Active Voice versus Passive Voice. by Richard R. Draude

Nothing drives me up a wall quicker than people writing in passive voice. How do you teach people to differentiate between passive and active voice and to avoid passive voice?

The first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice. Most writers believe they should avoid the passive voice, but few can define it or recognize it.

So, the first question, Active Voice how do you define it?

In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence "Al loves Michelle." Al is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Michelle, the object of the sentence.

The Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine” is another example of active voice. The subject of the sentence "I" is the one who is doing the action. "I" is hearing "it," the object of the sentence.

What Is Passive Voice?

In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, "Al loves Michelle," the sentence would read, "Michelle is loved by Al." The subject of the sentence becomes Michelle, but she isn't doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Al's love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Al to Michelle.

“It was heard by me through the grapevine,” is how to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive. You would say not such a catchy title, and you would be right.

Many people believe all sentences containing a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn't true. For example, in the sentence "I am holding a pen" is active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is "The pen is being held by me."

Notice that the subject, the pen, isn't doing anything in that sentence. It's not taking an action; it's passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn't taking a direct action.

Is Passive Voice Always Wrong?  Passive voice isn't wrong, but it's often a poor way to present your thoughts.

It is important to remember, passive sentences aren't incorrect, though often they are not the best way to phrase your thoughts. Passive voice can be awkward and at times it’s vague. Passive voice is usually wordy. Replacing a passive sentences with an active one, will tighten your writing.

When you put sentences in passive voice, it's easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, "Michelle is loved," is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don't know who loves Michelle.

Ronald Reagan said, “Mistakes were made.” when he referred to the Iran-Contra scandal. Politicians are famous for usiing passive voice. It’s a convenient way to obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons include, “Shots were fired,” and “Bombs were dropped.” Pay close attention and listen for examples of passive voice, when you watch the TV news reports or listen to radio news.

Also, a reader named Priscilla commented that businesses at time will use passive voice. It sounds better to write, "Your electricity will be shut off," than "We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power."

Crime Reports: Is Passive Voice OK?

Sometimes passive voice does have its advantages. For example, if you don’t know who is taking the action, then the person can’t be named. It can be quite common, especially with crime reports. For example, a security guard submitting his report will write "The store was robbed." This is because, if the thief isn’t captured right away, then nobody knows the robber’s identity when the report is files.

Can Passive Voice Work in Fiction Writing?

Passive voice is also sometimes useful in fiction writing. For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, "The cookies were stolen," instead of "Somebody stole the cookies."

The difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “My cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In active voice, “Somebody stole my cookies,” the attention would focus

on the unknown thief.

Passive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it's not usually a good choice when you're writing nonfiction and you want your writing to be clear.

Passive Voice is Recommended for Science Writing?

Scientists are the exception for passive writing. They are encouraged to write in passive voice. It lends a sense of objectivity to their writing. Passive voice takes them, their actions, and opinions out of the experimental results. I find it odd. It feels as if they are trying to hide that real people did the experiments.

Passive voice has its place. In fiction its place is in dialogue. People speak in passive voice. “I already went to the store.” or “She was here an hour ago.” The use of any “to be” verbs, was, were, had, etc, will render a sentence passive in most cases. In your exposition or narrative, passive voice should and must be avoided. Keep your narrative in active voice and the scenes as seen through your main character’s eyes. (POV) This moves your story along and keeps your audience involved. Passive voice slows down your narrative and can take your reader out of the story.

It can turn into author intrusion. (The author telling the reader what he or she thinks the reader needs to know.) That’s a subject for my next blog.

Does Word Count Really Matter? By Denice Whitmore, Director of Editing for Mystic Publishers, Inc.

As a writer, I worry about word count. I want to meet my writing goals for the week. I want to create a vivid picture for my readers. And, publishers have minimum word count requirements for each genre. So as I’m writing, I keep these things in mind.

But as an editor, the last thing on my mind is word count. As a matter of fact, I frequently remove words. A lot of words. Sometimes I feel as if I have two personalities as writer and editor. I have to remember which hat I’m wearing at any given time.

When I have my writer’s hat on, I love to free write. I let the words flow on the page making all the same mistakes I would edit out of someone else’s work. Getting my ideas on the page and to a place where I can flesh them out is my goal. I don’t worry about rules or word count when I write a chapter for the first time. I may have some bullet points jotted down of things I need to accomplish in the chapter but quite often as I free write a better idea will come to me. Something that never occurred to me in my pre-write process will manifest itself on the page leaving me staring at the screen in wonder. It sometimes changes the direction of my story or develops a character in ways I hadn’t thought of. For me, it’s where the creativity happens. If I rigidly worried about writing rules or word count, I don’t believe I would have the same outcome.

I recently finished the first draft of my first book. My word count fell around 45,000 words. That’s about 10,000 words short of a minimum requirement for my genre. I am working on my second draft. I am adding scenes, changing one character’s personality, adding a character earlier in the book and giving him a bigger part in the plot and cleaning up the narrative. I am also changing from third person to first person point of view so my readers can better relate to my main character.

So now that I have my editor’s hat on, what has changed? I will look for unnecessary words like, that, and had. I will look for weak verbs like was, and replace them with stronger verbs. I will remove ‘ly’ words or adverbs and if necessary replace them with stronger verbs. I will look for passive phrases and make them active. And many other things that an editor should do. It is not uncommon for me to open a chapter that is 20 pages and whittle it down to 18.

It’s not that I am looking for words to delete. That is not the purpose of editing. My job as an editor is to make sure you have clear, vivid sentences that create a picture in the readers mind. To make sure the writing is concise and easy to understand. That the writer doesn’t bog down the story with author intrusion explaining things to the reader. To make sure that the ups and downs flow with the right amount, and right kind, of tension in each scene. That there are no unanswered questions (unless it has a sequel. Spoilers!) and a feeling of resolution at the end of the story.

Editing is so much more than just content or grammer. A good comprehensive editor can take your manuscript and enhance it to be your best work.   They can maintain your voice, identify plot holes, identify character inconsistencies and help build tension in your scenes. A good comprehensive editor wants you to succeed because in turn they succeed.

So in your process, don’t be so concerned about word count. Yes, you want to meet your publisher’s word count requirements. Yes, you want your editor to have some wiggle room because they will cut your word count down. But you don’t want to sacrifice your creativity to meet someone else’s standard. Create the best work you can do. Push the limits, try new things in your writing. Don’t be so worried about details like word count that you stifle your creativity to make it fit in the perfect word count box. Be the best writer you can be and the rest will fall in place. But most important don’t forget to have fun!

Keep writing!

For more information on standard word counts for different genre’s, check out the link below and read Chuck Sambuchino’s article in Writer’s Digest.

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post

Mystic Publishers Employee Bios: RICHARD DRAUDE, DIRECTOR of GRAPHICS & IT

My first dabble into writing happened in the fifth grade. While riding the school bus, I heard my classmates talking about their book reports. I realized I’d ignored the assignment and was in a lot of trouble. Arriving on the playground I pulled out my binder and penned a fictional book report about a set of twins and called the fictitious book Double Trouble. I added a couple of short paragraphs about the problems they created and handed it in. I don’t remember the grade, but I did complete the assignment.

By eighth grade I was deep into the Hardy Boys. I never read the entire series, having a mild form of Dyslexia, (discovered later in my life, the main reason I did things backwards) Also I probably would have fit today’s definition of a child with ADD. Never-the-less I finished high school. My stint in the Navy was my first contact with Science fiction, E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Skylark series. I devoured it and a lot of other book in the same genre. I also kept up with my love of mysteries. Another series I followed is the Travis McGee series, John D. McDonald.

In 1991 when Jo Wilkins approached me with the idea of co-authoring a science fiction book, I jumped at the chance. (I had to relearn how to write properly, but I did, with a lot of help. We’ve reissued our first book after a complete rewrite. The first book in my new series The MacKenna Saga is out. The second is due to be released in November.