Amy Sue Nathan

Passive voice = passé

My blog friend Debbie reminded me how much I love Stephen King’s On Writing, and remembering that, I recalled having posted some writing advice from said writing guru.  You can watch that video here.

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One of my favorite parts of King’s book is when he moves his desk out of the middle of his office to a place against the wall, noting that the world doesn’t revolve around him and that he didn’t need to sit there and wait for the stories to pop into his head, that the stories are all out there and he needed to go get them.

He pursues his stories.

King is adamant in his opinion of using active vs. passive voice and in the editing I’ve done for several writers, I’d say that this is the snafu even the best and most seasoned writers run into from time to time.  In novices it’s lack of experience and in experienced writers it can be just a lapse, the failure to re-read and catch something – which is why it’s always good to have more eyes on your work than just your own.

So why is active better than passive?  In life it’s always better to do than not do.

For example:

The entrance exam was failed by half the students.

It makes sense, right?  Of course it does.  But it’s passive.  Think of passive as passé.  And while the adjective passé means out-of-style — the noun passé means an attack (in fencing) that doesn’t hit the target.

And as writers we want to hit our targets — we want our words to be sharp, our thoughts concise, our sentences well-structured.  It doesn’t mean there is no creative license.  It doesn’t mean there no exceptions to the rule.  It does mean you should try your passive sentences in an active voice to make sure it doesn’t serve your story – and your reader – better.

For example, let’s take those same students again:

Half the students failed the entrance exam.

Ah, much better.  It means the same thing but ‘the students failed’ is active while ‘the exam was failed’ is passive.

I am a visual learner, so I picture things in my mind.  Can I picture – truly picture – ‘the exam was failed?’  That makes the exam the subject of the sentence.  Can I picture – truly picture – ‘the students failed?’  Yes I can.  It’s a clear-cut roadmap to the meaning, while the passive version is more of a roundabout way of saying it.

I think for many of us it’s a habit.  When I write quickly – or blog – I use passive voice.  No crime in being passé in rough drafts or online.  But not in a finished, polished piece of writing.

Here’s a list of passive verbs to watch out for in your writing.

is
am
are
was
were
will be
will have been
has been
had been
would have been
being
to be

Here are some other passé verbs worth looking out for:

exists
seems
appears
represents
presents
constitutes
offers
has
acts as
displays
makes
exemplifies
describes
characterizes
shows
occurs
contains

Is this an issue in your writing?  Any suggestions for how to catch those pesky passive verbs aside from using the search function in Word (which I adore)…let us know!