Avoiding passive voice?

Your post doesn't seem to have an issue with passive voice. Passive voice doesn't have anything to do with run-on sentences, though.

A run on sentence is one where two or more independent clauses are joined together without appropriate punctuation. They can occur in both passive and active voice sentences. For instance:

My dog is a terrier she always digs holes and barks.

This is a run-on because you would need a semicolon between terrier and she, or a comma and coordinating conjunction. Both clauses are also active voice.

Passive voice has a place in fiction. It's something you'd use when you want to emphasize the subject of a sentence as the recipient of its main action. But if it's overused, it makes for indirect, cumbersome prose.

By the way, the italicized clause in the previous sentence is passive voice. The test you can use to check if a clause or sentence is passive voice is if you can add the phrase "by zombies" to the end, and it makes sense, it's passive voice. Sentences can be a mix of passive and active voice too.

So some examples of passive voice sentences:

He was dragged to the dungeon in chains.

"He" is the subject of the sentence, but he is the recipient of its main action. Who or what is dragging him? We don't know. But we could add what is dragging him if we wish. By the guards, or by zombies

An active version of the sentence would have to include the entities doing the dragging:

The guards dragged him to the dungeon in chains.

Here's a mixed sentence:

Thrown from the horse, she hit the ground hard.

The first clause is passive, but the second one is active.

Now to change the two examples into active voice, you'd have to include who or what did the action.

So:

The horse threw her, and she hit the ground hard.

The only suggestion I can give you for catching excessive use of passive voice is to put what you've written aside for a bit and come back to it. Or try reading your sentence aloud. Sometimes these techniques can make it easier to get that distance you need when editing. Mistakes won't cripple your novel unless you fail to catch and fix them when you revise, rewrite, polish etc.

Here are some links about passive voice and about run on sentences:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/01/

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/what-are-run-on-sentences

RileyGardner1836 said:

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on this. As it turns out when I write (I've been aware of this) my writing often turns up in a passive tone and makes for a frustrating read-through and confusing sentence structure as well as run-on sentences. In other words, a whole nasty mess 'a things.

Has anyone else successfully pushed past this problem? I've noticed it creeping up in all my writing and can't seem to stop myself from writing in that fashion to where I worry it might cripple the novel I'm working on as a whole.

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Can you give examples of what you think 'passive voice' is? A lot of people think they know but they don't really and the fact that you describe a passive 'tone' in your writing is making alarm bells ring.

Use passive voice where it's applicable. ie - where the emphasis is on the subject's reception of the verb's action.

Don't use it unless you want to keep the focus on the subject as a recipient of the action.

It's better to use passive voice than to do an abrupt POV shift in order to avoid it.

But - examples are good. Show us examples of what you mean and we'll be able to help you.

What Roxx and Rufus said. Examples would help to see where your issues are. Most people -- even seasoned writers -- seem to have trouble identifying what the passive voice actually is, going by previous posts in this subforum.

Or, if by passive tone, do you mean your protagonist is reactive instead of active? As in, your central character doesn't really drive the plot, or they're only responding to things that happen, or along for the ride instead of making the story events happen?

There are some great stories with these kinds of characters, though they take careful handling. It might be genre dependent too.

There are also stories where the main character starts out passive or reactive, but assuming a more active, confident, plot-driving role is part of their arc.

Now that you're aware of it, you just need to go through your chapters weeding it out, and you'll eventually override your old habits and form new ones.

Regardless of what you mean by "passive" (and I get the sense from the OP that the word is being used as a synonym for "weak", rather than in the strict grammatical sense of "passive voice"), advice to avoid it entirely is advice to avoid, entirely. There are situations in which passive voice sentence constructions are both appropriate and desirable. The trick is to recognize those situations, and that's where a lot of inexperienced writers fail. The general problem is that of falling back on passive constructions as a default, and having far too many of them, which would be better and less wordy rendered in an active voice construction.

caw

I have pushed through it. I don't let using the passive voice bother me. There are times aand places for it. When I find the passive voice bothering me, I realize that there is something else wrong, so I go out for a drink.

I hope that you also will push you way past the problem of worrying about the passive voice.

King Neptune said:

I have pushed through it. I don't let using the passive voice bother me. There are times aand places for it. When I find the passive voice bothering me, I realize that there is something else wrong, so I go out for a drink a drink is gone out for by me.
.

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caw

If you know what passive voice is, you don't have to push past it. You avoid it simply by not writing a passive sentence. If you don't know what passive voice is, then you can't avoid it. So learn what makes sentences passive.

As for run-on sentences, this is tougher. It sounds like you need to sit down with a good grammar book. Find of that's at seventh grade level, and study it. Everything you will ever need to know as a writer will be in that book. Get a teacher's homeschool version. Spend a couple of weeks going through it, and you should solve every problem you have.

Jamesaritchie said:

As for run-on sentences, this is tougher.

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Nope. If anything, recognizing a run-on (fused) sentence is easier than recognizing passive voice construction. But, yes, people really do need to study basic grammar a hell of a lot more than they apparently do.

caw

I am guilty. For what? Run - on sentences of course.

Is anyone here a master at noticing verb tense consistency? I am referring to the first chapter of my novel. It has been edited multiple times, but something doesn't feel quite right as I am really striving for technical perfection. If anyone loves spotting verb tense inconsistency and wouldn't mind reading one chapter, please let me know. Perhaps we could work out a compensation deal. Thanks!!

katherine444 said:

Is anyone here a master at noticing verb tense consistency? I am referring to the first chapter of my novel. It has been edited multiple times, but something doesn't feel quite right as I am really striving for technical perfection. If anyone loves spotting verb tense inconsistency and wouldn't mind reading one chapter, please let me know. Perhaps we could work out a compensation deal. Thanks!!

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1. The best way to do this is to post an excerpt in the Share Your Work forum. BUT, you have to have 50+ posts at AW before you're allowed to do that. However, looking at other's works in that forum is okay, and in fact a pretty good idea.

2. "Verb tense consistency" has nothing whatever to do with the subject of this thread, passive voice. Just in case you're conflating those two things.

caw

As an editor, I hear that old adage "Avoid using passive voice" and I always wonder, "Why?". There is a time and place for it, and especially in fiction, it can sometimes work better than active for you, adding to the tone and atmosphere and music of the prose that you intend as an author. I think that, as Roxx says, the problem comes when you use it as a habit or crutch, and it makes your work difficult for the reader to decipher. I would like to suggest something for you, for what it's worth: stop thinking about "passive voice" altogether. You're obsessing over the technical. Rather, think about, "Is this clear to my reader? And is it the feeling that I intend?" Just concentrate on those.

I love the example Roxx used, so I want to repeat it, "He was dragged to the dungeons in chains." Now, I really love this sentence. Technically it is in the passive voice (you know that because of the word "was" before the verb). But - and more importantly - it works to enhance the prose. "He" is, I assume, a victim in this scene. To word the sentence in the passive sense emphasizes his victimization. He is so powerless that he is being dragged in chains. The reader sees the word "he" first and so subconsciously understands "he" as the most important element of the sentence/thought. If you were to say, "The guards dragged him to the dungeon in chains.", which is the active tense, it isn't as powerful because the reader's mind processes "guards" first as the important element in the sentence.

In short, stop thinking about what is passive. Think about the music of your writing - listen to it. Think about what atmosphere it is building and how understandable it is to the reader. If you learn to do this, I think you will find that your problem takes care of itself.

blacbird said:

But, yes, people really do need to study basic grammar a hell of a lot more than they apparently do.

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That resonated. Often when I am asked to critique an aspiring writer, my most accurate reply would be: When you got all those C's and D's in English, I'll bet you weren't thinking about ever trying to be a writer, were you? This problem gained in prevalence with the rise of easy (and free) self-publishing.

Sloane said:

As an editor, I hear that old adage "Avoid using passive voice" and I always wonder, "Why?". There is a time and place for it, and especially in fiction, it can sometimes work better than active for you, adding to the tone and atmosphere and music of the prose that you intend as an author.

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In another thread, I pointed out that if you'll read the first two chapters of Lord of the Rings, you'll find enough passive voice to make the heads of passive voice wonks explode. They also contain numerous sentences that many people would misidentify as passive voice.

In addition to your example, I also will use passive when I'm constructing a scene intended to relax the readers.

I also think that used judiciously, a well planned passive voice sentence can provide some variety in an otherwise unrelenting sequence of actions.

I had to work hard on this, because in earlier days my natural tendency was to write passive voice carelessly. It seemed to often carry a sense of erudition, which I suppose makes sense, since scientific papers are intentionally rife with passive voice. The sense of erudition wasn't worth the overload of weak sentences.

Sloane said:

"He was dragged to the dungeons in chains." Now, I really love this sentence. Technically it is in the passive voice (you know that because of the word "was" before the verb).

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Just to clarify, nope, the word was preceding the verb does not make a sentence passive voice.

For instance: He was standing by the bar.

Not passive.

You need to have the action of the sentence performed on its subject instead of by its subject.

He was dragged to the dungeon in chains. He was dragged by something or someone, though it's not mentioned in this sentence.

You could also say: He was hauled to the dungeon in chains by zombies.

But you can't say: He was standing in front of the bar by zombies (well, not unless zombies is actually what he was standing next to). The point is, "he was standing" is used to create the past progressive tense in this case.

And it's possible to have a passive-tense clause without a "to be" verb at all.

Blinded by the sun, I didn't see the pedestrian until it was too late.
or even just:

Blinded, I didn't see the pedestrian until it was too late.

With this sentence, the initial clause is passive, and the second one is active.