Dear Aspiring Author is a new weekly column, wherein I’ll cover some of the issues I see during the course of editing various clients’ manuscripts. Using samples and easy-to-understand terminology, I’ll go over the craft and grammar problems and provide suggestions on how you can improve your work-in-progress.
Dear Aspiring Author will help those authors who aspire to become published authors, as well as those previously published authors who aspire to improve/become better writers.
And so, without further ado, here is our first post!
Dear Aspiring Author – Passive vs. Active Writing
You may have heard about this online somewhere, either in a writer’s group, or maybe from a fellow author… Or, maybe you received feedback on one of your manuscripts from an editor, agent or publisher who told you the story contained too much passive writing. Recently, I edited a story for a fellow, and the manuscript contained paragraph after paragraph made up of passive writing.
So, what is passive writing, and how does an author fix a passive sentence by making it active? Do passive sentences equal bad grammar? When should you use passive writing?
First, let’s define a passive sentence. I normally see two kinds. In layman’s terms, a passive sentence is one that either doesn’t have an “actor” (someone performing the action), or one that has the object of the action in as the subject (as the “actor” in the sentence).
Here is an example of the first type of passive sentence – one that is “missing” an actor.
Flowers were delivered on Friday.
What’s missing from that sentence? Who delivered the flowers?
Here’s an example of the second type of passive sentence – the one in which the object of the action is used as the subject (as the “actor” in the sentence):
Flowers were delivered by Gerald on Friday.
This sentence is a little better–at least we know who delivered the flowers–but it’s still passive.
Here are two more examples:
I was hit.
I was hit by the car.
The first example is passive, and it’s missing an “actor.” Who or what hit me? The second sentence is better…at least we now know what hit me, but again, this is still passive writing.
How would we go about making the above samples active? Well, first, we need an actor–someone who can perform the action–and then we need to rearrange the words a little bit, so the actor performs the action.
Gerald delivered flowers on Friday.
The car hit me.
See the difference?
Now, many people think all passive writing is bad, and a lot of authors think all sentences that contain the words WAS or WERE (or other forms of “to be,” such as have been, had been, has been, is, am, were, will be, will have been, are, being) are passive. Neither of those opinions are factual.
So, when is it okay to use a passive sentence? I’ll be honest with you; I don’t like passive writing. Not in fiction. Why? Because when you’re telling a story, every single sentence you write should work as hard as possible. Sentences should move a story along, convey important information, and a writer should make them as vivid as they possibly can make them. This means you should choose the best word (especially nouns and verbs), and write active sentences.
Having said all that, here is an example of a non-passive sentence:
Jill was happy.
The sentence contains a form of “to be” (was), but this is not a passive sentence. It simply describes a state of mind. However, if I saw this sentence in a story, and I felt the author could or (more importantly) should do more to convey the point, I’d ask them to revise. Why? Because this is “telling.” But that’s a whole ‘nother column…one we’ll cover soon!
I hope you enjoyed this first Dear Aspiring Author post. Have questions? Need clarification? Leave me a comment!
And please stop back next Sunday for another Dear Aspiring Author topic!
Noble Expressions 