Sat The New Was

Welcome to Monday Blogs, where we talk about recent trends in writing or problems that appear to be cropping up. Today’s topic is a growing trend I’ve noticed over the last year, a most frustrating trend. It has to do with “to be” verbs and their use, or in this case, non-use.

We all learned as soon as we started our first story that to be verbs were passive. We had to avoid passive tenses; they would make our book boring. Passive verbs, according to every discussion on them, are telling the reader the story, not showing.
Many new authors have taken this literally to heart and are substituting other words to stop using to be verbs. Instead of using was or were, they are inserting sat, stood, looked and the reader is confused. They don’t understand what the author is trying to convey.
Yes, to be verbs can be passive, if used incorrectly. A sentence can be telling if the author doesn’t take the time to construct it carefully. However, you can use to be verbs and still have an active sentence.
How does one do that? The author has a very important job. They must show the story in their head. That often takes many months, even years, of hard work. They need to edit said work and have others let them know what is going well and what needs improvement.
Substituting an “action” verb in place of a “to be” verb doesn’t always make the sentence active. In fact, you may have created a passive sentence by doing this. The word itself isn’t responsible for your sentence not being active, you are. If what you’ve written reads like it’s telling the reader rather than showing them the passage, you need to restructure the sentence rather than inserting another word such as sat or stood in its place. That simply doesn’t work. 



Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Those who know her best will tell you that nothing is safe or sacred when she is observing real life. In fact, she considers any situation she witnesses as fair game when plotting a new story.


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