Passive Aggressive
June 01, 2008 21:12
Passive Aggressive
by Ian Thomas Healy
There is a problem with most writers. It is something that runs rampant through nearly everything we do. No matter how much we are writing, it is pervasive and insidious. It is even running all through this paragraph. It is the passive voice, and I hate it!
Defining the Passive Voice
I’ve chosen to write about it for this month’s column because it represents such a big problem in our work. I see it not only in my own projects, but in nearly every piece I am asked to edit or critique. First, a definition: What exactly is the passive voice? In any proper sentence you have a subject and a verb. At its simplest definition, passive voice uses verbs that don’t represent an action: am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being.
“What’s wrong with that? Everybody uses those all the time when we talk,” you ask.
Well, how we speak is not how we should write. Sure, we’ll all say “I am going to the store,” or “He is such a jerk,” and think nothing of it. But those statements make for poor, dull narrative.
Fixing it
Let’s look at an example. Here’s a simple sentence: There was a man who was running. Sounds comfortable and friendly, doesn’t it? – Like you’d start telling a story around a campfire with that sentence. But look at the subject and verb! There was. And then in the predicate, who was. That, my friends, is an incredibly passive sentence. Okay, let’s start by removing that execrable There was construction – something we all love to use when we write – and cut out that execrable who, leaving us with A man was running. Better, but still passive. Let’s change the operative verb from was to ran and get rid of that running altogether. By the way … words which end in –ing often indicate the presence of the passive voice. More on this later, but back to our sentence. We’ve turned There was a man who was running into A man ran. That’s a boring sentence, certainly, but it’s not passive. The subject, the man, actually did something besides simply exist. He ran. As writers, we must be aware of how we can reword sentences to make them exciting and interesting instead of passive. Obviously, we can take a simple sentence like that and make the man do something far more exciting. A man raced toward the fallen child. That would make me want to read more.
Ing-ing
I am guilty of overusing a specific kind of sentence construction; it is a sneaky way the passive voice gets onto the page. The construction looks like this: A man raced toward the fallen child, breathing heavily from the exertion. The sneaky part is in the second clause. The first part of the sentence is a nice, active clause, but look at that present participle breathing. What’s the subject of this sentence? The man. A man raced works as a subject-verb combination, but A man breathing heavily from the exertion doesn’t work. Even though it’s not actually in the sentence, a was is implied by the present participle. And that means passive voice. There are lots of ways to fix this. Change that breathing to breathed and alter the rest of the sentence to fit (A man raced toward the fallen child and breathed heavily from the exertion.) or divide it into two separate sentences (A man raced toward the fallen child. He breathed heavily from the exertion.). Either way works; it just depends upon your style. I would probably rework the second clause entirely into something a bit less stilted: A man raced toward the fallen child. His breath came in quick gasps as he ran.
Finding it
Sometimes it can be really astonishing just how much passive voice invades our work. We tend to gloss over the most common was-es and is-es when we read, and even when we edit. We’re so used to constructing sentences that use those state-of-being verbs when we speak, they don’t seem out of place in a written piece. I use the following technique in my own work, and certainly recommend you try it.
Use the Find and Replace function of your favorite word-processing program. If your favorite program doesn’t have a Find and Replace function, you might want to upgrade. What you’re going to do is find every was and replace it with was. In other words, you’ll change the formatting to a different color and bold. If you’re really worried, make it an even larger font size. Then go back through and do the same with am, is, are, were, be, been, being. Worried about those –ing words? You can find those too by finding and replacing ing(space) with ing. Now some words (doing, going) will be highlighted by this as well, but you don’t have to change them. If you have any other words you tend to overuse – that and there are both common problems I have – do that too.
Try not to be discouraged at the huge amount of red in your piece.
Instead, go through it a page at a time, and start fixing. Replace those passive verbs with exciting, active ones. I recommend you change the color back as you make fixes so you know what you’ve done and what you haven’t. When you’re done, you’ll have a much stronger piece – which means it will be more saleable and appealing to an editor.
So get out there and be aggressive in eliminating your passive voice, and keep on writing!
Ian Thomas Healy is the author of The Milkman. His manuscript Deep Six: A Just Cause Novel was a Top 100 semi-finalist in the 2007 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award contest. He blogs regularly at http://ianthealy.blogspot.com and http://popcornprinciple.blogspot.com. He also produces a daily webcomic, The Adventures of the S-Team, found at http://ianthealy.comicgen.com. Contact him at ian@ianthealy.com or visit his website, www.ianthealy.com for more information.
by Ian Thomas Healy
There is a problem with most writers. It is something that runs rampant through nearly everything we do. No matter how much we are writing, it is pervasive and insidious. It is even running all through this paragraph. It is the passive voice, and I hate it!
Defining the Passive Voice
I’ve chosen to write about it for this month’s column because it represents such a big problem in our work. I see it not only in my own projects, but in nearly every piece I am asked to edit or critique. First, a definition: What exactly is the passive voice? In any proper sentence you have a subject and a verb. At its simplest definition, passive voice uses verbs that don’t represent an action: am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being.
“What’s wrong with that? Everybody uses those all the time when we talk,” you ask.
Well, how we speak is not how we should write. Sure, we’ll all say “I am going to the store,” or “He is such a jerk,” and think nothing of it. But those statements make for poor, dull narrative.
Fixing it
Let’s look at an example. Here’s a simple sentence: There was a man who was running. Sounds comfortable and friendly, doesn’t it? – Like you’d start telling a story around a campfire with that sentence. But look at the subject and verb! There was. And then in the predicate, who was. That, my friends, is an incredibly passive sentence. Okay, let’s start by removing that execrable There was construction – something we all love to use when we write – and cut out that execrable who, leaving us with A man was running. Better, but still passive. Let’s change the operative verb from was to ran and get rid of that running altogether. By the way … words which end in –ing often indicate the presence of the passive voice. More on this later, but back to our sentence. We’ve turned There was a man who was running into A man ran. That’s a boring sentence, certainly, but it’s not passive. The subject, the man, actually did something besides simply exist. He ran. As writers, we must be aware of how we can reword sentences to make them exciting and interesting instead of passive. Obviously, we can take a simple sentence like that and make the man do something far more exciting. A man raced toward the fallen child. That would make me want to read more.
Ing-ing
I am guilty of overusing a specific kind of sentence construction; it is a sneaky way the passive voice gets onto the page. The construction looks like this: A man raced toward the fallen child, breathing heavily from the exertion. The sneaky part is in the second clause. The first part of the sentence is a nice, active clause, but look at that present participle breathing. What’s the subject of this sentence? The man. A man raced works as a subject-verb combination, but A man breathing heavily from the exertion doesn’t work. Even though it’s not actually in the sentence, a was is implied by the present participle. And that means passive voice. There are lots of ways to fix this. Change that breathing to breathed and alter the rest of the sentence to fit (A man raced toward the fallen child and breathed heavily from the exertion.) or divide it into two separate sentences (A man raced toward the fallen child. He breathed heavily from the exertion.). Either way works; it just depends upon your style. I would probably rework the second clause entirely into something a bit less stilted: A man raced toward the fallen child. His breath came in quick gasps as he ran.
Finding it
Sometimes it can be really astonishing just how much passive voice invades our work. We tend to gloss over the most common was-es and is-es when we read, and even when we edit. We’re so used to constructing sentences that use those state-of-being verbs when we speak, they don’t seem out of place in a written piece. I use the following technique in my own work, and certainly recommend you try it.
Use the Find and Replace function of your favorite word-processing program. If your favorite program doesn’t have a Find and Replace function, you might want to upgrade. What you’re going to do is find every was and replace it with was. In other words, you’ll change the formatting to a different color and bold. If you’re really worried, make it an even larger font size. Then go back through and do the same with am, is, are, were, be, been, being. Worried about those –ing words? You can find those too by finding and replacing ing(space) with ing. Now some words (doing, going) will be highlighted by this as well, but you don’t have to change them. If you have any other words you tend to overuse – that and there are both common problems I have – do that too.
Try not to be discouraged at the huge amount of red in your piece.
Instead, go through it a page at a time, and start fixing. Replace those passive verbs with exciting, active ones. I recommend you change the color back as you make fixes so you know what you’ve done and what you haven’t. When you’re done, you’ll have a much stronger piece – which means it will be more saleable and appealing to an editor.
So get out there and be aggressive in eliminating your passive voice, and keep on writing!
Ian Thomas Healy is the author of The Milkman. His manuscript Deep Six: A Just Cause Novel was a Top 100 semi-finalist in the 2007 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award contest. He blogs regularly at http://ianthealy.blogspot.com and http://popcornprinciple.blogspot.com. He also produces a daily webcomic, The Adventures of the S-Team, found at http://ianthealy.comicgen.com. Contact him at ian@ianthealy.com or visit his website, www.ianthealy.com for more information.