There Is No Reason To Write “There Is”
By Chuck Wendig • Jun 10th, 2009 • Category: On Writing(Cross-posted from Terribleminds)–
If you’re one of my freelancers — and, I’m sorry if you are, I’m probably an asshole to deal with — then you’re familiar with one of my pet peeves in writing. You’ve seen it, and you know what I’m talking about because it elicits a certain response, a response not unlike what would happen if I were trying to pass a living human baby through the length of my intestinal tract.
That pet peeve is the construction, “There is.”
As in, “There is only one reason to go to the zoo, and it is to get high off bat guano.”
Or, “There are four men at my front door, and none of them are wearing pants.”
Now, first, let me say that this is a pet peeve because it’s something I used to do. Most of the things that rub me the wrong way in people’s writings are pitfalls into which I’ve tumbled many-a-time, dig? The only reason I’m jumping up and down, flapping my arms like an imbecile, is so you don’t fall in the same hole again and again. I’m marking the path is all. I’m the yellow sign on the bathroom floor: Cuidado! Verboten! Slippery When Wet! I broke my neck for you, so you don’t have to.
So. “There is.” What the hell is wrong with that? Nothing, right? Bzzt. No. Here’s what’s wrong with it: it’s goddamn lazy. You don’t know it’s lazy, but half the stuff we do, we do because it’s easy, not because it’s correct — it’s like coasting gently through a stop sign. You do it because you’re too lazy to expend the effort to, y’know, stop the car with that ever-so-tiring tap of your foot. It’s not right. But you do it. I do it. We all do it. Lazy.
“There is” as a construction is just like that. Outside of “there is” being a generally bland way to communicate, what’s the issue? The issue is, you can always say it better. You can always say it more clearly, more evocatively, more actively.
“There is a human baby in my intestinal tract.” Can we write that in a more interesting, more direct way? Sure we can. Let’s try:
“A human baby is in my intestinal tract.”
Or, “My intestinal tract is home to a human baby.”
Or, “I’ve got a human baby crawling around in my guts, and he’s a grabby little fucker, and — oh, oh no, I think he just threw up in there. This is really awkward.”
Of course, exceptions to the rule exist (or, put more weakly, “There are exceptions to the rule” — see what I did there? See?). Dialogue, for one. People do speak this way, and they say the “there is” construction fairly frequently, so it’s not odd to slap it into dialogue. Also, if you’re going for a very conversational tone, it can work there, too. But if you want flavor, action, drama, or poetic intensity, don’t rely on the “there is” construction.
I mean, hey, if I’ve yelled at you about it, don’t feel bad. Some professional, even popular, writers use it. Frequently. Joe R. Lansdale is one of my Writing Heroes (I’ll have to do a post on this at some point), and his latest book (Leather Maiden, buy it) uses “there is” frequently. All the time, actually. And I love his books regardless. But understand, every time I read those two words paired together, Baby Jesus loses a feather from his wings. Er, I think that’s how it works? Right? Anybody? High-fives?
Chuck Wendig is a 30-something freelance penmonkey. He's written too much, and should probably stop, but he won't. At present, he's written for, or developed, over 80 books for White Wolf Game Studios. He's had a handful of short stories published. He's written a couple screenplays. He's thinking about branching out into menus, pamphlets, or witty doormats. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife and two very stupid dogs.
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I’ve received writer’s guidelines that make this same point, but with the more pointed argument that the construction’s no good when used figuratively — unless the thing you’re talking about occupies physical space, unless you can point to it, don’t say “there is.” Fair enough.
But here’s why the argument against “there is” smells bad: it made my writing worse. It’s one thing to aim high, but rules like this don’t encourage us as much as scare us off. I tried to avoid it out of fear that an editor would think I was a bad writer, and that’s a shitty way to write.
“There is” is valueless, but that’s not to say it is bad. It gets out of the way. It is the casual camera pan that reveals something — something normal, something we didn’t expect because of the mundane setup, something mysterious, anything — instead of the zooming steadicam antics necessary to avoid a “lazy” shot. “There is” disappears, like the indicative equivalent of “he said.” It has its purpose.
If “there is” sucks, consider also “this is” (used above), the word “is” at all, and the awkward gait of any sentence that uses “exists” in place of “is” — it’s like the guy who power-walks everywhere because walking is lazy. There are viable reasons for using “there is,” though like all such lug nuts it should be used by choice, not just because it was on top of the pile where you left it. When I know a writer uses clauses by design, and they didn’t just fall out of his pen, “there is” is fine.
While we’re at it, though, you’ve touched on one of my peeves here: using “only” as an intensifier instead of to indicate actual exclusivity. You wrote: “The only reason I’m jumping up and down, flapping my arms like an imbecile, is so you don’t fall in the same hole again and again. I’m marking the path is all.” What does “only” add to that sentence other than to diminish “reason” by replacing it with the idiom, “the only reason?” Is this really the only reason, or is it also to keep you from having to hear people crying out from the bottomg of those holes? The rest of your sentence is so lively, though, that the idiom is serving a purpose: to set up the rest of it. It’s carpentry. And that’s fine.
I use “here is” and “this is” all the time. Weirdly, they’re far more definite and powerful.
I enjoy both “here is,” and “this is.”
Fixing an instance of “there is” never took me more than… I dunno, 10 seconds? I feel like it’s only strengthened my writing; your mileage certainly varies.
Writing offers few universal rules. Even the most fundamental ones get broken, and being on the lookout for the “there is” construction is hardly fundamental; as noted, one of my favoritest writers in the whole wide world uses it regularly.
But, as a guideline, I find it’s worth it (for me, at least) to pay attention to the construction. Improving that construction has, I think, helped my writing immensely. I don’t find that it disappears into the background; it’s not wallpaper, for me. Now, that’s probably because it’s a pet peeve, so it stands out like a hammer-struck thumb, but I definitely feel it. It feels soft. Mushy. Undefined. It detracts. It’s like Kevin Smith’s directing (ooh, nerd jab! no he didn’t!) — flat, directionless, it just sits there like a discarded sock.
“Only” as intensifer, yeah, I can buy that. This’ll sound a bit lazy, but I don’t apply the same rules to blogging that I do to… er, other more professional writing, as blogging is meant to be entirely conversational. It simulates more the way I speak than the way I write, for better or worse. But it’s a good point, and I’ll be on the lookout for that language goblin.
Related note: anybody ever see the redlines that other professional writers give themselves? Like, Don DeLillo’s redlines of his own drafts? I read that, and I think to myself, “Self, you are not self-editing nearly enough.” The guy tears his own work a new asshole.
Oh, and the whole E-Prime (”anti-is!”) comes from a good place, a place to keep writing sharp, punchy, evocative, declarative — I think it’s a bit Nazi-ish, and we all know that the Internet is a good place to bring up Nazis. Plus, Indiana Jones punches Nazis. So what’s that tell you?
I do find that, when writing, some sentences molded around the verb “to be” end up stronger when I re-sculpt them when I make them more active.
Again, no rules are truly universal, though.
Out of curiosity, does “there are” bother you? Do you avoid it in dialogue? E.g., “There are two men at the door,” she said.
There’s an issue of The Paris Review, I think it was, that I bought just for the reproduced pages of Norman Mailer’s self-edited draft of some lost work they’d found. (I can’t find it myself, now.) I’d love to see more working writers’ redlines and notes to themselves.
For sure, I get that blogging can be conversational. That I tend to treat it as something not so conversational anymore, and sometimes edit the hell out of my blog entries, is why I blog less and less it seems — it feels like work. The reason I put my blog entries through the wringer, though, is because I have been made terrified in the past that writers and editors I admire will discount me utterly if I use colons to set up complete sentences, adverbs at all, or “there is” in any form. And that’s writing out of fear, that’s writing out of a desire to placate or pose rather than a desire to make the work good. Peeves be damned, I’m not sure that any good work has been made bad by an adverb or “there is.”
As Stephen King does in On Writing, look at the advice versus how its actually implemented anyway. He says adverbs are bad, and then later uses one that he “could not bring [himself] to cut.” And it (”sexily”) is a pretty weak adverb, in my opinion.
More and more, from the exclamation point to the semicolon, I find that the instruments I used to have pet peeves for have served me well, now and again. Granted, there are plenty of constructions I still see as feckless twits, best avoided, and there are sentences or passages in best-selling novels (you know the one I mean) that I think are evidence of lazy writing, but passing judgment on those two words, without specific context (e.g. “This instance of ‘there is’ pricks a hole in the balloon.”) seems unhelpful to me. Yes, writers had best be cautious with the phrase, as it cannot support weight — some sentences become more interesting fragments if you just remove it — but the toolbox is infinitely large, so why take anything out of it?
My struggle is motivating myself to write more and show it to people. I write less now that I’ve had contact with editors who transform their peeves into rules, because I let myself believe once that their peeves were indicative of some secret wisdom they’d gleaned from the DNA of the language. Or something. I’d become afraid not of writing badly, but of writing wrong. For me, if for no one else, rules that diminish my writing do not help me. I am only partway through the process of restoring my method of writing to serve the material and not to please, for example, Justin Achilli.
There is my reason.
You and I have very different experiences, I think. Once I learned to Love The Bomb (i.e. push past my own supposed ideals, murder my darlings, slaughter my sacred cows) and listen to editors (incl. Achilli, or you), I think I became a much stronger writer. I don’t universally agree with every editorial statement, but most I think pointed me in the right general direction.
Usually, I get an editor’s note, and this is my mental process:
“I hate you, die, die, die.”
(period of lamentation and mourning)
“Holy shit, that person’s right.”
(improved writing ensues)
Too many writers, I think — and this isn’t directed at you, just a General Us, because I do all this shit — love to hobble around on crutches. We think certain errors and weaknesses in our prose can be held aloft as “stylistic flourishes,” when really, they’re nothing like that. A bad shirt is a bad shirt; it doesn’t make you a fashion model as much as you might want it to.
Now, again, this doesn’t mean that every editorial comment is a shining beacon of truth, either. But, as noted, as long as it pushes you in the right general direction — northward instead of, say, southward, then I think it serves its purpose. We have to embrace criticism and love the bomb. It refines us. Agitation is key.
Now — “there is/there are.” The latter is just another face of the former, but as I note in the post, any form of the construction can be made to work, especially in dialogue. People talk like that, and so it’s okay to write like people talk like that in my opinion (though some do feel that dialogue in prose should not be made to mimic dialogue in reality, though why this is, I haven’t yet gotten my head around).
As for whether or not work has been made “bad” by weak constructions — well, no. No one hole will sink the schooner, but you get a lot of little holes, and eventually it’ll start to take on too much water. It’s like our little dog and her Thousand Allergies — one allergy alone isn’t enough to explode her, but it was explained to us that she’s a bit like a cup. Each allergic exposure fills up the cup by a little. Too many exposures, and the cup overflows, and she goes into reaction mode. You can’t keep her away from all the allergens, but you can remove some of the big ones.
Writing can be like that. You can’t be perfect. But you can strive to knock out some of the bigger errors or weaknesses so the cup doesn’t overflow. Some things you can help. Some you can’t. Not supposed to end a sentence on a preposition, but I do, and it can work. Sentence fragments are bad, but they can be made really awesome. You just have to know when it’s awesome, and when it’s not, so you don’t overfill the cup.
The cup may not be infinitely large, but the toolbox is, yes — it’s just important not to put a turd in there and call it a tool.
That is my declaration. There it is. Here you go. Let’s dance.
There’s a key difference between an editorial note and blanket advice. It’s this: The editorial note cites a specific bad instance for correction, while the blanket advice uses hyperbole like a dirty bomb to pockmark and scar the subject into a radioactive practice non grata.
Don’t mistake me for the guy who thinks writing is perfect the way it comes out the first time and that revision is the suffocation of art. You know I’m not that guy. I cooked up this place because I thrive on notes and have been improved by actual editorial contact. In comparison, I have been sometimes improved and sometimes betrayed by blanket opinion-based prescriptivism.
I, personally, say “there is” should be used when pointing to something that can be physically regarded, if only because it’s clearest — but the figurative “there’s an idea” has a certain ephemeral value. (It is shitty journalism, though.) “There is” is a cliché, as much as it can be, which is why I think its value has been depleted over that of Wood’s “here is,” which is almost theatrical in its presentation, like the words of the Chorus. (”Here is a man, twice shot now by the woman he loved first, then hated, and now loves again.”) But it’s not a damaging cliché, inherently, in the way that stale imagery is. It’s worn smooth by usage, like a railing, and serves much the same purpose.
Don’t you mean, “A key difference exists between an editorial note and blanket advice?”
…
I joke, I joke, I keed, I keed!
I’ll add here that my response wasn’t to you, directly — I don’t think you’re in danger. You’re already a qualified, capable writer (and the ‘r’ key seems to be borked on my kbd, damnit). Experienced, able writers have a better grip on what tools are right for what job. They can use more… er, “advanced” ideas with greater confidence. Writers with less experience are in danger of assuming that they can skip fundamentals or ignore criticism because, say, “Oh, this is just another tool in my toolbox,” or, “This is part of my voice.”
That sounds elitist. And it is. I consider myself more toward the “experienced” end of the pool these days, but I wasn’t always, and when I wasn’t, I’m glad I was able to kick my own screaming baby ego to the curb and improve. I still need to do that, still need to constantly refine and improve. But I think I have my feet on solid ground, at least.
My only advice to people who receive advice from an editor is: do it. I mean, don’t do it if it goes against your every human impulse. But your editor is the one who’s responsible for the final document, good or bad. So, do what the editor says. Do it. That’s workmanlike. You don’t have to take the advice beyond that project, but for that one project, pony up. Make it happen. Make it work. Or go home, and don’t pay your bills or eat or whatever; your call.
Again, for the most part, I’ve received editorial notes that I didn’t agree with at first, but by processing those comments and criticisms, I feel I became a better writer. Cleaner, sharper, stronger, faster, able to kick down doors and impregnate virgins with but a dash of my pen, all that. It nets out as a positive experience for me.
It means, of course, shoving your ego aside — ego both as a frail trembling creature afraid of being kicked, and a bloated thing with a swollen head whose leathery flesh refuses violence. That’s the writer’s ego in a nutshell, I think. Not universal, but I’ve seen it often enough, and I know it’s a problem I have: on one hand, you feel weak and aimless and full of self-hatred, and on the other, you feel super-strong, indefensible, bulletproof to anything (and full of hatred for anything that says otherwise). Gotta find that middle line.
When you’re done with a project, take yourself out of the project and let it stand and walk on its own wobbly legs, and let it suffer the slings and arrows that make it stronger. You want people to like it, because that’s why you did it; but you have to like it, too. Always the middle line.
And Jesus Christ, I’m rambling. I’m soaking wet from a rained-out yard sale. More beer, please.
Ultimately, I’m not talking to You = Will Hindmarch, I’m talking to You = All Us Silly Writers.
I think I gotta take a nap. Shit.
I know what I wrote, and I did it on purpose. (Which, to be fair, means I was asking for that joke.) I don’t think “a thing exists” is necessarily one whit better or more active than “there is a thing.” This is just my opinion on a matter of opinion, though.
You’re talking pretty well past my point, though, I think. I’m not talking about ego here (that’s at my blog), and I’m not talking about the writer’s toolbox versus the Fisher’s Price writer’s toolbox. Yeah, a young writer can get himself in trouble if he treat tools like toys, but I’m not taking tools out of my kit just because kids are dumb.
I agree with you completely that a working writer’s job is, in part, to make the changes the editor calls for, including those changes to style called for before the assignment in the author’s guidelines. This magazine says the letter “f” is verboten, I skip it. That magazine says adverbs will get me killed, I abstain from them. That’s the job. That’s about the individual work being crafted.
It is not the same, though, as seeing every editor’s peeve as a force that improves your skills. I’ve made my skills more dynamic by contorting to serve foreign peeves, but that is not the same as adopting a peeve and thus improving as a writer.
It’s a valid peeve, for sure! It’s a worthy position. My position is that “there is” is not a big deal, and that there are reasons to use it. That’s my argument.
No doubt. As noted, some of my Most Favoritest Writers use it. It works at its best when its conversational, and Joe Lansdale’s tone is very, very conversational (which is why his books are so readable — I cannot recommend his work enough, really).
And I did dance well-beyond the point, sure. But I blame yard sale weariness. And beer. And you can’t ask me to stop drinking beer. Or whiskey. Or meth. Wait, you don’t drink meth.
Or yard sales, but I won’t ask you to stop drinking yard sales, either.
*whew*
“Get” is also a stinky word when used as a verb. Anyone communicating with words will always find better choice than “get.”