The words in the title — are was were have had has — are (see what I did there) too often substituted for action words that can make writing lively and immediate.

Let me try to write that first sentence again: Using “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” instead of action verbs such as “need”, “possess”, “describe”, “denote” and others makes writing passive and unconvincing.

Or: Using more active verbs such as “need”, “possess”, “describe”, “denote” and others rather than “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” makes writing more convincing and engaging.

I wish I remembered this during the writing stage rather than having to go back and edit out most of those passive verbs for more active ones.

That’s what I’m doing right now — editing Whose Hearts are Mountains, which consists mostly of making my verbs more active. I’m afraid I’m going to have to add more words to it to market it, I’m having to rewrite so much. Getting rid of the passive verbs causes me to get rid of passive, weak sentence fragments, so fewer words.

I try for not more than one “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, and “has” per paragraph and only if I can’t find another way to write it. I wish I had the “pre” writeup for this, but this is post-edit. Just for you to read:

I crossed the border to Wyoming with little fanfare. Just on the other side of the border I saw a highway sign at the entrance for the town of Pine Bluffs. I parked the car at the shoulder of the ramp and consulted my doctored map. Soon, I would be at the border of No Man’s Land, a place without cities, gasoline, or food. A temperate desert, scathingly hot in the days and chilly in the evenings. I would need a city to stock up at, get my last refueling before I would need to rely on pressing castor beans and precipitating out the glycerin to make the biodiesel. I hoped I knew how to do that; Back at my last stop — I still felt gut-wrenching horror to remember it — I had written down the proportions of ethanol and lye to castor oil with a pencil stub I found in my coat pocket.

I drove toward Pine Bluffs, and the small gas station at the exit looked closed and shuttered. This didn’t surprise me — I suspected many proprietors would shun a gas station on the eerily deserted interstate. As I drove into town, I saw a wooden sign for the town with the carved letters painted over in black.

As I drove to the downtown, I noticed the skies darkening, and trees whipped in the wind around me. Looking at the stores, I saw nothing — houses shuttered and sagging. Buildings in the small Main Street stood deserted with furniture and goods still displayed in windows. Christmas decorations twisted in the wind on the light poles downtown. I parked my truck and stepped out to survey the streets, hearing only the wind howling.

At that moment, the wind died and the sky darkened almost to night. The most frightening silence surrounded me, most frightening in its completeness. I looked up and saw the funnel of the tornado in the near distance, and I kicked in the window and rolled through it, hoping the glass would not cut me fatally.

I turned and saw Christmas garlands ripped from their guy wires and realized blood may not be the worst of my problems. I ran through the aisles of what I recognized as an old-school hardware store. Near the antique counter of walnut and mellow gold wainscoting, I saw a door sagging open. I ran through it and down the stairs as the roaring demon coursed down the street.

Downstairs, I sat on the floor, wishing I’d thought to grab a hand-crank flashlight before I retreated. Eventually, however, my eyes adjusted to the dark broken only by the tiny window at the top.
I realized that I sat on a dessicated body.

I stood up quickly, shrieking, to survey the situation. A flannel shirt and pair of coveralls shrouded the bone and sinew. He had fallen face-down; I turned the corpse over carefully, and saw steel-rim glasses and a few scraps of silver hair adhered to his skull by leather-dried skin. Next to him, I noticed a stenographer’s pad, the pen by which he documented the tragedy of the town lying by his skeletal hand:

“Buried thirty people today with the backhoe; that’s all I could manage without help. There’s no one to help; I may be the only one left. The CDC said they can’t spare anyone, but the National Guard has posted people at all exits. Anyone who tries to get out is shot on sight.

“The streets remain empty of life, except for the random dog or cat, which seem immune to the disease. The bodies lie inside houses, where my neighbors succumbed to the fever and the rash and the despair. The despair doesn’t last long, because it takes only six hours from the rash to death.

“I will not be able to bury everyone, because my hands now carry the rash, and my armpits and neck swell and bruise. My hands burn and itch; soon my whole body will be on fire. I feel numb — even though I expected to die, I didn’t expect to be taken by the sickness, but by eventual hunger.

“If anyone finds this, I hope my corpse doesn’t carry the infection. I am not sure how long I’ve carried the virus, but the rumor is that it takes only hours from contamination to death; at least my suffering will not last long.

    “Mayweather Gleason, 64, Pine Bluffs WY Nov. 2, 2030.”