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Passive Voice and Passive Writing

© Suzanne James

Three things create Passive Voice and Passive Writing: sentence structure, 'to be' verbs, and telling.

To eliminate passive writing from your work, you need to understand the difference between showing, and telling a story.

Telling creates passive writing. The story can have 100% active voice sentences, but is still poor writing. You don't need to master the grammar rules to identify this common mistake. All you need to do is to recognize words that flag passive writing, and then reconstruct your sentences to active voice. Once you know how to do that, you can 'show' the story, instead of 'telling' it.

Sentence Structure, and State-of-Being Verbs Active voice sentences are direct statements. They are more powerful than passive sentences, because they move the character through the scene. In an active voice sentence, the subject is doing the action. In a passive voice sentence, the action is being done to the subject. Another way to identify passive sentences, is to look at the verbs. If they are strong, and you can picture the action, they are active.

Try this exercise. Create a picture in your mind of "thought," or "think." You can't, unless you create an abstract. If I ask you to draw a picture to express the word "run," you can do that. This means that "thought" is a passive verb, and "run" is an active verb.

Here are some passive verbs: broke, meandered, wandered, careened, etc..

Here are some words you'll overuse if writing in passive: had, that, which, and was.

Here are some 'to be,' or state-of-being verbs: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, and been.

The problem comes from one simple grammar rule, past perfect verbs. This states that if an action begins and ends in the past, you should use past perfect verbs, also called state-of-being, or 'to be' verbs.

Active: Mary had a great party. Passive: A wonderful time was had by all.

Active: I book Bill's appointments. Active: I booked all of Bill's appointments. Passive: All his appointments have been booked by me. Passive: All his appointments were booked by me.

Active: Mark returned the books to the library. Passive: Books were returned to the library by Mark.

Writing in active voice enables the reader to turn words into pictures.

Passive voice creates awkward sentences, which don't sound smooth when read out loud.

When to use Passive Writing

You can't write an entire novel in active voice. Sometimes, you must use passive writing for clarity between people, or when you need to create a time line.

The copyright of the article Passive Voice and Passive Writing in Write a Romance Novel is owned by Suzanne James. Permission to republish Passive Voice and Passive Writing in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.