Scaffolding
Flags “there is / there are” openers holding the real subject offstage.
Every sentence has a front-loaded slot where the reader's attention lands hardest. When you open with "there is" or "there are," you park a grammatical placeholder in that slot and push the thing you actually care about — the subject — somewhere into the middle, where it arrives late and quiet. The placeholder costs you nothing in meaning, but it costs you the position.
Cutting expletive openers is simple once you see them: find what follows the verb to be, make it the subject, and rebuild from there. "There are three mistakes writers make" becomes "Writers make three mistakes." Same information, one fewer word, and the sentence opens on the actor rather than a holding pattern.
When does this NOT apply? Sometimes the delay is the point. "There is a man at the door" is not weak — it puts the man's existence in doubt first, which is exactly what some moments need. Atmospheric or mystery-building prose occasionally earns the placeholder. Dialogue does too: people say "there's something wrong" because they are uncertain; flattening that to "something is wrong" loses the hesitation. The rule is a default, not a law. Apply it when the real subject is more interesting than its announcement — which is most of the time.
In practice
Expletive opener burying the subject
There are several factors that affect how quickly a reader trusts a narrator.
Several factors shape how quickly a reader trusts a narrator.
Dropping "there are" and cutting the relative clause moves the subject to the front and shortens the sentence by three words without losing any meaning.
Buried actor in a scene
There was a woman standing at the end of the corridor who would not look up.
A woman stood at the end of the corridor and would not look up.
Replacing the expletive with a strong past tense verb puts the woman in the subject position and lets the action carry the sentence forward.
When the placeholder earns its place
"There is something in this house." Rewriting to "Something is in this house" flattens the dread — the expletive here does work by making existence itself feel uncertain, so keeping it is the right call.
Common questions
- What is an expletive opener in writing?
- An expletive opener is a sentence that begins with "there is," "there are," "there was," or similar constructions, where the word "there" holds the subject position without contributing meaning. The real subject of the sentence is postponed until later, weakening the opening.
- Is it always wrong to start a sentence with "there is"?
- No — when uncertainty or atmosphere is the point, the expletive can do genuine work ("There is something wrong" conveys hesitation that a cleaner construction would erase). Cut it when the real subject is more interesting than the announcement of its existence, which is most of the time.
- How do I fix a 'there is' sentence?
- Identify what comes after the verb "to be" — that is usually your real subject. Make it the grammatical subject of the sentence and choose an active verb. "There are mistakes in this draft" becomes "This draft has mistakes" or "You have made mistakes here."
- Why do expletive openers weaken writing?
- The opening slot is where reader attention is strongest, and an expletive spends it on a placeholder that carries no information. Readers have to wait for the meaningful content, and the sentence loses momentum before it begins.
Inside Verbaria
Verbaria's editor flags "there is," "there are," and their past-tense equivalents as you write, highlights the deferred subject, and suggests a rebuilt version — so you can accept the fix or decide the delay is intentional.
Try it on your own writing
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Where it comes from: Strunk & White; Zinsser's war on clutter.
This is one of the tools inside Verbaria — the writing room that names the craft while you work. Read the writing.