How to Kill the Passive Voice

[JoanDrake]

The worthy Springs credits learning how to do this as the most important writing lesson she has learned.


Please tell me how. I seem to fall into it all the time, no matter what I do


This question is, of course, addressed to the board, but Springs did mention it in another thread, and she is a very, very good writer.

 

[Hex]

I think it was Mouse, actually, not the lovely springs, but since Mouse too is a fabulous writer, the point stands.

Passive isn't always wrong, but it seems to take a roundabout route to get places.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

The worthy Springs credits learning how to do this as the most important writing lesson she has learned.


Please tell me how. I seem to fall into it all the time, no matter what I do


This question is, of course, addressed to the board, but Springs did mention it in another thread, and she is a very, very good writer.

You are very lovely.

It was Mouse who said it and since she normally has to shout at mefor my passive tendencies I shall let someone more confident on passive answer ( and watch with interest.)

 

[Mouse]

Well, it took me ages to get my head around it. Basically it's just making things more immediate and switching the sentences around.

So (because lots of my characters get run over!)...

John was hit by a car.

vs

A car hit John.

It's more immediate. So good for action scenes and whatnot. But I do use passive when, say, a character's been taken prisoner or something, so they're in a passive situation.

This site's quite good: 7 Examples of Passive Voice (And How To Fix Them)

Something Teresa said made it click into place for me. It was something along the lines of watching out for where you've got stuff happening, but nobody doing it. (So, I had 'Lanterns were held up' rather than 'People held up lanterns').

 

[chrispenycate]

To eliminate passivity you need your protagonist to be so proactive that he (or she, I was taught at the period when the masculine subhumed the feminine {or, passively, the feminine was subhumed by the masculine – sounds painful}) never has anything happen to him, but happens to everyone else. Which is pretty boring, when you come to think about it.

Certainly, certain catastrophes are personal enough – baddies, stupidity on the part of the virtuous – to generate active sentences, but "Why does it always rain on me?" (which, while not officially passive mood, in that 'it' is the subject of the sentence, is as passive a sentiment as one could hope to see) can only be avoided by reigning over it (an unlikely outcome) or totally ignoring all elements you don't control.

So, 'killing' passive mood, in life or art, is not a practical operation. I suppose one can avoid "Mr. White was run over by a steamroller" type scenarios without too much effort, but sometimes it's no-one's fault; things just happen to you.

Or me, anyway.

 

[Bowler1]

Keep your writing in the present tense. Stay away from past and future. That way your writing is nearly always immediate, by default you could say.

 

[chrispenycate]

Keep your writing in the present tense. Stay away from past and future. That way your writing is nearly always immediate, by default you could say.

Help. I am being slowly squashed by a runaway steam roller, while being shouted at by crowds of angry nuns. I am being overwhelmed by pain and a man with a ray gun.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I'm not that negative on passing voice. They key, though, is using it judiciously rather than as a default.

 

[tinkerdan]

There is a place for passive voice. And though it is true that passive voice often looks like the cart before the horse there are still times when you might not want to be clear who that stuff is happening to. Or for that matter who is doing that stuff.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Keep your writing in the present tense. Stay away from past and future. That way your writing is nearly always immediate, by default you could say.

Actually, I've seen plenty of stories written in future tense that were quite the opposite. Flat, passive, and therefore distancing. I think writers (YA writers mostly) are just now really getting a handle on how to do present tense well. It used to be that present tense somehow lured people into using passive voice far, far more often than past tense usually does. Now I don't see that happening nearly as much, though it still happens.

 

[AMB]

Regards passive, I read this a couple of weeks ago, and wonder on people's take:

Do You Mean Passive or Just Weak?

 

[tinkerdan]

Passive is not really weak, though. It might lack full disclosure or even hide the facts and often it becomes a mouthful to read if you read stuff out loud. It definitely can hurt the ears. But sometimes you do want to hide facts. You don't want to disclose everything. And sometimes it is at the perfect pace for what you already have on the page.

Weak and Strong are not always good words for active and passive. But when they are appropriate they are a good way to draw someones attention to it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Of course the passive voice is bad only when it weakens the writing, and it doesn't always do that. Sometimes it's entirely appropriate. (Sometimes trying to avoid it results in weird and artificial sounding sentences.)

But when you are critiquing something by a relatively inexperienced writer they aren't going to appreciate it if you simply tell them that you think the writing is weak if you don't also tell them where you think the problem lies and what they can do about it.

To just tell someone that their writing is puny, lifeless, blah, feeble, etc. is hardly constructive.

 

[AMB]

The point was more that not everything that people call passive IS passive, and that instead it is often used to say something is weak, even when the weak sentence is grammatically active.

The alternative word choices were to get away from incorrectly saying passive if you don't want to say weak.

It isn't my strong suit, so I was wanting to know what people thought in regards to the whole "not really passive voice" thing.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I agree that a lot of people misunderstand the meaning of "passive voice," but I think as many people (probably the same people) might misunderstand that article. I am all for using terms like weak or lifeless where appropriate (just ask anyone I've edited) but identifying why is just as important, and I think that article might steer people away from doing so.

That's my only problem with the article. Otherwise, I think he is making a very important point.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Please tell me how.

As others have said, passive constructions aren't always bad. If that's your default, you should fix it, because active construction is far better, and stronger. Know the difference and use each with purpose. It's like adverbs, metaphors, similes, telling rather than showing, and dialogue tags other than said. They're spices. Use them wisely.

The site Mouse linked is good, but can be confusing. That "(noun) (verb) (noun)" thing could easily throw more than a few people for a loop.

Most sentences need an action (the verb) and someone performing the action (the subject). Some sentences also need an object, the thing the subject is performing the action on or with. So, "The man (subject) drove (verb) the car (object)." Active construction is placing the subject before the verb, "The man drove the car." Passive is placing the verb before the subject, "The car was driven by the man."

You can find and highlight (in Word) all instances of "was" and "were" and start there. Not every instance will be passive, but these will be your big offenders. Another big clue is if you see the "by (something)" construction. Find and highlight, then snipe those bastards out of your prose with precision.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Another tricky passive construction is leaving off the subject entirely, such as the "Lantern were held up" sentence above. One way to spot these is if you can add "by zombies" to the end of a sentence and it's still grammatically correct, chances are it's a passive construction. "Lanterns were held up *by zombies*". Passive.

 

[ZombieWife]

Try removing "to be" verbs and replacing with more dynamic verbs. ("To-Be" verbs: is, are, were, was, be, being, etc.)

The man was struck by the lightening. (Man is passive. A thing to strike.)
Lightning struck the man. (Lightening is active. It now has power.)

The dragon was being pushed back into the cave.

VS

The knights pushed the dragon back into the cave.

Of course, it depends on perspective and how much you limit yourself.

Not foolproof but it's a start.

 

[millymollymo]

Thanks to Fishbowl Helmet, I'll have a "zombie" filter when editing anything from this point on. It makes it so much more fun.

 

[prizzley]

There is a place for passive voice. And though it is true that passive voice often looks like the cart before the horse there are still times when you might not want to be clear who that stuff is happening to. Or for that matter who is doing that stuff.

But that's probably the only time(s) it can be justified.