Lucid Writing Advice VII

Their is and old saying that ‘actions speak louder than words’, that also goes to say that ‘ someone talking speaks louder than them not saying it’.

Read the following and see if you get a sense of a dull monotone as you read:

Lucinda turned and watched as the sorceress stalked angrily before her. Her white eyes were ablaze and her wavy white hair bounced in the wind she created. She was only a foot taller than Lucinda, but she had the feeling that she much taller. The sorceress had long arms that Lucinda feared would reach out and strangle her at any moment. But it was her teeth that scared her the most. They were sharp and fanged like a coyotes.

After the first sentence, every other following it deals with the sorceress stalking in. Lucinda stands calmly aside as the writer gives us the description. It would be better if spoken words could express what we need to see. Here it is with dialogue.

Lucinda turned to see the sorceress walking in.
" Bethany, I’m glad that you came-"
" Came? It’s the middle of the night, and I was still asleep when that fool-hearted maid of yours woke me up! I would have still been-"
" Please, Bethany, I know the hour. And it is much too late to be in such a fit."
Bethany blew the air from her lungs as she watch Lucinda pour tea from a pot into teacups. She took one when Lucinda offered it.
" What is it you want to know?" Bethany asked.
Lucinda took a drink from her cup, trying not to laugh at seeing the sorceress’s white hair sticking nearly straight up.
" Where are the books?"
" What books? You drag me in here for this?"
" The one’s with the coveted spells."
Bethany licked her teeth, revealing in a flash the two fangs hanging at the corners of her mouth.
" I burned them all."
" You did what!"
A hand reached out, long and slender. " I said I burned them all Lucinda, and if ask that question again I’ll strangle yo u."

There, much better. The reader now knows that Bethany, the sorceress, is angry in the way she talks. I didn’t even have to say it directly. She rambles at how she was asleep and how that ‘ fool-hearted maid’ woke her up. She wouldn’t talk like that unless she was angry.

I talked about every description that was in the before passage, but I failed to mention that Bethany was taller than Lucinda, but that she appeared much taller. I feared such sentence could be omitted, it wasn’t really worth knowing.

A sure way to scan your sentences to tell if they are in the passive voice is to look for the word ‘was’. In the sentences above where I wrote them in passive voice, almost everyone that was in passive voice had the ‘was’ buried somewhere in it. When I rewrote them into the active I omitted the that word in all of them. Be careful though, because not every sentence with ‘ was’ is active. Changing them can make you inadvertently transpose them for passive:

She was tall. Tall was she. Or a question you didn’t intend. Was she tall?

This is similar as of the topic before. Words like ‘was’ and ‘were’ when you write in the passive voice can make your writing seem hindered and appear as if it is all taking place in the past. Do you intend to say that was how it used to be at one time, or is that how it is now? You must always make yourself clear, you don’t want your readers looking into a muddy pond.

This is where I’ll give the answers to the sentences above that were in passive voice. I rewrote them in the active so you’ll see the difference between them:

So, how did you do? For each one you got wrong go back and see why you missed it.