Look at your last book and count the number of times you used is, are, was, and were. Thoughts? Lessons learned?
This week’s question deals with the verb “to be.” Since we mostly write in the past tense, I’ve decided to concentrate on “was” and “were,” instead of the present “am,” “is,” and “are.”
Dickens opens A TALE OF TWO CITIES with this famous passage:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
That’s thirteen instances of “was/were” in the first paragraph. (And “being,” too.) Technically, in the first sentence…
We writers are taught to embrace so-called strong verbs (except when attributing dialogue. I’ve written about that random contradiction several times in this space, most recently on January 9, 2025.) The implication of this week’s question—posed by me, true enough—is that the verb “to be” is weak. If that’s so, how should we feel about Dickens’s colossal run-on sentence above? Not only does he repeat a form of “to be” thirteen times, he blatantly flouts the rule of three in the process! They say he wasn’t actually paid by the word, but that opening passage begs to differ.
Regardless of the word count, A TALE OF TWO CITIES makes me feel a little better about sharing how many “was-es” I use in my work. In my latest book, THE PRANK (July 2026), “was” accounts for 2.45% of all the words I wrote. I choked on that number. That seemed like a lot to me. So I counted “was” in a different book I’d written, TURN TO STONE. Whew! Much better: 1.69%. In A STONE’S THROW, the total was 1.65% and STONE COLD DEAD clocked in at 1.54%.
Why the discrepancy? Without proof, I can only hypothesize that the narrator in THE PRANK is to blame. He is a thirteen-year-old boy, after all. Perhaps his age explains why. His language is simpler than that of my trusty heroine, Ellie Stone, in TURN TO STONE, A STONE’S THROW, and STONE COLD DEAD.
But is this a problem at all? Is the overuse of “to be” wrong? Is it a weak verb?
I’ll be contrarian here and say that, despite popular opinion, “to be” is perhaps the strongest verb there is. (Notice how I used it in one form or another four times in that sentence?)
We’re taught in school that verbs describe action, and “to be” certainly doesn't do that. But it is a verb. It describes essence (a word that comes to us from Latin, from the present participle of esse—to be). “To be” is actually a tremendously versatile word, which is why we use it so much. It can act as an intransitive verb with many shades of meaning, from existence, to belonging, identity, coming and going, and more.
It’s also an essential (another word related to “to be”) auxiliary verb, used in many tenses:
present continuous—I am going
present perfect continuous—I have been going
past continuous—I was going
past perfect continuous—I had been going
As well as the conditional and future continuous tenses:
I would be going
I would have been going
I will be going
I will have been going
And, of course—my favorite—“to be” used to be used as the auxiliary verb for several intransitive verbs in the present perfect:
He is come
He is risen
How the mighty are fallen
As a French and (former) Italian teacher, I am happy to point this out to my students who struggle to understand why the auxiliary verb for some verbs is être in French and essere in Italian. (Hint, these are intransitive verbs—they can’t take a direct object.)
Je suis allé au marché.
Sono andato al mercato.
It’s fascinating to me that, despite English and Romance languages coming from different language families, the word “to be” fills (or used to fill, in the case of English) this function as auxiliary verb for intransitive verb constructions. And guess what. In German it’s the same. “Sein” (to be) is the auxiliary for the present perfect of intransitive verbs, e.g. “Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!”
Damn! “To be” is one bad m&%^fing verb!
“To be” is also our most irregular verb. I am, you are, he/she is, etc. And it’s our most common verb. If it weren’t so common, of course, its “irregularity” would never survive. It would “regularize” because no one would remember its forms. “To be” is also the most irregular verb in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
Okay, but I’ve strayed from the subject at hand, which is do we overuse the verb “to be” in our work and what do we think about that? As a reality check, I counted the word “was” in Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP. 1.45% of the words. That’s a lower percentage than I use. Hmm. I should definitely pay attention to this. Not necessarily change anything, but definitely be aware of it going forward.
Then, when I was feeling down about my overuse of “was,” I had the idea to check a book written with a young narrator, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. And what did I find? Approximately 2.5% of the words in that book is “was.”
VINDICATION!🎈🎉
Finally, just to cover all (some of) the bases, I thought I’d check a book written in the present tense and chose our own Terry Shames’s MURDER AT THE JUBILEE RALLY. As I suspected, “was” accounted for a far lower percentage of the words used, a paltry 0.925%. (Great book, by the way. Love me some Samuel Craddock!) Bravo, Terry!
CONCLUSIONS
I’d like to think that a book can have anywhere from 0.8% to, say, 3.0% usage of “was” and still be okay. It all depends on the narrator, the point of view, and the individual style. Still, as for any other word we choose to include in our writing, we should always remain vigilant and challenge it at every turn. “Was” must be the right word or we must strike it out.
Let the arguing begin in the comments!
Slvjkn