Passive form...why everybody hates it?

I have a question, but it's not a really big deal so I'm not going to clutter the board with another thread; I'll just post here.

Do you mind a mix of active and passive in the same sentence?

Example:

After the books were purchased, she walked home and ate an apple.

ETA: I've read a ton of really good work that uses passive voice extensively. The first thing that comes to mind is The English Patient. I really don't mind it at all. The only time passive voice sticks out *to me* is if an entire piece is active, save for one passive sentence that pops up outta nowhere and could easily be re-written into active to jive with the rest of the piece.

Cuthbert, your first example proves that you know how to use passive voice correctly. Don't worry about it. The "never" advice isn't for you.

When people say "never" do something, they're just talking to stubborn novices with an inflated self-opinion and bad habits. It tries to prevent this sequence of events.

1) Novice reads "A certain amount of adverbs is acceptable. You just need to use them correctly and use your own judgement. If you're a novice, try not to use them at all until you're better at writing."

2) Novice decides he is a genius and his judgement is always right. He uses adverbs after every single verb.

3) Someone tries to explain that novice uses too many adverbs and his writing looks bad.

4) Novice points out "sometimes adverbs are acceptable" and accuses person helping him of being an idiot.

Now, really, stubborn novice is going to act like that no matter what. But "never" is good advice for new writers. Most new writers use adverbs and passive voice too much. When they strive to "never" use them, they'll end up using them "sometimes" rather than "too much."

That's also why people say "never" to use words other than "said" for speech tags. It's okay to use them sometimes, but some stubborn people will argue themselves blue in the face that you should never use "said." Only an equally extreme counter-example will get through their thick skulls and make them think.

So, basically, stubborn people will only listen to extreme advice. People who aren't so full of themselves will generally listen to gentler, more reasonable advice.

EyeSeaAll said:

Do you mind a mix of active and passive in the same sentence?

After the books were purchased, she walked home and ate an apple.

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I don't see a problem, for two reasons.
1) It's pretty obvious that the previous sentence explained who was purchasing the books.
2) "After the books were purchased" is, um, one of those phrases I learned about in English class ten years ago. Prepositional phrase, maybe? Anyway, it means that it's a phrase that can be removed entirely and still leave a complete sentence behind. Prepositional phrases aren't supposed to be given the emphasis anyway, so it's probably fine to use a weaker voice for them. (You want to focus on "She walked home an ate an apple," so you give that the stronger active voice.)

ChristineR said:

There's nothing wrong with it. The examples people give to show why the passive is supposed to be bad are so moronic that no one would ever use them.

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The examples I post are from actual manuscripts I've critiqued, with just enough bits changed that *hopefully* the person won't recognise it and thus be offended.

I have more, but found it harder to swap the subjects enough, so I won't show them.

Don't underestimate the atrocities that a new writer can create.

Mara said:

Cuthbert, your first example proves that you know how to use passive voice correctly. Don't worry about it. The "never" advice isn't for you.

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Mara said:

When people say "never" do something, they're just talking to stubborn novices with an inflated self-opinion and bad habits. It tries to prevent this sequence of events.

1) Novice reads "A certain amount of adverbs is acceptable. You just need to use them correctly and use your own judgement. If you're a novice, try not to use them at all until you're better at writing."

2) Novice decides he is a genius and his judgement is always right. He uses adverbs after every single verb.

3) Someone tries to explain that novice uses too many adverbs and his writing looks bad.

4) Novice points out "sometimes adverbs are acceptable" and accuses person helping him of being an idiot.

Now, really, stubborn novice is going to act like that no matter what. But "never" is good advice for new writers. Most new writers use adverbs and passive voice too much. When they strive to "never" use them, they'll end up using them "sometimes" rather than "too much."

That's also why people say "never" to use words other than "said" for speech tags. It's okay to use them sometimes, but some stubborn people will argue themselves blue in the face that you should never use "said." Only an equally extreme counter-example will get through their thick skulls and make them think.

So, basically, stubborn people will only listen to extreme advice. People who aren't so full of themselves will generally listen to gentler, more reasonable advice.



I don't see a problem, for two reasons.
1) It's pretty obvious that the previous sentence explained who was purchasing the books.
2) "After the books were purchased" is, um, one of those phrases I learned about in English class ten years ago. Prepositional phrase, maybe? Anyway, it means that it's a phrase that can be removed entirely and still leave a complete sentence behind. Prepositional phrases aren't supposed to be given the emphasis anyway, so it's probably fine to use a weaker voice for them. (You want to focus on "She walked home an ate an apple," so you give that the stronger active voice.)

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THANK YOU! Take a bow.

Cuthbert, if you'd like to see a really great example of how active versus passive voice can be used in a story, I encourage you to check out Kij Johnson's story 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss, which just this weekend won the World Fantasy Award for best short story. It appeared in Asimov's magazine. All the uses of active and passive in this story are deliberate and function beautifully to carry out her purpose. I have an analysis of part of the story (including her use of passive), here. As for adverbs, I have previously argued here on AW that they are a tool in the writer's toolbox that should be used properly, but not ignored. Why forbid yourself the use of a tool that can do critical things? English does have a proliferation of verbs to express the manner in which things get accomplished (e.g. laugh, guffaw, titter, snicker, bray, chuckle, etc.) - more so than some other languages. Because of this, it's good to think through when one of those verbs might serve better than the prototype verb+adverb. But on the other hand, I wouldn't say that's always the way to go.

I hope that adds something helpful to the discussion.

EyeSeaAll said:

I have a question, but it's not a really big deal so I'm not going to clutter the board with another thread; I'll just post here.

Do you mind a mix of active and passive in the same sentence?

Example:

After the books were purchased, she walked home and ate an apple.

ETA: I've read a ton of really good work that uses passive voice extensively. The first thing that comes to mind is The English Patient. I really don't mind it at all. The only time passive voice sticks out *to me* is if an entire piece is active, save for one passive sentence that pops up outta nowhere and could easily be re-written into active to jive with the rest of the piece.

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Who purchased the books? And why would you use passive in such a case when active is so much easier and clearer?

There is a time and a place for passive, but passive is usualy boring as old dishwater, and there's very seldom a time when active is better. Too much passive writing will bring a swift rejection, and with good cause.

I suspect most defend passive because they don't know how not to write it. Use passive when it's needed, but I've yet to see a case where passive is needed more than three or four percent of the time.

And it isn't difficult at all to write a short story or a novel with no passive sentences.

Jamesaritchie said:

And it isn't difficult at all to write a short story or a novel with no passive sentences.

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QFT. Seriously--listen to the people around you.


Listen.

Jamesaritchie said:

Who purchased the books? And why would you use passive in such a case when active is so much easier and clearer?

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Example sentence to a hypothetical question. Mara already gave an excellent answer (Thanks Mara!).

Some authors may occasionally use passive in place of active for stylistic reasons; I see nothing wrong with that. If it works, it works.

This thread will probably start going in circles from here.

Jamesaritchie said:

I suspect most defend passive because they don't know how not to write it. Use passive when it's needed, but I've yet to see a case where passive is needed more than three or four percent of the time.

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I defend the passive. Vigorously. I have no problem getting rid of it, should an editor demand it. For example, your second sentence could read:


That the version I just gave is available shows that the passive isn't needed. And yet I see no reason to get rid of it in your post. It's perfectly fine. Had you chosen the general-you version, I'd have seen no reason to edit it in.

I defend the passive because I think it's a matter of style, and I disagree with about 70 % of all passive removals I see in online crits.

Your 3-4 % estimate sounds about right for fiction. That's roughly every 33rd to 25th verb. (I don't suggest to write to match statistics, though.)

And it isn't difficult at all to write a short story or a novel with no passive sentences.

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It's not difficult, no. Just pointless. Unless you have a specific reason for it. Then, by all means, eliminate all passives.

If there are more great, published books out there written in passive than great, published books written in active, y'all can count me as dumbstruck.

I'm sure anyone who critiques on a regular basis can point out a whole swag of awful manuscripts filled with passive writing.

I think if we take note of both of these things, we would realise why articles (directed at newbie writers) recommend against using passive unless it's absolutely necessary.

And yeah, I fill my posts with passive writing. But my posts aren’t 85k-100k long.


My garbled, sleep-deprived contribution for the night. ^_^

Like everything else, passive voice has its appropriate uses. But many writers sprinkle it liberally throughout their books, and that creates distance between the reader and the characters. That's generally not as interesting or exciting as a more close relationship between reader and characters.

Passive sentences show up in business communications, where the writer must be politically correct and surely doesn't wist to point his finger at anyone. The writer will say the $1,000,000 accounting error was the result of blah blah blah. Rather than Tom Stephens entered the wrong figures in X account, resulting in a Million dollar error.
Another area where passive sentences appear is in police reports. The perpetrator is unknown, therefore, the window was broken, rather than someone broke the window. This terminology flows through copspeak. You will hear "The victim was found in his bed at 4 a.m. by his mother." Rather than "The victim's mother found him in his bed at 4 a.m." It's just the way they talk (and write).

Cuthbert said:

Thanks...the reference to a possible rejection was, indeed, an hyporbole.

The fact is that english is not my native language but I need to write my novel in english, therefore some of your uses of your language is pretty unusual to be. In my first language, the passive form is VERY used (When you want fo focus on the object and not on the subject of the sentence) and it's considered good and sophisticated writing, while if I follow all the Rules of that article the result to me looks like a tale written by a ten years old child with a vocabulary of 200 words.

But of course, I'm more interested in how you view the problem.

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English is not my native language either, and in Chinese we don't even have that kind of grammar (such as passive/active voice, etc.) What I'm saying is, if you're going to write in English, you need to abide by the conventions.

The reason why fiction favors active voice is that it's more exciting and "active" to read. People are DOING things instead of things are done to them, or the focus is on the characters, not the objects.

In technical writing, on the other hand, passive voice is favored because the focus is on the "technology" and not the people who use the technology. So you have a lot of things such as "the system must be shut down after the operations are accomplished." The anonymous user -- "someone" -- is unimportant.

In fiction, rarely do you not know the subject of the action, and it's more interesting to read who did what. It doesn't mean passive voice has no place in fiction -- it can create mystery when we really don't know who did it: "he was shot in the back." Here, the focus is on the shot and also the character being shot, and the shooter is unknown. It's a perfectly good place to use passive voice.

Mara said:

I don't see a problem, for two reasons.
1) It's pretty obvious that the previous sentence explained who was purchasing the books.
2) "After the books were purchased" is, um, one of those phrases I learned about in English class ten years ago. Prepositional phrase, maybe? Anyway, it means that it's a phrase that can be removed entirely and still leave a complete sentence behind. Prepositional phrases aren't supposed to be given the emphasis anyway, so it's probably fine to use a weaker voice for them. (You want to focus on "She walked home an ate an apple," so you give that the stronger active voice.)

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I disagree. It's clunky at best, and confusing at worst. Who purchased the books? Even if it was clear in a previous sentence, it's still a clunky construction. Why mix the tenses? What's the purpose of using passive voice here? Is the focus on the books, or the character, or both?

The sentence would have been so much stronger in active voice -- and if I were an editor, I would definitely suggest an edit without changing the construct:

After purchasing the books, she walked home and ate an apple.

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The problem isn't the prepositional phrase, but the passive voice in it. It focuses on the books, meanwhile we know very well who purchased it, and then we shift the focus back to the purchaser. Why? It's a literary whiplash. Please, avoid that.


You can, however, use passive voice if the focus is consistent. Say, the focus is on the MC, then this would work:

After being pushed down the hill, Mary got up, barely a scratch on her body, and wondered what had happened.

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Dawnstorm said:

It's not difficult, no. Just pointless. Unless you have a specific reason for it. Then, by all means, eliminate all passives.

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Exactly. No one in this thread has read the OP's work, for one. And if someone went in thinking only "where are all those passive sentences, I'm gonna active-ate this writing!" I'd not let them NEAR my work, if I were the poster.

If a critter doesn't know how to use context to crit, I don't think they're the right match for me.

And if I didn't know how to write an active sentence, I wouldn't be writing them now. I think to assert passive writing essentially as valueless is wrong. All it does is merely bring focus to another part of the sentence, which the OP already points out is useful. It's a tool. It may be the one that gathers dust at the back of the toolbox--it's no screwdriver or wrench. But it's a tool and people aught to be allowed to use it, damn it.

I don't know about that 3-4 percent statistic. It could be accurate, but I've never trusted a statistic and I'm not about to start.

I use passive voice when it's appropriate. Period. I don't give an f about what anyone else thinks about the philosophy of sentence structure. Everything I write is slave first and foremost to the story.

Pepper said:

I think if we take note of both of these things, we would realise why articles (directed at newbie writers) recommend against using passive unless it's absolutely necessary.

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Of course. Why would we do anything in our writing unless we thought it were absolutely necessary?

The Lonely One said:

I don't know about that 3-4 percent statistic. It could be accurate, but I've never trusted a statistic and I'm not about to start.

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Nobody should write to statistics. That's not the point at all.

Of course. Why would we do anything in our writing unless it were absolutely necessary?

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Nothing in writing is absolutely necessary. You can always say it differently. If you only write what's absolutely necessary, you won't even start writing. That whole spiel about "necessary" and "needed"... Look at the way advice uses this. It's usually relegating it to intuition, which is something good writers should trust, but beginning writers shouldn't. And since the good writers (advice givers) don't point you towards the road to an intuition you can trust, it's really an artificial barrier to learning. There are the advice-givers and the advice takers, and little mobility between the two. An elitist caste system.

"Don't do X unless it's absolutely necessary." (= Unless I think it's necessary; I'm not interested in your judgement.)

"You must know the rules to break them." (= I know the rules, so I can break them at will. If you break them, you have no idea what you're doing.)

"X is an indicator of lazy writing." (= If you don't agree with me, you haven't put enough effort into understanding your craft.)

If you want to help new writers, you'll have to separate judgment from fact (which is hard, since the ways to describe facts are themselves fraught with judgement, but that's another discussion). If you're familiar with what passives do, you're able to make up your own mind about when to use them. If you grow your writerly self on avoiding them all you get is an aversion.

So, no, telling a newbie to avoid passives is not the way to go. It gimps their development.

I follow a very simple rule when I'm writing: if I want passive voice, I use it, and if I don't want it, I don't use it.

maestrowork said:

What's the purpose of using passive voice here? Is the focus on the books, or the character, or both?

...

The problem isn't the prepositional phrase, but the passive voice in it. It focuses on the books, meanwhile we know very well who purchased it, and then we shift the focus back to the purchaser. Why?

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Why would an author choose to use passive when there is a clear alternative to active?

What if money issues plague the example girl? Then the use of passive voice indicates her emotional distance from spending money. She feels uncomfortable saying "I bought the books..." so she (or in this case the narrator) uses passive to show that emotional distance.

Obviously, the sentence could easily be re-written into active; the use of passive must have a reason for being there. In that hypothetical, it indicates emotional distance.

EyeSeaAll said:

Obviously, the sentence could easily be re-written into active; the use of passive must have a reason for being there. In that hypothetical, it indicates emotional distance.

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It's certainly a legit reason, and would enhance the reading experience if that emotion is conveyed and evoked. However, without context, the passive voice simply reads weak and whiplashy. And there are other ways to show us that she is emotionally distant about spending the money on the books.

Again, the point is that passive voice is not all bad. But when you use it, you need to understand why and how, and not because it's the first choice that comes to your mind, especially if you're used to writing passive voice (say, going from business writing to fiction).

Dawnstorm said:

Nothing in writing is absolutely necessary. You can always say it differently. If you only write what's absolutely necessary, you won't even start writing. That whole spiel about "necessary" and "needed"... Look at the way advice uses this. It's usually relegating it to intuition, which is something good writers should trust, but beginning writers shouldn't. And since the good writers (advice givers) don't point you towards the road to an intuition you can trust, it's really an artificial barrier to learning. There are the advice-givers and the advice takers, and little mobility between the two. An elitist caste system.

"Don't do X unless it's absolutely necessary." (= Unless I think it's necessary; I'm not interested in your judgement.)

"You must know the rules to break them." (= I know the rules, so I can break them at will. If you break them, you have no idea what you're doing.)

"X is an indicator of lazy writing." (= If you don't agree with me, you haven't put enough effort into understanding your craft.)

If you want to help new writers, you'll have to separate judgment from fact (which is hard, since the ways to describe facts are themselves fraught with judgement, but that's another discussion). If you're familiar with what passives do, you're able to make up your own mind about when to use them. If you grow your writerly self on avoiding them all you get is an aversion.

So, no, telling a newbie to avoid passives is not the way to go. It gimps their development.

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Well, to be honest I agree (see my post upstream) about not telling newbies to avoid passive. My point was that to say "avoid passive unless it's necessary" in a tunnel is failing to recognize that it's really just part of a larger sect of advice. That is: do things that are necessary (as deemed by the writer, or, let's say an agent or editor) for the story to work.

What I should have said instead of "doing things that are necessary" is "make the story work best," which of course I agree is subjective.

The Lonely One said:

What I should have said instead of "doing things that are necessary" is "make the story work best," which of course I agree is subjective.

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Sorry; I was more responding to a stereotype in my head than your post. Which happens when I'm in rant mode. And the anti-passive rule often puts me into rant mode. I abused your post for a spring board. Sorry, 'bout that.

Advice #1: ignore anyone who tells you "you must NEVER do <something>."

Advice #2: learn why so many people say <something> is bad or weak or whatever. Understand the concept behind it. Apply it.

Advice #3: first and foremost, write a good story. These "rules" are tools -- tried and true -- to tell good stories. There is a reason why fiction encourages the active voice (while technical/business writing encourages passive voice). These advices are supposed to make the particular writing better. But there is no absolute.

That's really good advice Maestro, but we must remember, there are lots of newbies out there who think their manuscript is the next GWTW, and they have the 100+ rejections to prove it.
I guess the answer is, we can't help everybody, only those willing to listen and learn.