ABNA
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.
|
Running the Gauntlet
March 29, 2008 04:52
Running the Gauntlet
by Ian Thomas Healy
Hello, my name is Ian, and I’m a self-published author.
“Hi Ian,” you all chorus.
A lot of people are curious about self-publishing. What is it? How is it different from conventional publishing? And, of course, can you make any money with it?
To answer those questions, I’d like to share some of my own experiences with dodging the pitfalls of the self-publishing industry.
The Backstory
I am a four-time winner of the National Novel-Writing Month competition – thirty days of scheduled insanity every November where you attempt to write 50,000 words. My 2004 entry was a crazy little book about alien abductions and how a sword-swinging milkman, a reporter, and an army of bikers manage to save the entire world. After completion and a reasonable amount of time passed to let it ferment, I went through it, edited it, and began sending queries around to agents.
Naturally, it got rejected, because that’s what happens by and large when you query projects. The few non-form rejections I got back all said more or less the same thing:
“It’s a great, fun story, but we don’t know how we could sell this.” I was, of course, disappointed, but stayed undeterred and continued to write, instead focusing on other projects. The Milkman went back into the drawer.
Research and Development
In late 2006, I learned I would have a bit of extra “fun money” to play around with, and began to consider the notion of self-publishing The Milkman. There are several talking points around self-publication, but first and foremost has to be cost. It does indeed cost money to publish, although some places charge more than others. But even using someplace like CafePress.com or Amazon’s CreateSpace, which have no set-up fees, you will still have expenses.
Do you like to edit? Are you any good at it? Lots of writers freely admit they hate editing (myself included) and would like to assume their words are perfectly-cut diamonds dropped onto the page. Sadly this is often far from the case. A stigma in the self-publication industry is poor quality. I’ve seen self-published books with numerous errors, from misspelled words to poorly-used punctuation and far worse. Very few self-published authors get their work professionally-edited, and the main reason is that professional editing is expensive when you have to pay for it yourself. Many self-publishing services are happy to offer various levels of editing from content to copy, at ever-escalating prices. So unless you’re willing to pony up the bucks to get some solid editing done, you’re going to have to either do it yourself or have a friend you trust do it. I mostly edited The Milkman myself, along with help from a few readers. Even after the third and final revision, I still know of four errors that crept into the final product.
Let’s say you get your book edited and still have money burning a hole in your pocket. Are you a graphic designer? Do you know how to create an eye-catching cover which will appeal to a prospective buyer? When you’re self-publishing, you have three options. One is to hire someone to design a cover for you; another is to try to do it yourself; or you can take the chance and let the self-publishing company do it for you. Again, you get what you pay for.
Lastly is the unknown expense – that of promotion. Self-published books are not aggressively-marketed by the publisher. They don’t get into chain bookstores or grocery store racks. They don’t get highlighted on book websites. The onus of marketing lies squarely on the author. Want to see your book in a Barnes & Noble or Borders? You have to convince the buyer to stock a couple copies, and often you’ll have to provide those copies yourself to be sold on consignment. Want to get your book reviewed in major publications? You’ll have to send out copies of your book yourself and even then there’s no guarantee you’ll see it, or that the review will be favorable. How much is your time worth when you’re doing legwork, making connections, shaking hands, kissing babies? Because you’re going to have to do it all yourself, or else pay someone to do it for you. You’ll need physical copies of your book, which your self-publisher will be happy to sell to you at a deep discount, which you will most likely be giving away at a complete loss.
The Final Analysis
Is self-publishing worth it? Well, if you want to see your work in print, and you can do so without dropping an arm and a leg (and a spleen, and four fingers, and a retina, etc. etc. etc.), there’s definitely a satisfaction of holding in your hands a book which you wrote yourself. You’ll get to sign copies for your family and friends, and you’ll feel like a million bucks. Will you ever recoup your costs in money and time? Realistically, no. There is a reason that you get an advance from traditional publication. The publisher is willing to risk X amount of money marketing your work for Y in anticipated sales, and Z represents your share of those sales. Publishers have been doing this for a long time; they know how to turn a profit with a book.
One final question to ask yourself … why are you not going with traditional publication? If your book is good enough to sell, somebody will want to publish it. If you’ve gotten nothing but rejections, perhaps your work simply not good enough, and that’s something self-publication will never fix.
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.