You Can Ignore Your ‘Self’ and Just Improve

Incollege I learned an exercise that drastically improved my writing skills. Writers call the practice E-prime. To write in e-prime, simply omit any version of the word “to be” from your prose. Drop is, am, are, were, or was, and also their cousins — the isn’ts, the will-bes, the would-have-been, could-have-been, should-have-beens — scrap them all. Simple, right? Not really. Writing in e-prime hurts like a kick to the cortex. But it works wonders; you find yourself thinking constantly about how to replace passive be-type language with more active, verby sentences that haul major freight. Active prose front-loads your writing and gives it a satisfying “oomph.” Your characters come into greater focus when you describe them using their actions. If I say John was wicked that could mean any old thing. If I say John shot the deer twice, once to kill it, and once because it made him smile, you feel John’s wickedness down in your stomach, and worry. A picture equals a thousand words, but a good writer with action verbs can paint you a picture with a sentence or two. For those who excel at it, then, writing action multiplies prose, because actions carry far more weight than abstractions. <a href="https://medium.com/the-affirmations/you-can-stop-thinking-about-yourself-37ce5a1f753e">Read More</a>