Comments on: So you think you can spot the passive voice? Bet you can’t.

By: SarahT

SarahT — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:08:46 +0000

“The lamb’s blood was splattered against the wall.”
Why can’t this be described as a sentence in which the past participle is employed as an adjective? That’s how I read it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not passive voice as it is a statement of fact, not a description of what was done to the lamb’s blood.
That something was done to the lamb to cause the splattered blood is clear. But there’s a significant difference between something being done to the lamb resulting in its splattered blood and something being done to the blood causing it to splatter.

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:32:29 +0000

sharkcrow, you bring up a good point. A few of the comments on DA talk about how confronting the blood/gore is, so perhaps the author intended for it to be a bit more distant.

Kathleen, languorous, YES! It bothered me that some of the changes that the majority of commenters were recommending would, in my opinion, tamper with the author's voice. SonomaLass's comment struck a chord with me: I crave lyricism in my romances.

SonomaLass, there's nothing worse than an ultracrepidarian. (I only know that word because I am one.) I'm not surprised that the execs wanted ownership of nothing. Ye olde PYA at work, plus they probably want to avoid any inadvertent legal consequences if something went wrong.

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one bothered by this. (Ha, see what I did there?)

By: SonomaLass

SonomaLass — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:06:19 +0000

Passive voice is a strange thing; some people don’t know what it is, others think they do but really don’t. As with all language, it serves a purpose and therefore has a place in some writing, although using it to disguise agency/shift responsibility is ethically repugnant to me.
I worked as an editorial consultant with an executive who had been taught the standard “passive voice is evil and wrong” lesson. She saw it when it wasn’t there, and she wanted it rooted out even if the construction seemed (in my professional opinion) appropriate in that context. Overkill! But then again, I worked with two execs who both used passive FAR too much — pages of reports in which no one DID anything. So I’ve seen the ugly extremes at work in business writing, and I can tell you that they both stink.
Fiction is different, of course; characters are agents, and most of the time I think readers want a sense of immediacy, and active voice generally serves better. But for lyrical/descriptive passages, or when there really is no agent to reference, passive may be the better choice. I trust a good writer to make that call, rather than any stringent set of editorial rules. In fact, some of the worst (and funniest) constructions I’ve ever seen are the corrections suggested by Word when its grammar check function notes the use of passive voice. Hilarity often ensues!
Thought-provoking post, Kat — ta!

By: Kathleen O'Reilly

Kathleen O'Reilly — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:11:30 +0000

I like the first sentence as is, although if I were to make a change, I would change “against” to “across”. There’s a poetry in the first sentence that people want to remove. When the sentence is made more active, it reads like a horror novel instead of something more langourous. I’m not sure what the author’s intent was, I was hoping they would weigh in on the project, but they never did.
When I saw the DearAuthor piece, I kept biting my fingers to keep them away from the keys. There were things that I didn’t like in the passage, some clunky moments, and not enough imagery for what should have been an awesome scene, but I liked it (until the character started on the walk). Also, a lot of the readers seemed to assume it was a vamp book, but I don’t think so. I got a ritualistic sort of vibe from it, more historical or alternative universe than vamp. I wish someone would do a ritualistic medieval, because I think it could be way cool… Anyway, rambling…
If you read some of William Safire’s (RIP) stuff on passive voice, many times politicians use it to avoid the inference of guilt. “Mistakes were made.” It’s a deliberately distancing sort of lexicon. Considering the rest of the passage, and the character’s heavy conscience, I wonder if the author was pulling a little of that, either consciously or subconsciously.
And as a last aside, the opening line from The Graveyard Book, a Newberry Award Medal book: “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”

By: sharkcrow

sharkcrow — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:52:07 +0000

Being of the age where grammar wasn’t really taught in schools (if it was, it was at an age so young I can’t remember a thing of it… a verb is a doing word right? jk), I actually had no idea of the difference between active and passive voice until I started learning Latin. (Really NOT fun having to learn English grammar in order to get my head around the grammar rules of another language!)
To be brutally honest, I don’t see why everyone is always up in arms when it is used. It’s like everyone is taught ‘passive voice = bad’. Personally, I LIKE the first sentence as it is – the detachment works for me. I wonder how many people outside literary / english major circles would even be able to tell the difference, and whether they have such an aversion to passive voice.

By: Kat

Kat — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:29:33 +0000

JenB, this is a long reply. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm super interested in what people think about passive voice, and why! Feel free to post an even longer rebuttal. :-D

If a reader pauses after the first sentence to contemplate structure, then she has stopped reading your ms for a second or two after just one line.

That's one of my problems with this. Most people think they can spot the passive voice, and that it's automatically wrong, and that in itself gives them pause. Vicious cycle.

An active first sentence will almost always make a better and stronger impression than a passive first sentence, with very few exceptions.

I question whether a sentence like "The lamb’s blood covered the wall" adds any more punch to the first sentence other than to avoid the appearance of using the passive voice. I don't think it does. Agency in this case doesn't really matter. No one is doing anything at the moment. The blood is just there.

You might argue that "The lamb’s blood covered the wall" is more evocative, and I might agree, but that has nothing to do with the passive voice.

Teaching an author to avoid unnecessary passive structure is like teaching a singer to breathe from her diaphragm rather than from her chest.

I don't believe passive voice is as fundamental to writing fiction as that. Using the passive voice is more like whether or not the singer/composer chooses to prolong a note. It's neither right nor wrong to start off with a slow note. It all depends on the song and the artist, but if you do use it too often, people will fall asleep in the middle of your aria.

Also, what constitutes an 'unnecessary passive structure' is subjective. I would argue that the reading the first sentence isn't enough evidence to make that call. I'd argue that if your first thought is, Passive sentence! Not close enough to the action! then you're criticising based on Strunk & White rather than because the text isn't working. The critique should start with, This sentence doesn't lure me into the story. Why not?

Unfortunately, too often I feel that people say, This doesn't lure me in, not because of any real problem with the text, but because of their preconceived notions about what looks like passive voice. This is what makes me tear my hear out in frustration, especially when they start asking writers to change their words based on misinformation. (For example, many of the comments on the DA thread suggest removing 'was' to make the first sentence 'active'. That's not a simple change from active to passive. That's a change in tense. So what they actually mean is 'start the scene earlier as the blood being spattered'.)

By: Kat

Kat — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:46:16 +0000

Because too many writers have read Strunk & White.

By: JenB

JenB — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:39:15 +0000

I like to avoid passive voice whenever possible, but I don’t think it’s “wrong” or bad. The problem with the First Page example is that the author opens with passive voice. Passive voice in the body of the ms is fine; passive voice in the opening line is weak. The point is that the first line could be stronger: “The lamb’s blood covered the wall” or “Sticky red splatters covered the wall. The lamb’s bleating shrieks…” etc.
The commenters are correct to point this out. The first line isn’t awful, but it could be better. It could be stronger. It could pack a heavier punch. An active first sentence will almost always make a better and stronger impression than a passive first sentence, with very few exceptions.
If a reader pauses after the first sentence to contemplate structure, then she has stopped reading your ms for a second or two after just one line. Fair or not, if the reader (editor, agent, etc.) can’t get through even the first paragraph without thinking “This would be so much better if only…”, then you have a problem. Read the comments, sort out the frequency and severity of the issues the comments address, suck it up, and make the revision(s).
Teaching an author to avoid unnecessary passive structure is like teaching a singer to breathe from her diaphragm rather than from her chest. It doesn’t change the singer’s voice; it only makes it clearer and stronger.

By: wandergurl

wandergurl — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:32:10 +0000

why was there such a massive fuss on passive voice?
Check out http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/passivevoice.html
I am still attempting to understand passive voice :)