Do I Draft & Revise?

I've had several people ask variations on this question, so I figured it was time to answer it.

Every writer is different, and I don't pretend to hold all magical writerly wisdom in my hands. But because every writer is different, I think we can all learn from one another, see what works for one person, and try it out for ourselves.

My drafting and revision method (such as it is) has evolved over the years quite a bit. Here's roughly how it stands today:

I rarely draft chronologically, at least at first. I usually start a novel midway. This is largely because I have a first-chapter curse (wish I were kidding). If I try to start at chapter one, scene one, that section will be inevitably be doomed for the trash can.

It's also because my ideas for books don't START at scene one. I usually get a cool idea for a specific scene that happens in the middle. So I start writing there, back up, jump forward, and somehow link it all together. At some point I do settle into mostly chronological writing, but I always allow myself to jump ahead again if I feel the need.

I'm not a strict outliner, but I'm not a "seat of your pantser," either. I fall somewhere in between. I have to know where I'm starting (although not what the first scene will be), where the story will end up, and several major landmarks along the way.

That's how I can hop ahead: I write out one of those major landmarks early on.

But I can't outline with too much precision, because that takes the fun out of discovering exactly what my characters will say and do. I do generally know that my characters will go from A to B to C, but I'm often surprised at exactly how they get there. (If that makes sense. Writers rarely do.)

I've learned that writing scenes I'm already "on fire" about tends to be best; if I wait until I get there chronologically, some of the fire is gone. Sure, by the time I've written everything that comes before that part, I often have to rewrite bits to make the whole fit together, and there's always bridging from one section to the already written parts, but it works for me.

While in drafting mode, I generally spend a lot of time thinking. When the kids were really little, this was the only way to survive as a writer: to think ahead to what I'd be drafting next, so when I had 45 minutes, I could race to the keyboard and pound out the next part.

I still think ahead even though the kids are older. This kind of creative thinking can be done while I'm falling asleep at night, folding laundry, taking a shower, driving, or whatever else doesn't use much brain power. I call them "brainless moments," where I can be doing one activity that doesn't take much attention or focus while my creative side can wander around and do its thing.

That way, when I'm ready to draft, I can really get to work instead of staring at the screen, fingers over the keys, but getting nothing accomplished. This is especially important for when I do writing marathons, when I set aside several hours or a special day just for writing. If I have a solid list of scenes to come, I won't lose valuable time trying to figure out what comes next.

Usually, but not always, when I first sit down, I'll go over the last part I wrote, making tweaks and fixes on it. That helps get me back into the groove of the story world, which makes continuing the story easier. It also makes answering the question, "How many drafts do you do?" pretty hard to answer. (Some scenes get rewritten a dozen times, others three or four.)

If I feel stuck, or somehow disconnected to the story world, I'll open up some research related to it. That used to mean historical books about temples and whatnot. For Band of Sisters, it was often rereading military wife interviews. With my YA folktale, it's reading a section aloud from The Kalevala.

I tend to write sparingly in my first drafts, so when I go back to look at a scene for the second (or whatever-eth) time, I flesh-out the details: setting, emotions, action, and so forth.

After revising a scene a couple of times, I print it out and take it to critique group. Ideally. There are times I have to crank out something to read, and they, um, get to see it hot off the press in all its ugliness.

When my awesome group is done praising/shredding/otherwise fixing the scene, I take it home. In theory, I make the needed revisions right away.

In reality, I often have a several-inch stack of critique pages before I buckle down for serious revision. I look at everyone's feedback and compare it, since sometimes they don't agree among themselves. I take about 90% of their suggestions. They're that good. But I don't take every single suggestion; it is my story, after all, and a lot of things are subjective. (I don't expect my fellow group members to take 100% of my feedback either.)

When I'm done drafting a book, I'll go through the whole thing from start to finish, looking for anything more that needs fixing or polishing that I haven't hit yet.

Up to this point, I've been working on the manuscript piecemeal, seeing it microscopically, if you will. The full read is the first time I see the book as a whole, where I experience the story arc all at once.

So I look at it macro-scopically, to see the big picture: Does this chapter flow into the next? Does this scene transition well here? Is the pacing good throughout? Does the motivation wash in that scene? Does the conflict carry over from here to there? Do the character arcs work? And so on.

Generally there's not time to take an entire manuscript to critique group a scene or chapter at a time before I want/need to submit it, so when it's fully drafted and revised, I ask for anyone in my group who has time to read over the whole thing. I hope to get at least two readers, and even with their busy schedules, they're pretty darn awesome and always come through for me.

We swap these kinds of favors, so I don't feel too bad asking; I know that I'll be returning the favor by reading someone else's entire manuscript soon.

When I get their edits back, I go through one final revision before submission.

Yeah, except that "final" is a misnomer, because even after acceptance, there's more revision with the help of my editor before we enter the line-edit stage.

That's the "typical" process, but really, there isn't a typical one. Every book has been different.

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