by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Writers of fiction are often told to avoid passive sentences. Nonfiction writers sometimes get the same advice.
The reasons for such admonitions are many. After all, they tend to tug backward on the forward momentum we are usually after. But passive construction can be used effectively, too. When we sense that there would probably be no passive constructions, we should listen. Our writing may improve if we force ourselves to accept passives, regardless of their ugliness. We can utilize what they’re good at in our writing and, at the same time, recognize their flaws so we can avoid them when they are just plain ugly.
Luckily, good editors are here to help. Yours may help you avoid passive constructions by making suggestions to “activate” them. There are times, however, when you must do your own editing. Here are some examples to try your hand at.
Here is your cheat sheet:
For the first you would, of course, make it "The President's proclamation offended me."
For the second, you'll have to provide the intended subject. It might look like this:
"The fuzz watched Catherine."
(So, maybe you'd be more formal and call them coppers!)
The third example might throw you a curve. That's because it isn't a passive sentence, according to the most restrictive definition. Here's the thing: we tend to assume a construction is passive when we see helper verbs and "ing" words. But these are not always passive indicators. That's one more thing for you to figure out in addition to deciding whether you want to avoid a passive construction. You’ll find a complete discussion of the dreaded “ing” words in my book The Frugal Editor.
You can still avoid the not-so-active-sounding helper verb with a mini rewrite:
“Gracie thought Catherine was being silly.”
You might ask, “So, if these slowpoke constructions stall the forward motion of my prose, what are the good reasons for using them?”
Few, if any, etymologists argue that language doesn’t develop or change unless there's need. When we recognize what passive construction and its copycats can do for us, we may grow to love it. Here are reasons you might want to intentionally use passive verbs:
We need to know how to make verbs active, when to leave them alone, and, yep, when to use them to our advantage. That way, we can take a red pen to them when they are likely to brand us as amateurs, occasionally put them to very good use, and even learn to love them.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning novelist, poet, and author of the How To Do It Frugally Series of books for writers. She taught editing and marketing classes at UCLA Extension’s world-renowned Writers’ Program for nearly a decade and carefully chooses to edit one novel she believes in each year. The Frugal Editor, now in its second edition, is a USA Book News award-winner as well as the winner of Reader View's Literary Award in the publishing category. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and the coveted Irwin award. She appears in commercials for the likes of Blue Shield, Disney Cruises (Japan), and Time-Life CDs and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences.
