Misused Writing Advice: There Is a Correct Way to Write

Plotting vs. Pantsing

Brandi Spencer (formerly B. C. Marine), Secretary-Treasurer Authors 4 Authors Publishing and Lisa Borne Graves, A4A Author

To plot or to pants, that Is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler for the writer to plan out every scene in outrageous detail, or to find inspiration in the sea of ideas and kinda just wing it?

Anyone who’s spent time in the online writing community or browsed the writing resources at their local bookstore has probably noticed that there’s no shortage of books and systems that proclaim to be the perfect method to write fiction. The vast majority of them can be divided into two categories that you’ve likely heard before: plotting and pantsing.

To illustrate the differences, I’ve asked one of our authors to join me in describing our methods. Like me, Lisa Borne Graves writes speculative romance; we share many themes and style choices, and our fantasy trilogies are being released almost side-by-side, but our methods of getting our stories on the page are wildly different—to a point.

Getting Started

Plotter (Brandi Spencer)

I plan everything before I write a word in my manuscript. I know the ending and sketch out most of the major plot points that will get me there, sometimes writing a paragraph or two of specific details I want to include. I make a map of the setting so I can visualize it as I write and set up spreadsheets with character descriptions, relationships, and other details that I need for continuity. If that sounds like a ton of prep work, that’s because it is! Depending on the length and complexity of the story (and how many of my other stories it has to maintain ties with), it can take up to a few months to get this all down. 

Pantser (Lisa Borne Graves)

I get inspired by something. Whether it be an image, a concept in a movie, book, real life, etc., something strikes a chord in me and sets off my imagination, aka, my “evil muse.” Scenes unfold, and I rush to write them down. I know nothing yet, except my main genre basics: romance has loose rules I will follow. I don’t know my sub genres or characters or their conflicts.

Drafting

Plotter

It usually takes me at least three or four months to get a novel down. Inspiration may not strike when I have time to write, but I borrow the inspiration I had during my preparation phase and tap into that. I write in order and build from one scene to the next, using my outline as a map.

However, much like an actual roadmap, I sometimes find that I need to take small detours here and there to get me where I want to go. Maybe my characters have developed more feelings for each other than I had originally intended, or maybe they’re hesitant to take a necessary step. In either case, I’ll stop and re-evaluate my outline to accelerate or decelerate relevant plot points before moving on.

Pantser

I often enter a phase of obsessive, or perhaps possessed by the muse, writing. At times, my husband teasingly comments my keyboard is smoking for how fast I type. I’m simply transcribing the scenes my imagination plays—much like a movie—into words. This takes me a few weeks to a max of two months if work and life are hectic.

The strangest part of letting the muse lead is she doesn’t like to go in order. I must go where I am inspired. The recent trend seems to be for me to start with the inciting incident—boy meets girl—and then I discover who they are. Sometimes conflict comes next, sometimes the climax and resolution. Exposition is usually added somewhere in the middle to end of my process. I jump around creating scenes until I feel spent. The story is done. 

I use these terms to explain my process to others, but never do I think, “I’m writing exposition right here.” I’m completely freewriting with wild abandon. 

Editing

Plotter

Up until this point in the process, I’ve been frustratingly slow. Just write the dang thing already! But in this editing stage, I’m lightning fast. The time it takes me to respond to both rounds of suggestions from my editor totals less than a week. Granted, it ends up being longer than that to process as I have to wait on my work to go through the queue, but it doesn’t sit in my hands for long at all. I’ve been known to turn my work around in a matter of hours for my second round of edits.

The truth is, I’ve done a ton of editing while outlining and writing. Scenes and subplots got scrapped or changed before I even put them in the manuscript. This doesn’t mean I can skip editing or am free from continuity errors, but having a cleaner manuscript from the start makes this stage easier.

Pantser

Editing already? Wait, wait. I’m not ready. After the first draft is done, I let it “marinate.” That means after my month of intense writing, I move onto something else for a few weeks to reset my brain. 

When I come back, I revise, and during that process, I’m taking the pieces I’ve strung together and smoothing them out, while checking that my plot is sound. Normally, it is pretty solid and shipshape, but I’m enhancing what is there by adding about 10-15K words in the form of descriptions and narrative voice. While I’m doing all this, I critique my work with notes—my own worst critic. This round takes a few weeks.

Then I pass a round or two of line edits and fix the notes I’ve made. Then I submit. The publishers give me a couple rounds of edits, but they don’t run off screaming, so I must be doing something right.

Altogether, the first words written up to the submission is a three to four month process for me, not counting the many breaks from writing that life throws. During these breaks, mental work is going on. I process and reprocess, revise and critique my work, write and rewrite. These mental exercises make this revision and editing process quicker and smoother.

The General Process

Plotter

Believe it or not, the single draft I get down is the one that goes to my editor. Before you gasp in horror, there is a difference between a first draft and a rough draft. Because I edit as I write (sometimes rewriting a single sentence four or five times before moving on), what is technically my first draft is by no means something rough that I threw down on paper; it’s closer to what a pantser’s manuscript looks like a few drafts in.

Pantser

I would say my fourth “draft” is what is submitted, but I feel more like they are two layers—draft and revision—that have been edited twice for everything from word choice and grammar to bigger things like characters arcs, narrative voice, and plot. Although many say first drafts can be hot messes, mine are more like a great tapestry riddled with holes that need mending. No matter how carefully I plan that tapestry pattern, it would not work out the way it was intended. Instead, I must go with the flow of where imagination takes me and then examine the pattern I have made and tweak the stitches for aesthetic beauty.

Conclusion

By the time you get to formatting and proofreading, both the pantsed and plotted manuscripts look the same. If we don’t tell you whether Marine and Graves are the plotter or the pantser, could you guess which is which? Unless you comb through our blogs or social media responses for where we’ve stated our preferences, we doubt it.

Both author types ultimately go through the same stages of the writing process. The difference is whether we spend more time at the beginning or end to get our ducks in a row.

Another thing to note is the false dichotomy of plotting and pantsing. Neither of us stays strictly within our chosen method 100% of the time. Sometimes a plotter has to be flexible or a pantser needs to stick to a planned element. The two methods are better described as a spectrum, and authors may find themselves anywhere on it, even directly in the middle. And the best part about that spectrum? It’s level; no part of it is above any other.

You can find romances by Lisa Borne Graves and Brandi Spencer here.

Next week we’ll be taking a break for Christmas, and in two weeks, we’ll conclude 2020 with a review post of the year. 

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Misused Writing Advice: Past Perfect is Perfectly Fine

Is “had” a bad word?

Brandi Spencer (formerly B. C. Marine), Secretary-Treasurer Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Welcome back to Misused Writing Advice, an ongoing series where we tackle well-meaning writing guidance that has either lost something in translation when made into a brief tip or been twisted entirely. Today’s topic, past perfect tense, is a little of both.

What is past perfect tense?

The rest of you who aren’t grammar nerds like me are probably slowly slinking away from your screen right now. Past perfect tense? That sounds really complicated…

I promise it’s not. Past perfect tense is what you use when you talk about something that had happened before something else in the past (including in this sentence). It’s essentially past-past tense (if it makes it easier for you, you can use that substitute term in your head as you read this article). For example:

• Present tense: I write to him.

• Past tense: I wrote to him.

• Past perfect tense: I had written to him.

Past perfect tense is always formed with “had” and a past participle. For the purposes of this article, that second part isn’t important. It’s the “had” that people do a search for when they want to rid a document of past perfect tense.

Wait. So, what’s the problem?

All right, gang, it’s time to unmask the real villain here. It’s...excessive flashbacks! Yes, it all started eons ago. I can remember it like it was yester—

Just kidding. You would hate me for doing that to you here. Why? Because flashbacks are literary detours. Of course, sometimes there are moments that are too important to miss, and it’s worth leaving the main storyline for a brief time to catch them. But if you take too many detours, readers are going to get the sense that you don’t actually know where you’re going.

What does that have to do with “had”?

Since most fiction is written in past tense, the flashbacks for it are written in past perfect tense. The “had” makes it very easy to search for in comparison to looking for simple past tense flashbacks in a present tense story.

The other thing working against this tense is that it invokes a need for context. If we go back to my example, “I had written to him” is technically a complete sentence, but it doesn’t feel like a complete statement. If I said it aloud to you, you would likely expect me to continue and elaborate with something like “before the event” or “until he moved.” When whole pages are written in past perfect tense, a reader’s mind is constantly having to fill in that context with what they’ve read so far, which gets tiring after a while.

Cool. I’ll just delete those “had”s!

That’s not really how it works. Past perfect tense exists for a reason. Without it, it can be hard to establish a proper order of events. So what should you do?

Tell it to me straight.

Ideally, the best thing to do is tell your story in order as much as you can. Granted, sometimes there are important reasons for telling a story out of order. (I won’t get into those now as that could be an entire article itself.)

Fine, but make it quick.

The second thing is to make those little detours into the past as brief as possible. One paragraph of backstory here or there won’t distract too much from the main story, and most people won’t even notice a single sentence in past perfect tense to explain a transition between scenes.

Put the past in its place.

Okay, so you absolutely must have a flashback, and it’s a long foray. This is where you finally excise the past perfect tense (somewhat).

A great example of this can be found in Renee Frey’s One Thousand and One Days. Storytelling itself is a major theme of the book as characters bond over it. When long accounts of the past are revealed, Frey will begin with either dialogue of the character beginning the tale or the character beginning to remember it in past perfect tense. Then she uses a scene break and continues the tale in simple past tense so that it reads like the narrative in the rest of the book.

If you’re having a character telling a story within your story, which is often the reason for longer backstories, this technique also avoids having several pages of quoted dialogue within dialogue as they relay what other characters have said. Depending on the length of your storytelling detour, you can even make it its own chapter instead of bracketing with scene breaks.

However, as you probably noticed, this technique doesn’t entirely eliminate past perfect tense. The idea is to remove the bulk of it from the middle of the flashback so you don’t fatigue the reader, but this tense is still useful for moving you into and out of the flashback so that the reader has cues to the change in setting.

Conclusion

Past perfect tense is a tool every writer uses for explaining the past before the past. But, just like in real life, we have to be careful not to dwell in the past for too long.

Next week, we’ll be taking a break for Thanksgiving, and in two weeks, we’ll conclude our series on plot archetypes with our rebirth post. 

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Misused Advice: Avoiding Tropes and Clichés

Can they really be avoided?

Rebecca Mikkelson, Editor-in-Chief Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Every piece of advice that we talk about in this series has good intentions at its origin but has evolved into something either misused or inviolable. Today’s advice to avoid tropes and clichés is slightly different in that we agree…but only to a certain extent. 

What is a cliché?

First, I think we should discuss what a cliché is. According to Merriam-Webster, cliché (noun) has three definitions but only two pertain to this post:

1: a trite phrase or expression (also: the idea expressed by it)

2: a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation

So, for example, a phrased cliché would be “avoid it like the plague” or “blood is thicker than water.”  And examples of the latter definition would be the Mary Sue or Marty Stu (which you should absolutely avoid at all costs) or the brooding rebel.

What is a trope?

You might be wondering why we’re including tropes in this post because some tropes are good and provide structure…at least by trope’s morphing definition, which is commonly attributed to recurring literary devices and rhetorical devices. Isn’t language fun?

But…by its definition from Merriam-Webster, a trope is a cliché:

1a: a word or expression used in a figurative sense: FIGURE OF SPEECH

b: a common or overused theme or device: CLICHÉ

2: a phrase or verse added as an embellishment or interpolation to the sung parts of the Mass in the Middle Ages

So when I say a trope is a cliché, I mean a badly written trope. Examples of good and bad tropes would be friends to lovers or the unlikely hero and the dreaded love triangle or instant love (love at first sight).

How did this advice start?

I can’t find exactly who this advice started with as we’ve been able to with some of our other misused advice posts, but I can take an educated guess: the need for originality. 

Originality is key for making a good book; readers don’t want to read the same thing over and over again, right? However, this advice is completely ignoring the fact that we authors are creative and find new ways to do things. 

Should we really be avoiding them?

Now here’s the big question, should we be avoiding cliches and tropes or should we keep using them over and over? Well…the answer is a little bit complicated, so let’s break it down into two sections: should and shouldn’t.

Why you should avoid them

So here’s where this post is going to differ from our other posts where we disagree with the vehemence of the advice, because in this instance we only half agree with the vehemence. Employing overused tropes can make the book feel predictable and the author seem lazy, which is death to any book.  

It’s unfortunate to put it so harshly, but it’s true. The experience of reading a good book will be  ruined by a book being too predictable. Reading should be an adventure. 

As for clichés specifically, using them could confuse international or non-neurotypical readers because they won’t make sense in other nations or cultures, may be too rooted in social understanding for a non-neurotypical person to decode, and oftentimes they’ve been repeated incorrectly so many times that they no longer make sense. For example, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” You can. You absolutely can have your cake and then eat it. This cliché should be: “You can’t eat your cake and have it too,” because you can’t both consume and possess something at the same time. 

Why you shouldn’t avoid them

Authors are creative, and we can find ways to refresh and invigorate ideas with new twists. If we couldn’t, literature would have died out centuries ago because we’d have run out of stories to tell. Of course we want to read about the hero vanquishing the evil and the band of friends that help them do it. And of course we want to read about the friends that fall in love by the end of the book.

With clichés, just the same as they can alienate some of your readers, they can bring them together as well. And they can give quick insight into what’s happening with the characters, such as when a character becomes pregnant quickly saying, “You’re eating for two,” makes it absolutely apparent the character’s condition. They can also make some of your readers feel like they’re at home.

This post may seem a little contradictory, and it is, because the subject in itself is contradictory. For this one, there is no right answer. 

Join us next week as we resume our series on plot archetypes when we talk about tragedy.

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Misused Advice: Write What You Know

Great advice taken too far

Rebecca Mikkelson, Editor-in-Chief Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Every piece of advice that we’re going to talk about in this series has good intentions at its origin but has evolved into something either misused or something inviolable. “Write what you  know” is the latter, especially in the last decade. In itself, “write what you know” is great advice because an experienced voice brings more depth to the work, but it’s been taken a little too far.

Origins

This phrase-turned-rule started with the illustrious Mark Twain, at least as far as I can find, though he wasn’t one to follow it himself in all aspects. “Write what you know” has become so limiting that, to be frank, often writers are left with boring stories and thinly veiled self-insertion because not all of us are privileged enough to have lived wild lives.

The biggest misinterpretation

The main issue I’ve found when it comes to the advice of “write what you know,” is that it’s taken too literally. Of course, you should write what you know, because it enriches your story. We all want that; we all want to really feel like we’re in that situation. 

For example, if I wrote a dystopian story where one of the plot points was the threat of a nuclear missile coming toward your location, I could easily translate the terror of thinking you’re going to have your face melted off, because I’ve lived through a fallacious warning of an impending missile strike. That can really bring depth to the work that could be lacking from someone who didn’t go through the same situation. 

But—but, that shouldn’t stop you from writing the same situation and asking someone if they have any insight they can give you to make your work more realistic. There are thousands of brilliantly written books with situations that are currently implausible, like Watership Down with its talking rabbits or the Outlander series with time travel. 

Limited experiences shouldn’t be an excuse for limiting creativity. I think Chuck Palahniuk said it best: “People who say ‘write what you know’ are afraid to make shit up.” 

Research is key

We don’t know everything. 

We won’t ever know everything—it’s literally impossible to know the ins and outs of everything to bring a semblance of realism to our books. So when writing what you don’t know, research is going to be key to bring in that realism. I’m not saying you need to be an expert in whatever field you’re writing in unless the fancy strikes you, but at least Google enough to not have egg on your face. Or find someone who knows more about the subject than yourself (like for myself, knowing nothing about horses whatsoever, am utilizing both Google and hippophiles to help me make sure I don’t put something ridiculously inaccurate in my work).

Another key aspect is respecting the subject you're researching. If you want to write about a religion or culture that isn’t your own, like A4A co-founder Renee Frey in her upcoming novel One Thousand and One Days, finding sensitivity readers will be a must. They will not only help you bring accurate information to your work but can also impart some personal experience to help enrich the world you’re writing about.

So what’s it really about?

Really, I think “write what you know,” started as writing in what you know in terms of adding emotional depth to your story. In the situations that are implausible for our world, emotional depth is really what’s going to make your story stick with your readers for a long, long time. It’s something your readers can bond with and relate to, even if it isn’t something that they’ve experienced themselves. 

And that, my friends, is our job as writers. 

Join us next week for an author interview with A4A author Diane Anthony, and in two weeks when we resume our series on plot archetypes, where we talk about the comedy plot archetype.

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Misused Advice: Never Filter

The one thing writing has in common with Instagram—sometimes filtering is a good thing.

by Brandi Spencer (formerly B. C. Marine), Secretary-Treasurer Authors 4 Authors Publishing

This month’s misused advice is fairly straightforward, though it sill manages to get twisted into an ultimate rule by some. I must admit that I like this one. Writers I’ve worked with can tell you that I regularly strike filtering language in edits. However, I still don’t make it a hard and fast rule. So how is it meant to work?

What is filtering?

It’s language that puts distance between the reader and the character. It’s sometimes incorrectly assumed that first-person writing is always closer than third-person. However, those terms simply refer to the pronouns the narrator uses for the main character. Narrative distance can be brought closer or made more distant in any point of view, depending on how much the story is filtered.

Filtering puts a layer of perception between the reader and what’s happening in the story. It’s usually indicated with words for thoughts or senses: see, hear, taste, feel, smell, think, guess, believe, etc. By removing them, you put the reader more directly into the action.

Examples

• I heard two people shouting in the alley.→ In the alley, two people shouted.

• She thought the coast was clear. → The coast was clear, right?

• He felt a cold needle poke his arm. → A cold needle poked his arm.

Active Voice

You probably noticed that this is closely related to the concept of favoring active voice over passive. By filtering, you automatically create a passive structure with your character observing the action instead of the action itself happening. Besides the narrative distance, passive voice is another reason to avoid filtering.

When is filtering useful?

There are at least two good reasons you might need to filter.

Do you see?

Sometimes the sense or thought is the whole point of the sentence. Let’s take that first example again:

I heard two people shouting in the alley, but I couldn’t see out the window.

The emphasis is on what the narrator is able to see and hear, not the people shouting, and that may be exactly what you intend. Or maybe your character has been drugged or injured, and you need to describe what they’re still able to feel. And for that all-important character growth, sometimes they need to directly acknowledge that whatever they thought or believed before is no longer true.

He thought she was his friend until she betrayed him.

Stay back!

Some writing is meant to be more distant, particularly if you’re emulating an older style like something from the romantic or gothic eras—or really anything pre-Jane Austen. Since styles have evolved greatly since then, you’ll have a hard sell on your hands if you aim for that, but you may have your own reasons for wanting to do things that way.

Children’s books also tend toward more narrative distance as children are still developing the empathy required walk in a character’s shoes as they read.

Before anyone gets defensive, this doesn’t make narrative distance a childish thing. In fact, some works are too dark or disturbing to write in a close perspective. If you’re writing in the villain’s point of view, you and your readers might not want to settle in too deep. Diane Anthony’s Supernova does this well. She alternates between a deeper first-person POV with a small-town librarian, who’s sweet but down-trodden, and a more distant third-person POV with an escaped convict, who has some rather unsavory view of his fellow man. There’s enough narrative to understand the convict’s downward spiral, but we aren’t settled in good and deep and invested like we are with the librarian.

A Time and a Place

Avoiding filtering will strengthen writing more often than not, but it’s certainly not a rule that must be adhered to at all times.

Were you taught that this was an iron-clad rule or some other strange-sounding writing advice? Let us know! Next time, we’ll discuss the advice that past perfect tense is passé (don’t use “had”).

Join us next week, when Rebecca Mikkelson will begin a new series on plot archetypes.

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Misused Advice: Must Have a Likeable Protagonist

Brandi Spencer (formerly B. C. Marine), Secretary-Treasurer Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Welcome back to Misused Advice, where we pick apart common adages of the writing community to figure out what they originally meant and where they went off the rails. As our returning readers know, every piece of advice that we talk about in this series has good intentions at its origin but has evolved into something either misused or inviolable. Today’s advice is that every story must have a likeable protagonist.

Entertain Us

The heart of the likeable protagonist is that a story should engage the reader and keep them reading to the end. There are two ways to do that: a situation or plot-driven story, or a character-driven story. I’m not going to dive deeply into the reasons a likeable character is helpful, because it’s pretty self explanatory. If readers fall in love with a protagonist, of course they’re going to want to read about them; they love them! Following that concept is a sensible decision.

But what about a protagonist who’s a bit prickly or downright foul? It’s still possible to tell their story.

And Then Something Even Crazier Happened!

If your story is driven by the plot or situation, you don’t necessarily need likeable characters. They wouldn’t hurt to have, but with a sufficiently interesting plot or zany events, it’s possible to forgo them. This is most likely to happen in comedy or mystery.

Comedy of Errors

Look at popular comedies like Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community, How I Met Your Mother, or Friends. They are filled with awful people. Most of the hijinks are caused by extremely vain and selfish decisions that no reasonable or likable person would make. This isn’t a criticism of those shows but an objective observation. It could be argued that the unlikeability itself allows these shows to be so funny; if the characters were better people, the consequences they deal with would invoke pity instead of humor.

What Comes Next?

Mystery—especially of the whodunit variety—is the obvious genre here, but it isn’t the only one. When your audience is completely enraptured with what’s going to happen, they can overlook dislike of a character—to a point. The more repulsive the protagonist and supporting characters are, the harder your plot has to compensate.

Be aware that this is a tricky dynamic to navigate. When you rely completely on the intrigue of your plot, remember how much weight it’s carrying. If you leave huge plot holes or give lackluster reveals to your twists, readers will walk away disappointed and wishing they could get back the time they spent reading. That isn’t to say that those aspects of your writing don’t need to be good if you have likeable characters, but they are absolutely glaring without them.

Relying on intriguing plots also has an expiration date. Your readers will only stick with your story for as long as you can continue ratcheting up events. At a certain point, you’re going to reach the peak of interesting things that can happen, and when you do, you won’t have anything to keep your audience going.

Get a Load of This Guy

Believe it or not, it’s possible to have a character-driven story without a likeable protagonist. This might seem counterintuitive, but let’s look at some ways this could work.

Our “Hero,” Ladies and Gentlemen

This is where antiheroes are born. If you put your protagonist against heinous odds or great evil, their very defiance can make the story worthwhile. The reader interest lies in the failure of the antagonist, rather than the success of the protagonist. It’s the classic, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The trick is to balance a formidable enough antagonist to outweigh the worst flaws of your protagonist.

Dexter is a good example. He’s a psychopathic serial killer, but he’s accepted as a protagonist because his victims are other predators who wouldn’t be caught by the legal system for one reason or another. He’s a monster, but people follow his story because his antagonists are arguably worse.

Of couse, you might look at that example and scoff because you see all murderers as equally bad. This is a common and valid response to antiheroes, which is why using one is risky. The point at which a protagonist is beyond any redemption is highly subjective, and the closer you get to it, the more readers you will alienate. What you as a writer have to determine is how many you’re willing to lose.

The Human Dumpster Fire

What if your unlikeable protagonist doesn’t have a worse antagonist? You aren’t out of luck yet. A sufficiently interesting character can hold your audience’s attention. Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair is a terrible person: greedy, vapid, manipulative, selfish. The book is mostly a series of all the awful things she’s done to the people in her life—most of whom also suck in their own ways. But because she’s clever and inventive in her terribleness, readers are captivated by her story, wondering when she’ll go too far and finally dig herself into a hole she can’t claw her way out of.

For a less fictional example, the millions of people who watched Tiger King this year didn’t do so because the people it follows are likeable. They watched because of the cross-fascination of horrible people and bizarre events.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

This last method works best when it supplements one of the others but can be highly effective at that. Your protagonist and main character don’t have to be the same person! If you want to know more about the difference between them, you can read my post on it here, but essentially, it boils down to this: the protagonist is the one driving the plot, while the main character is the one whose perspective the story is told from.

Sherlock Holmes mysteries are a standard example of the two being separated for the sake of an unlikeable protagonist. Though Holmes is brilliant, he’s off-putting and unfriendly—so much so that they’re some of his defining traits. Since he can’t be changed, the audience is given the affable Dr. Watson as a main character, a sort of buffer to make Holmes more palatable and get the read to stick around long enough to be pulled into the interesting plot.

Make Them Likeable

Of course, when in doubt, the original advice to make the protagonist likeable is still the ideal option for most stories. If you’re looking for some strategies on how to do that, Rebecca Mikkelson wrote a helpful post about how to make characters bond, both with each other and your audience.

Were you taught this rule or some other strange-sounding writing advice? Let us know! Next time, we’ll discuss the advice that you should never filter the point of view.

Join us next week, when Rebecca Mikkelson will tell us about writing for your audience.

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Misused Advice: Don't Use "Be"

Sometimes you need to let “be” be.

Brandi Spencer (formerly B. C. Marine), Secretary-Treasurer Authors 4 Authors Publishing

Welcome back to Misused Advice, where we examine some of the “rules” of writing that have been twisted over time. If I’m being honest, I have a bit of a grudge against this particularly slippery rule. Depending on the source, this one goes by different names, so we first need to pin those down.

Double Trouble Origins

It’s the bastard spawn of two separate writing concepts: strong verbs and active voice. When misapplied, they can both be taught as “Don’t use the word be.” This includes all the conjugations of it: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been.

Why would you want to write this way? Let’s look at the more beneficial advice this started from.

Using Strong Verbs

We covered this a bit in my post on the much-maligned adverbs. Unless you’re writing deliberate repetition for effect, reading the same verb over and over gets monotonous. And reading nothing but various states of being isn’t exactly exciting either.

The dog is brown. His toy is squeaky. He likes to squeak. He is happy. He eats kibble.

Yawn! When you’ve moved beyond the basics of how to hold a pen and spell words, this is more of a rough outline than a descriptive passage. You can see how easy it would be to blame this on the verb choice here. When you’re a writer or teacher who is short on time, looking for excessive use of be can seem like a handy shortcut. Plus, having to use any other verb out there to replace all of them can be a great exercise to boost your creativity and add variety to your writing.

Avoiding Passive Voice

The passive voice is when the subject of a sentence is acted upon, as opposed to the active voice, when the subject acts. It’s created by reversing the sentence order and using the past participle of the verb, usually connected by be—which is why be is often used as a flag for the passive voice.

Active: He ate the cookies.

Passive: The cookies were eaten.

There are some problems with passive voice. It’s less clear and concise, for one. And in fiction, the active voice usually pulls readers deeper into the experience since the emphasis of the sentence is on the acting subject.

Shortcut to Failure

With be being an indicator of both weak verbs and passive voice, eliminating it seems like an obvious shortcut, right?

Well, no. There are no perfect shortcuts in good writing.

Though be isn’t an exciting verb, it is not the only “weak” one. In my example of weak verbs, likes and eats are just as bland. And, in the right context, be can pack a punch. The biggest tension can be derived from a state of being—whether someone is alive or dead.

This Test Gets an F

Looking for be is a terrible way to look for use of the passive voice. If you’re paying attention, I just used is in the last sentence and are in this one, and both are in the active voice. When used in a dependent clause—such as this very sentence!—the passive voice can drop be and use the past participle alone.

So using be as a test will give you false negatives and false positives. Yeah…not a great test. The zombie test is much more effective for passive voice: if you can insert “by zombies” after the verb and still make sense without changing the meaning—or already have “by ___” in there—the sentence is using the passive voice.

The cookies were eaten [by zombies]. → Makes sense. We have cookie-loving zombies. → Passive

He ate the cookies [by zombies]. →Zombies don’t really factor in the cookie eating here. → Active

The house was built [by zombies]. →It’s probably not a pretty house, but it works. → Passive

The werewolf can be killed [by zombies]. →This is a huge change in meaning. Instead of the mortality of the werewolf, the method of dispatching one is the topic. → Active

Overly Aggressive to Passive Voice

Every tool in English grammar has a place, and that includes the passive voice. One use is to shift emphasis to what would otherwise be the object of the sentence. Depending on the point of view you’re telling the story from, you may want to shift blame toward or away from a character. Is John kicking Bob, or is Bob being kicked by John? It’s a subtle distinction, but when used purposefully, it can direct the way readers react.

Secondly, sometimes the actor of an action is unknown. The whole genre of mystery would be nigh-impossible to write without the passive voice. The stories start with a crime being committed, and if the actor were revealed, there wouldn’t be a story. So you can’t write, “The villain murdered the victim.” I mean, you can, but it would be an odd sentence outside of a satire. The normal way to write it would be, “The victim was murdered.”

Lastly—and one I’d suggest using sparingly—is that passive voice can be used to create a sense of despair. Try writing an entire paragraph of internal dialogue in the active voice. Then rewrite the whole thing in the passive voice. Because of the shift in emphasis on the character being acted upon, a sense of victimhood and helplessness will tint the passive version. This can be a good tool to pull out for your main character’s absolute bleakest moment, but because it’s such a strong tool, it can be overwhelming for the reader if you let it linger too long.

No Contortionists Here

While it’s helpful to make sure you aren’t leaning too heavily on be for the sake of variety, don’t twist your sentences in knots to avoid it. Even if you succeed in deleting them all, it’s not likely to get rid of all the passive voice and weak verbs, and they aren’t all bad anyway.

Were you taught a form of this rule or some other strange-sounding writing advice? Let us know! Next time, we’ll discuss the advice that you must have a likeable main character.

Join us next week for an interview with author Lisa Borne Graves to discuss Draca, the second book in Celestial Spheres and sequel to Fyr.

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