I'm encountering the little word "as" more and more often in the place of a multitude of other conjunctions. It is used as a substitute for "when", "while", "because", "since", "for" and even "and". Sometimes, three quarters of the relative clauses in a story are just those two letters.
Yes, those uses are allowed. But overdoing it makes a story appear flatter than it is. Strive for diversity in picking your words, not a repetitive one-size-fits-all.
Keep in mind that every time they encounter it, readers have to decide which meaning of "as" you use. Sometimes it is clear from the context, but sometimes they have to break their reading flow for a moment. That's something you want to avoid. Try to limit the uses of "as" to its most distinctive one - comparisons. I write "try", not "always do", because there is always that grey area where the aim of diversity may make it a good variation in a paragraph and because direct speech needs to reflect our - sometimes sloppy - everyday use of it.
Another point - depending on which use of "as" you have, you may need to insert a comma or not. Some uses form an essential relative clause whereas others just add non-essential information. In long sentences, we are tempted to read "as" as the start of a prepositional phrase. Consider this (smaller) example: "I lay naked on my bed as a bird passed in front of the window." Some of us may read the expression "naked ... as a bird" there and only realize that this makes no sense when we encounter "passed". While it depends a lot on where you live and what variant of English you hear every day, it is an ambiguity that can easily be worked around by swapping "as" with "when".
There are other conjunctions that can be used with multiple meanings. "while" comes to mind, which can also transport the sense of "whereas". The first one is usually essential information, meaning no comma, while the second one tends to introduce a stand-alone sentence that should have one.
It takes a bit of time to go through a finished story and have a look at each conjunction, but it can make your writing a lot richer and help you catch comma issues and ambiguities.
Story Verifier
