"Was Clusters" and How To Get Rid Of Them

Earlier this week Kristen Lamb introduced me to "was clusters", and I was ecstatic when she went into detail on what "was clusters" are and how to get rid of them in her most recent post, Ten Ways to Tighten Your Writing & Hook the Reader. She says:

"The biggest red flag to me as an editor is an infestation of the word “was.” This is a major indicator of weak writing and passive voice. If a writer does this on page one? Fairly safe to assume the trend will continue.

Do a Was Hunt. See too many of those buggers together? Time to kill.

It was barely dawn and Lulu was sitting on the couch. She was waiting for her father who was already hours late. This was unusual for him. He was always punctual. A crack that was deafening made her scream and moments later the door was kicked in by the police who barked orders for her to get down on the floor.

Instead….

Predawn light spilled into the room where Lulu sat, waiting for her father to be home. He was never late. Ever. A deafening crack made her scream. Police kicked in the door and ordered her to the floor."

My novel is in present tense, so I went on an "is cluster" hunt instead. Here are five examples I found in my writing, and how I fixed them (partly with the help of this article by Thomas King as well).

He is also carrying a large, black bag.
He also carries a large, black bag. 

Something about him makes me pause. He is young, and wearing loose gray pants and a gray sweatshirt.
Something about the young man and his loose, gray pants and gray sweatshirt makes me pause. 

The recovery unit is one of the less desirable jobs, since it takes people away from the hustle of city life and their families.
The recovery unit, one of the less desirable jobs, takes people away from the hustle of city life and their families.

I can see him clearly through the slats. My hiding place is too open.

I can see him clearly through the slats. Exposed, I crouch down further. 

I think the hardest part for me is when what follows the to be verb is an adjective. 

Timothy King recommends to

"look at what’s in the sentence’s predicate. If it’s an adjective, see if you can change it into a verb. So for example, the infamous, “She was sad.” Change this into: “[Something] saddened her.” You may need to make up the “something,” or combine this clause with another sentence in order to make it work."

But how do I do that with a sentence like, "I dig and my hand brushes something metal. Am I that lucky? No, it's too big to be my phone." ? Too big can't be changed into a verb. The last thing in King's article says,

"In general, focus on the action. Start by asking yourself what action the sentence is conveying. That determines what verb dominates the sentence. Then you can arrange the other concepts of the sentence around that verb, usually in a “Something action [something else]” form."

What is the action in this sentence? How does she know the object is too big? Well, she must be feeling it somehow. There's my verb. 

I dig and my hand brushes something metal. Am I that lucky? No. I wrap my fingers around the object, too big to be my phone.

Voila. Job done. 

Giving Myself Permission To Write

This blog post from Writer Unboxed couldn't have come at a better time.

"I rode on the write-edit-write-edit carousel, which meant a year later I was still plotting out my story while editing at the same time. This might work for some, but it stalled my progress. I was caught in an endless loop that meant I wrote at a snail’s pace.
In order to write that fast I had to learn to get the story, and only the story, down. When I hit a patch that my internal snail frothed to focus on, I made a note and kept going. It was freeing.
The drafts of my story became easier to write when I could assign their purpose. First draft: get my crazy ideas on paper; second and third drafts: edit and refine."

I have been stuck in this endless "write-edit-write-edit" loop as well for the past few months, and it took this blog post dumping a bucket of icy water over my head to jolt me out of it.

Why can't I give myself permission to write?

I know my characters aren't developed enough yet, and I know there are plot holes. But I think that at the moment it's more important for me to finish an entire first draft than it is to get the existing parts closer to per***t.

Tonight, I'm giving myself permission to write the next scene in TGITP (not to continue rewriting one of the scenes from the beginning). To hold myself to this promise, I'll update soon with how it went.

The Shoe Test

I found some great revision advice today on Janet Reid's blog. It's called "the shoe test"

I've been reading manuscripts for the last few days and a recurring foible is what I now call "the shoe test."
Example: "She wore six-inch slingbacks on her feet."
Where else is she going to wear them? Her head?
Go through your manuscript sentence by sentence to make sure you're not "wearing shoes on your feet." You might be delightfully surprised by how much more lean and elegant your prose is.

This is definitely something I've noticed in my own writing; I'll be keeping an eye out for it in future revisions.

Murder Your Darlings

I first heard this phrase when I was reading On Writing by Stephen King.

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."
-Stephen King, On Writing 

At first the advice didn't make much sense to me. Why would I want to kill the best parts of my story? But I think I finally understand.

Last month I was about 30,000 words into my first draft of TGITP (aka the book I'm currently working on), when I realized that about 20,000 words in the middle didn't need to be there. Now, don't get me wrong, I needed to write them. They showed me where my main character needed to end up, and they taught me a lot about the world she's living in. However, they didn't add to the overall story. It was tough, but I ended up cutting them and finding a much better, much quicker way to get her from the inciting incident to where the story really begins.

And now I think I understand what it means to murder your darlings. I certainly had darlings in those 20,000 words. In fact, I had two very real darlings who were characters that I axed, as well as a few plot points I was excited about. To me, murdering your darlings doesn't mean killing off the best parts of your story, it means killing off the parts that, although you may love, don't add to the story you really need to be telling at that moment.