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."
