In high school English, a lesson I struggled with talked about active versus passive voice. I thought to myself, why is this important, and when will I ever need to use this. Maybe those thoughts lead me to not care about the subject matter taught. However, in college I discovered a passion for writing. This caused me to read books about writing, read blogs on writing, and start writing myself. That’s when I realized the importance of writing in active voice. So, why does it matter?
Often, when we pick up a new book we can quickly tell if we will enjoy it or end up putting it down. The style, sentence length, chapter lengths all factor into our decision to continue reading. Sometimes readers put down a book because there’s too much telling and not enough showing, or the main character falls flat and is boring to read about. Passive voice causes some of these issues. If the author used more active, maybe we would have been more invested into the story. Let’s dive right into the lesson.
The Subject, Verb, and Predicate
First, we have to discuss what makes a sentence a sentence. The most basic sentence really only needs two things, a subject and a verb. Most sentences however, contain much more than that. They contain a full predicate.
The Subject- The subject of a sentence, is who or what the sentence is about. The easiest way to describe a subject is by using proper nouns, John, Lydia, Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln presided over the United States. Abraham Lincoln is the subject of the sentence. Obviously, subjects are not always proper nouns. They can be cats, dogs, a microwave, whatever the sentence is about.
The Verb- The verb is the action word of a sentence. The subject does an action. Take the previous example. Abraham Lincoln presided over the United States. Presided is the verb of the sentence. The subject did something. Oftentimes, the verb is the first word in the predicate.
The Predicate- The predicate contains the verb and verb phrases. The verb phrase is those helping words to make a complete sentence. Once again using the previous example: Abraham Lincoln presided over the United States. The verb starts the predicate and everything until the period is the full predicate. Abraham Lincoln presided, is a full and complete sentence since it includes the subject and action word. However, the sentence does not include all the information we want to get across.
Active and Passive Voice
Hopefully, what’s written above is all review and stuff you already knew. If not that’s okay too. It’s always great to learn new stuff. Now that we finished the simple stuff let’s get into active and passive voice.
Look at this sentence below:
The dog was fed by me.
In that sentence the dog is the subject, fed is the verb, and fed by me is the predicate. This sentence is an example of passive voice. The subject of the sentence is not the one doing the action. The subject is receiving the action, making the subject passive to the action done. The predicate is the one that does the action. Authors and readers find this sentence to be a poorly written sentence. The sentence written is weak. Imagine reading an entire book where the main character is not the one doing the actions but is the one actions are done to. To me, that sounds like a terrible read. No one wants to read about a passive main character. We want to see the main character driving the plot forward with his or her actions. A simple revision can fix this sentence to make it stronger.
I fed the dog.
Now, the subject is me. The verb remains the same but the new predicate is the dog. In the previous sentence the subject does the action on the predicate instead of the other way around. Boring and slow writing can often be attributed to the passive voice. Here we will look at a few more examples.
Passive: The marathon was ran by five hundred people.
Active: Five hundred people ran the marathon.
Passive: The car was driven around the racetrack.
Active: The racer drove the car around the racetrack.
Here are some common words used in passive voice: am, is, were, was, being been. Other examples include present progressive verbs such as: is running, is driving, is feeling. A lot of these words can be remedied by alternatives or stronger verbiage.
Feelings in writing are considered passive voice. I am sad, I am mad. Simply using a verb removes the passive voice and makes the writing improve. I felt sad, I felt mad. Likewise, with the present progressive changing the verb removes the passive voice. Here is an example. John is running in the marathon. This sentence is a little ambiguous and, well, passive. There are alternatives such as John ran in the marathon, or John runs in the marathon, depending on the tense you want to use.
Conclusion
In writing, rules are meant to be broken. Take this quote by Charles Dickens, for example.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Dickens uses passive voice to his advantage here. He establishes a sense of urgency and helplessness to the historical powers at play. By using passive voice continually in one sentence, Dickens is able to captivate the readers attention for the ensuing narrative waiting for them. While Dickens is a fine example of an exception, I wouldn’t recommend opening your short story/novel with as much passive voice as he does.
We can’t use active voice in 100 percent of our sentences. Even books written by great authors will include some passive sentences, and that’s okay. However, if more sentences are passive than active that is a book worth putting down. Are there examples on when to use passive voice? Of course there are.
Detective books, murder mysteries, crime books, use passive voice because who committed the crime is often not known. Sentences such as these: The knife was placed on the table. The body was placed in the fetal position. While, I can easily revise these sentences to make them active, the author wants the person who did the actions to remain unknown. However, I truly believe a stronger active voice can be used to convey the same thing, such as: Someone placed the knife on the table. The detective walked into the room and found the body lying in the fetal position.
Good writing uses mainly active voice. If you want to write something that better captivates your audience, using the active voice is preferred. I hope this helps you in your endeavors to improve everything you write. Passive versus active voice is a difficult lesson to learn, but with some practice, editing, and revision anyone can turn weaker writing into the much better active writing. Do you have any questions or need some help with passive and active voice? Leave a comment below and we will definitely get back to you.
As always, happy reading and writing!
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