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Naw, that's ok. I already changed my name today anyway! Check out my MySpace page to see my name of the day!
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Naw, that's ok. I already changed my name today anyway! Check out my MySpace page to see my name of the day!
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Any of those could be right in the right place. Sentences don't exist except that they are surrounded by other sentences to make up paragraphs. The paragraphs form scenes. The scenes form chapters.
You can have present tense thoughts in a story written in past tense, the same as you can have present tense dialog. E.g., "Let's go to the store," she said.
You might want to figure out how tlo differentiate thoughts from other dialog. (Many people italicize.)
Be careful with questions in narration: They can give the impression that the author doesn't know either. (The author and the narrator being different.)
You might try rewriting the piece in close-third, then re-rewriting it back into first person.
Thanks...
...for that Jim. I read through it again last night, looking for thoughts with question marks and removed just a couple that I thought were a bit unnecessary and heavy-handed. I think the rest are okay. I rejected the italics idea early on. I don't think I need them. Since the whole thing is written in first person, the thoughts flow nicely in the narration (I think).
Your last suggestion gave me goose pimples (bumps)! I've already completed 11 full edits. I don't think I can take many more!
Thanks again.
...for that Jim. I read through it again last night, looking for thoughts with question marks and removed just a couple that I thought were a bit unnecessary and heavy-handed. I think the rest are okay. I rejected the italics idea early on. I don't think I need them. Since the whole thing is written in first person, the thoughts flow nicely in the narration (I think).
Your last suggestion gave me goose pimples (bumps)! I've already completed 11 full edits. I don't think I can take many more!
Thanks again.
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Time to let go.
Yes, I think you're right. I will resume querying in a few days. I sent a few pages out to 2 agents in December: 1 rejection, the other hasn't responded.
It's in really great shape now!
Yes, I think you're right. I will resume querying in a few days. I sent a few pages out to 2 agents in December: 1 rejection, the other hasn't responded.
It's in really great shape now!
Another question
Hi Uncle Jim,
Sorry to bother you again,
but could you explain to me the difference between active and passive constructions? I read people's comments all over the place about this, but I don't understand what they are saying. Maybe you could give me some examples.
Thanks
Hi Uncle Jim,
Sorry to bother you again,
but could you explain to me the difference between active and passive constructions? I read people's comments all over the place about this, but I don't understand what they are saying. Maybe you could give me some examples.Thanks
The words "passive" and "active" get horribly overloaded when talking about writing.
If we're talking about verbs and sentence construction, "active" means the agent of action is the subject of the sentence, and "passive" means the recipient of the action is the subject of the sentence. The agent is relegated to a prepositional phrase, or missing altogether.
Active: I broke the titanium encrusted chafing dish.
Passive: The titanium encrusted chafing dish was broken by me.
Active: I was biting the flying spigot with my canines.
Passive: The flying spigot was bitten by me with my canines.
Copular: He was a swirl of chartreuse and mango.
Don't let people convince you that the mere presence of a linking verb indicates the use of a passive verb form. In English, we use linking verbs for all sorts of things. e.g, the copular, and the progressive verb tenses, as well as passive verb forms.
If we're talking about verbs and sentence construction, "active" means the agent of action is the subject of the sentence, and "passive" means the recipient of the action is the subject of the sentence. The agent is relegated to a prepositional phrase, or missing altogether.
Active: I broke the titanium encrusted chafing dish.
Passive: The titanium encrusted chafing dish was broken by me.
Active: I was biting the flying spigot with my canines.
Passive: The flying spigot was bitten by me with my canines.
Copular: He was a swirl of chartreuse and mango.
Don't let people convince you that the mere presence of a linking verb indicates the use of a passive verb form. In English, we use linking verbs for all sorts of things. e.g, the copular, and the progressive verb tenses, as well as passive verb forms.
I was all right as far as here (but what's an agent?)
The next bit threw me completely:
Euclid - this thread finally helped me get the hang of it. There are a couple of posts that explain it all nice and simple ( for my simple brain)
Your basic sentence has three things: An action, something that DOES the action, and something the action happens to.
The something that is DOING the action is the agent.
If the agent is the subject of the sentence, then it's active:
Euclid threw the ball.
Euclid is the agent, doing the throwing, and the ball is the object, being thrown. "threw" is the action, or verb. Since the agent is the subject, this is active voice.
If the thing acted upon is the subject, then it's passive:
The ball was thrown by Euclid.
Here the ball is the subject of the sentence, and since it's what the action happened to, we're in passive voice.
I think the point about the "copular" thing is that a common sign of a passive construction is the use of "was" (or "were", etc), but that just seeing "was" doesn't make a sentence passive:
The ball was thrown: passive
The ball was red: active
It's not even just "was" with a verb form:
I was riding my bike: active.
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The agent is the person or thing doing the action.
Consider: I broke the titanium encrusted chafing dish. The action is broke. Who did the breaking? I did. So the agent in this sentence is I. And the subject of the sentence is I, so this is an active construction.
Consider: The titanium encrusted chafing dish was broken by me. The action is was broken. Who did the breaking? I did. So the agent is I. But in this sentence, the subject is chafing dish. The subject of the sentence (chafing dish) is not the same as the agent (I), so this is a passive construction.
Consider: The titanium encrusted chafing dish was broken. This time we don't know who or what did the action, but it isn't the chafing dish. So again this is passive.
Dale
Was is also found in active voice, but many people mistakenly think those constructions are passive, too.
Marvin was hungry.
Here was is a copula (aka linking verb). It links the subject, Marvin, with a state or condition, hungry. There's more to say about copulas, but I'll leave that to another post. Copulas are active voice.
Marvin was eating soup.
Was eating is progressive (aka continuous) aspect. It can be troublesome for a reason I'll leave to another post as well, so it does behoove a second look, but it is NOT passive voice. (Progressive aspect and passive voice can occur together--the soup was being eaten--but they're two separate attributes.)
Key identifying features when Is or Was is present:
Is/Was <adjective> = active voice, copula
Is/Was <noun> = active voice, copula
Is/Was <verb>-ing = active voice, progressive aspect
Is/Was <verb>-ed (including irregular forms) = passive voice
That thread...
...was read through by me. Still not completely convinced. I think there are sneaky places where passive constructs hide and are not so easy to see. (was that one?)
I printed out the long post by Dawnstorm for further study.
...was read through by me. Still not completely convinced. I think there are sneaky places where passive constructs hide and are not so easy to see. (was that one?)
I printed out the long post by Dawnstorm for further study.
In summary then, it's okay to be active and copulate, but not to be passive.
I think I got it.
caw
Almost always true! But not so much with experience verbs. "I felt bruised" is active, even though I am not doing anything, I am experiencing something, and in fact something seems to have been done to me!
But you don't have to worry about these cases -- as far as I remember, they're all places where one would never ever try to use a passive (Bruised was felt by me?
)Absolutely true. But the thing is, these are not places where one generally needs to worry about them for writing purposes, only for linguistic-analysis purposes. If you want to be a language geek about them there is all sorts of neat complex stuff. But if you don't in this particular case, you can avoid it easily enough; the simpler explanations are plenty to go on.
Almost always true! But not so much with experience verbs. "I felt bruised" is active, even though I am not doing anything, I am experiencing something, and in fact something seems to have been done to me!
But you don't have to worry about these cases -- as far as I remember, they're all places where one would never ever try to use a passive (Bruised was felt by me?
I'm fairly certain "I felt bruised" is a copula. "Bruised" is functioning as an adjective there, not as a verb. All the experience verbs are copulas. Err, most (all?) of them also have a non-copula meaning. "I felt the wall." That's an ordinary transitive(1) verb. It can be made passive: "The wall was felt by me."
(1)Only transitive verbs have a passive voice. No object; no passive voice.
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Ya, absolutely; feel is the verb, bruised is an adjective. I have been simplifying and leaving things out.
However, I've been doing that for reasons:
1) people who have trouble with this really don't need to try and figure out when an -ed is an adjective and when it's a verb. Because that's yet another damn hard thing.
1b) Therefore in some cases it's not real useful to say that passives only apply to transitive verbs, because figuring out transitivity is not always easy.
2) Copula is used so often as only "to be" that I've found it's best not to complicate matters.
3) Writers who are worried about passive/active distinctions are generally good at working from examples rather than linguistic babble, or it wouldn't be a problem.
Anyway. I might be right or wrong, but that's my motivation
Personally, I wouldn't be sad if a strange sort of amnesia struck this particular rule from our collective memories. There's nothing wrong with the passive voice; it's chief problem is that it's been named by grammarians with little flair for PR. I'll call it the promotive voice from now on, as it promotes the object of a verb or prepostion to subject of a verb. Would you like the promotive voice better than the passive voice?
You know, I read this as a what-if for a novel, but I don't think it's one that would sell
What's wrong with passive voice
A lot of people on AW read my (best) stuff and say: "It's too passive, rewrite those passive constructs and it should be fine." But I can never find the offending constructs!
PS "promotive" is no better than "passive".
A lot of people on AW read my (best) stuff and say: "It's too passive, rewrite those passive constructs and it should be fine." But I can never find the offending constructs!
PS "promotive" is no better than "passive".
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In practical terms, read lots (and lots and lots) of good literature and the right construction for any given passage should sound right to you.
There are times and places where the passive voice is absolutely the right thing to use.
Be aware that "It sounds too passive" is an easy crit to make, and may not always be correct.
There are times and places where the passive voice is absolutely the right thing to use.
Be aware that "It sounds too passive" is an easy crit to make, and may not always be correct.
You know, I read this as a what-if for a novel, but I don't think it's one that would sell
euclid said:
Damn! Another one bites the dust.
***
Well, to summarise the confusion: people who talk about "passive voice" on writing boards often explain "the passive voice" (the grammatical concept) but talk about a wider, stylistic concept (a writer's voice which sounds passive). The idea is to maximise content words and minimise function words (which include all auxiliary verbs as well as articles etc.)
I do think that the name "passive voice" is a strong unconscious motor for the prejudice against the construction. Nobody wants to sound passive. It doesn't matter, on the primal level, that the "passive voice" has nothing to do with sounding passive (except in the sense above, in that it requires a "function word", an auxiliary).
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