Some Helpful Tips for Removing Linking Verbs

LINKING VERB TIPS:

"What do we mean by linking verbs? Linking verbs join two different items in the sentence and tie them together. 

Besides be, look for the words am, are, is,was, were, been, and being.  Other words can also be linking verbs: words like become, get, feel, and seem. For example: “She became a little girl. She got depressed. She felt sad. She seemed unable to go on.”

Why get rid of these words? Because (1) the verb is the most powerful word in your sentence, and (2) these verbs add nothing, nada, zippo, zilch, zero meaning to the sentence. A linking verb merely connects other words of the sentence together, foisting on them all of the responsibility that the verb itself ought to take" (King, J. Timothy, 2011).

FOUR HELPFUL TIPS FOR YOU:

1. Be sure you actually need to get rid of it. In some sentences, linking verbs can serve as helping verbs, which help another verb by adding to its meaning, or even as full verbs on their own. For example, “The earth is rumbling,” showing the action as it is happening rather than simply as a fact (“The earth rumbles.”).

2. Change predicate adjectives to verbs. Look at what’s in the sentence’s predicate. If it’s an adjective, see if you can change it into a verb. So for example, the infamous, “She was sad.” Change this into: “[Something] (The play "Romeo and Juliet", for example) saddened her.” You may need to make up the “something,” or combine this clause with another sentence in order to make it work.

3. Change the predicate noun to a verb. If the sentence’s predicate contains a noun, you may be able to convert it to a verb as well. For instance: “There was an investigation into the cause of the accident.” Change to: “The Los Angeles Police Department investigated the cause of the accident.” You should also look for passive-voice verbs that say nothing in themselves, foisting the action of the sentence onto the subject. So: “The transmission of the data was accomplished by the system.” Instead, try: “The system transmitted the data.”

4. Turn it into an attribute or an appositive. Try merging the “to be” verb and attaching the predicate to some part of another sentence. 

Here’s an "attribute" example: “The sports car raced down the highway. It was arrest-me red.” Try making the color an attribute of the car: “The arrest-me-red sports car raced down the highway.” 

Another example with an appositive: “The sky was a sheet of drab grey, and grey sheets of rain poured down.” Try something like: “The sky, a sheet of drab grey, poured down grey sheets of rain.”

LINK TO SOURCE: By J. Timothy King, 2011: http://bethestory.com/2011/03/07/7-ways-to-eradicate-the-copulative