Lucid Writing Advice VII

Passive voice, unlike the more excited active voice, gives writing a sense of going no where. The bad thing is that most writers don’t even know their writing in the passive voice until it’s too late...when they finally relax and read their work. In passive voice everything just happens, and objects are acted upon. What do I mean by that? Look at the following passage in passive voice:

The soccer ball was kicked by Alan.

Note how the soccer ball was kicked by Alan, and example of an object being acted upon. Here’s that sentence in the active voice, and believe me its quite easy to fix:

Alan kicked the soccer ball.

Now we have a feeling of action because we have placed this sentence into the active voice. Here are more passive voice passages, and beside them their counterpart in the active voice:

Passive	Active
The grass was stooped by the wind.	The wind stooped the grass.
The glass was filled by Jamie with orange juice.	Jamie filled the glass with orange juice.
The pizza was eaten by the eager friends.	The eager friends ate the pizza.

By now you should get the picture. Everything under Passive was being acted upon instead of something making it happen. See if you can tell which sentences are passive:

1. The bark came from the dog.
2. The window was repaired by dad.
3. Helen ate the popcorn.
4. The moon was round.
5. The covers were pulled by James at the sight of the monster.
6. Valerie hopped onto the boat.
7. The fortress seemed to graze the sky.
8. He left the bucket of water where it was.
9. Orange and red was the sky.
10. Passive or active voice is this sentence in?

Out of those ten, only 5 were passive. Do you know which ones? I’ll tell you at the end of this article so remember which numbers you choose.

In this sentence I shall now contradict myself in saying that in some cases the passive voice is all right to use; such as when a character has a flashback or when you the writer want to describe something that happened in the past. When writing these kinds of scenes its important that you don’t over use the words ‘was’, ‘had’ ‘could’, ‘have’ and ‘been’. There are many more. Here’s a passage to show what I mean:

He remembered the water hitting him. It had been a hot day then, and it was supposed to get hotter. He would have brought his own swimming pool wherever he went had he known that. But this pool, one his friends had, was one he could swim in with more space. It could have been the biggest pool he’d seen, but he’d seen a larger one somewhere else.

There’s a lot of ‘he’d’ , ‘ had beens’ and ‘ haves’. When you right flashbacks just remember not to overdo the past.

LIMITED DIALOGUE

Every story should have at least some dialogue and the more the better. In passive voice there is sometimes a lack for someone speaking. This is done especially when you want to describe one of your characters. What’s the main way many writers do it? Well, they introduce the character and as soon as the reader sees their names they beginning reading at least the next four paragraph detailing that character from eye color to the way their hair blows whenever the wind touches it.