Unsolicited Advice: Passive Writing

The more I write—and specifically, the more I edit—the more I realize I still have a lot to learn. (Who’da thunk?) And I’ve noticed one particular issue both in my own novels and in published books.

Passive Writing.

Now, for those not in the know, an author uses passive writing when he or she relies on “to be” verbs such as “am”, “is”, “are”, “was”, “were”, etc… Also, just so we’re on the same page, active writing employs verbs of action rather than verbs of being. Did I make that confusing enough? Good, okay, moving on.

For starters, passive verbs perform many great jobs, but they have one great flaw. They tell rather than show. If I were to say, “The cow is angry,” it would be a statement of fact. By my word choice, I have conveyed the necessary information to you, and that would be fine if I were writing an informative article (I think). But novels deal with the imagination, and that means the reader should get involved as well. So that’s where active writing comes in. Rather than simply telling you what you need to know, it’s my responsibility to go deeper than that. Instead of saying, “The cow is angry,” I could write, “The cow snorted, lowered its head, and gouged the earth with its hoof.”

In the first example, I took the easy route—I simply told you what was going on. But in the second example, I gave you three vital (and hopefully interesting) bits of information, and then trusted you to come to the proper conclusion on your own. By using the passive verb “is”, I wasn’t necessarily trying to communicate that I think my readers are too stupid to look at the evidence and then figure out the cow’s emotional state, but I wasn’t trusting you to figure it out yourself, either.

Here are some more examples that (hopefully) show why passive verbs make for weaker writing:

 

The woman was old.

With her grey hair pulled into a bun above her wrinkled face, the woman shuffled along, her joints creaking.  

 

Once the horsemen were through, the gate was shut behind them.

Once the horsemen had ridden through, the gates swung shut behind them.

 

He was tired.

His shoulders sagged, and he struggled to keep his eyes open.

 

The rope was frayed.

The rope had begun to fray.

 

There is a dresser on the other side of the room.

A dresser stands on the other side of the room.

 

As far as words go, passive verbs are boring. With them, you serve as merely an onlooker, watching from the sidelines as the drama unfolds—you become the audience in the theater, the person flipping through the photo album. Like the verbs, your role is passive. But with active verbs, you enter into the story as though you belong to it, as though you can take part in the narrative. Which option would you prefer?

That’s not to say you should never use passive verbs again. They do have their place as well. When I stumble across something passive in my story, though, I have to ask myself whether a more active word choice would work better in its place. And, nine times out of ten, I find the answer is yes.

Just to drive my point home, let me show you how passive writing effects, not only individual sentences, but the entire flow of the story:

 

"There is a dog. I see it out the window. The dog is big and brown, and his ears are perked. I am sure he is listening to something, but I cannot hear it myself. Maybe there is a rabbit in the brush across the road. Maybe the rabbit is sitting with its paws up and its nose twitching. Maybe it smells the dog. If it does, I’m sure it’s afraid."

 

Now see what happens when I make this active:

 

"When I lean out the window, I see the dog, sitting there all big and brown with his ears perked. He must hear something I can’t. Maybe he senses a rabbit hiding in the brush across the road, sitting with its paws up and its nose twitching at the sharp canine scent. I can only imagine how the poor critter’s little heart must be racing."

 

Now it’s your turn. If you’d like, try rewriting the paragraph below in the comments section using active verbs—and feel free to think outside the box and tweak the sentence structures if you have to:

 

"The princess was sad. The halls were dark, and the sound of her feet was loud as she walked toward the exit. On the other side of the door was her destiny. Or maybe it was her doom. To her, the two were the same thing. She wasn’t happy to be here, and every moment she lingered was torture."