Writing through passive eyes

Writing the first person point of view.

I'll try this post again...HTML ate the last one.

There has been a lot of posting lately about point of view and about active versus passive sentences. I wasn't sure exactly where to post this so I decided to make my own thread for it: In truth it falls into both camps.

The first person point of view has its own pitfalls; if you have not written in first person before you might not be aware of them; if you have you may have done it by instinct, and perhaps done it well; some who have been published are by no means masters of avoiding them.

You might want to keep in mind that my radical approach to grammar is not always appreciated by grammarians. In fact it is often considered insulting to the entire subject of grammar. I am the grammar student teachers love to loath.

Be that as it may, the facts are these:

One of the first problems the writer encounters when writing in the first person is the word "I": Suddenly every other sentence starts with "I" and every third sentence has "me" or "my" in it: Until the reader is ready to scream "I'm outta here."

I came: I saw: I conquered: This sounds great when they are the only three "I" words on the page. When they sit among thirty others they lose their force and their appeal.

The first first person stories I wrote were short mysteries and westerns, so I'll use one of those for an example. The first short story I ever wrote in the first person was not much better than the example that follows:

I was glad to accept Phil's invitation to visit him, just to get away from my normal routine for an evening. I arrived at his house in the early afternoon. I walked up the path to the small house by the beach to the large door. When I knocked there was no answer. I tried the door. It swung open easily when I pushed it.

I looked over the front room. What I saw was standard bachelor with just a hint of weekly maid service. I wondered if she ever spent the night. I wondered if she might be married. I knew it would not make any difference to Phil. I did not think this was a good time to ask that question though.

I saw only one thing that marred the well kept room. In the far corner by the lamp I saw a body lying in the fetal position in a round pool of blood.

I bent over the body looking for signs of life. I could not tell if it were Phil or not as the body was headless.

The people who will have the biggest problems writing in the first person are those who insist the active voice should be used at all costs.

One of the strengths of the active voice in most communications is that it always identifies the person or thing that performs the action. One of the weaknesses of the passive voice is that it often avoids saying who actually committed the action.

One of the really neat assumptions the reader will make when reading a first person narrative is that the writer is the one doing the action unless told otherwise.

So one of the best ways to avoid filling the page with "I" after "I" after "I" is to write the previous example this way:

Phil's invitation to visit him came as a good excuse to get away from the normal routine, even for an evening. It was still early afternoon and the sun cast long shadows up the path to his house by the beach. Knocking did not elicit any answer. However the door was unlocked and a soft push was all that was required to open it.

His front room was standard bachelor with just a hint of weekly maid service. She might or might not have spent the night with him. She might or might not be married. It would not have made any difference to Phil. This was not the best time to ask that question though.

Only one small detail marred the well kept front room. There was a body lying in the corner by the lamp.

Bending down to examine the corpse for signs of life was a waste of time. It was also a waste of time trying to be sure if it was Phil or not. The body did not have a head.

You will notice in the second example, thanks to the use of the passive sentence structure, there is not one single "I" or "me" or "my" to be found anywhere.

Still it is obvious to the reader that it is a first person account.

When writing the first person narrative the passive voice is not a sin to avoid: It is an art to master.

Actually, in the second example you give, all the clauses except one ("that was required") are in the Active Voice.

Having a non-human Subject and/or use of the verb 'to be' and/or use of cleft sentences ("it was clear that") and/or use of there+to be, doesn't necessarily make a sentence Passive.

Passive Voice means the Object of the Verb (what the verb is acting upon) is in the Subject position in the sentence.

Okay. 8o

That's it.

I'll get my coat. :x

Euan was correct when he said that having an object doing things is still active voice: the door shut; the wind blew...

Active voice creates excitment and is evocative, putting the readers in the scene.

Passive voice is useful when you want to convey the sense of passivity: I was pushed down the hallway, blindfolded... you could easily write it this way: Someone pushed me down the hallway... but you lose the sense of "helplessness."

In you first example, the problem is you use too much "filtering": I see, I hear, I think, etc. That's a common mistake writers do when they write in 1st person. The thing is, since you're narrating the story, it's intrincit that everything you describe on the page is through either your senses or thoughts/memory, so there's no need to further filter everything. Filtering slows down your pace and creates distance.

You could do something like the following to reduce the use of the "I" word:

Phil's invitation to visit him came at the right time for me to get away from the normal evening routine. I arrived at his small house by the beach in the early afternoon. No one answered my knock. The door swung open as I pushed it.

From the looks of the front room it was a standard bachelor pad with just a hint of weekly maid service. Did she ever spend the night? Was she married? It probably wouldn't make any difference to Phil. But it was not a good time to ask that question.

One thing that marred the well kept room lay by the lamp in the far corner: a body in fetal position in a round pool of blood.

I bent over and looked for signs of life. The body was headless. It could be Phil. Or not.

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I did the edit in just a few minutes.

The second example is almost as active as the first. Not quite as active, but almost. It's just a little better writing in the sense that it avoids overuse of pronouns. But it has other qualities that make it read almost as poorly. The places where it is passive could and should be changed to active, and you dont have to add a single "I," "me," or "my" to do so.

I'd say 70% of my published writing is first person, but I avoid passive voice just as much as third person writers do. First person writing is never a reason to use passive voice. In fact, passive voice sounds worse in first person than in third person.

And while using "I" too often is a bad thing, never using it is also bad. Same with "me" and "my." Using either too often is bad, not using either enough is equally bad.

First person writing is the art of telling someone a story verbally. That's what it's all about. The best way to think of it is thiis: you're the protagonist and you're sitting across the table, or campfire, as Louis L'Amour put it, from a good friend, verbally telling him a story that happened to you sometime in the past.

Trying to do this while using too many personal pronouns will drive the reader/listener crazy. But trying to do this while using too few pronouns will make the reader/listener go look for a better storyteller. And trying to tell a friend a story in passive voice will make them fall asleep, coffee in hand or not.

Going out of your way to avoid pronouns is just as tedious to the reader/listener as is beating him over the head with too many pronouns.

(Cabn I just write "pronouns" from now on? "Personal takes too much typing.)

Anyway, it isn't the pronouns that make writing active or pasive, it's the verbs and the sentence structure. Some of the second example you give does come across as passive, and it should be changed because it reads poorly. But you can make the change to active voice without sticking in pronouns. You just have to use better sentence structure and active verbs.

And to be honest, the second example really doesn't sound like first person at all to me, and if you hadn't told me it was, I wouldn't have known it. It reads like slightly passive third person.

The art of writing first person is no different than the art of writing third person. In first person, you limit the number of times you use I/my/me, but you still write in active voice. In third person, you limit the number of times you write John/his/he, and you write in active voice.

Let me put it this way. Just as first person sound bad when you begin every sentence with "I," third person writing would sound horrible if you started every sentence with a personal pronoun. "John was glad to accept Phil's invitation to visit him, just to get away from his normal routine for an evening. John arrived at Phil's house in the early afternoon. John walked up the path to the small house by the beach to the large door. When John knocked there was no answer. John tried the door. It swung open easily when John pushed it."

"I" is nothing more than a substitute for the protagonist's given name. It should be avoided to the same degree AND IN THE SAME WAY, third person writer's avoid it.

Just as third person writers don't avoid using "John" by switching to passive voice, there's no reason at all for first person writers to avoid using "I" by switching to passive voice. It simply isn't necessary, and it makes for poor reading.

Other pronouns work exactly the same way. Just as third person writers avoid overuse of the pronouns "he" and "His," first person writers avoid overuse of the pronouns "me" and "my." And we use exactly the same techniques for doing so, and just like third person writers, we continue to use active voice.

The primary difference between third person and first person is really as simple as pronouns. Third person uses the pronoun "John," and the two pronouns "he" and "his." Plus the feminine.

First person uses three pronouns "I," "me," and "my."

Same thing, same problem, same solution.

You avoid the same overuse of pronouns in both, and good writers do so the same way. Writing in first person is never, ever an excuse to use passive voice. Using passive voice and avoiding pronouns simply have nothing at all to do with each other, and that much passive voice really reads poorly.

One of the hallmarks of the passive sentence is the avoidance of stating "who did what."

"The plans were finalized." may appear to be an active sentence, but it is not. "who" finalized the plans is not specified. It is passive business and political speak that allows the speaker to avoid responsibility for their actions.

Plans cannot finalize themselves, someone had to do it.

Doors do not open themselves. "The door opened swiftly" is not an active sentence. Someone had to open the door.

The wind blew is not the same as the door shut. The wind may blow, and the wind may blow the door shut, but doors do not shut themselves.

"Passive sentences," I was told, "result from unclear, muddy thoughts that result in unclear, muddy sentences."


I only remember one conversation that involved the "cleft" sentence and the response to that was, "When you are Shakespeare you can write like that. Until then you will use proper English." Of course I don't agree with that sentiment either. Most likely the speaker used Shakespeare as a reference and the teacher didn't know what a cleft sentence was.

Passive voice is useful when you want to convey the sense of passivity: I was pushed down the hallway, blindfolded... you could easily write it this way: Someone pushed me down the hallway... but you lose the sense of "helplessness."

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I like that.

Anyway, it isn't the pronouns that make writing active or passive, it's the verbs and the sentence structure. Some of the second example you give does come across as passive, and it should be changed because it reads poorly. But you can make the change to active voice without sticking in pronouns. You just have to use better sentence structure and active verbs.

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The simple way to avoid the over use of pronouns in the third person is to use the name of the person.

Instead of saying, "He walked up the hill. He carried a pail of water. He kissed Jill." you say, "Jack" every so often. You can use other identifiers as well. When writing in the first person you can neither say your name nor ever call yourself the man carrying the pail of water. You have only one reference to yourself -- "I".

There is only one way to avoid the use of either the subject noun (personal noun) or the personal pronoun is to use the passive sentence.

What makes a sentence passive is the avoidance of "who acts." (personal noun = Jack; personal pronoun = I)

An active sentence is:

I kissed Jill.

Jack kissed Jill.

A passive sentence is:

Jill was kissed.

If you write:

The kiss landed squarely on Jill's mouth.

You still do not say who kissed Jill. It looks like an active sentence because it has an active verb, but it is not because kisses do not exist without both a kisser and a kissee.

Also in the second example, the use of was drove me nuts--too many uses of it. And as James said, it read like third person.

I also write mostly in first person and I do it well. (grin) It has nothing to do with sentence structure and everything to do with word order.

Shawn

Also in the second example, the use of was drove me nuts--too many uses of it. And as James said, it read like third person.

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Yeah, in polishing I would have caught that and done some was weeding.

I have not written in the first person in a long time except for some humorous short stories.

First person reading like third person does not seem like such a bad thing.

'The door opened" is middle voice. The door is both the doer and the recipient of the action.

You have to scroll down to find it.

Hconn,

Well that blew me away. I thought I'd at least heard every kind of grammar term that ever existed, whether I followed it or understood it or not.

First time in my life I ever heard of "middle voice."

I was taught that a sentence is either active or passive. An active sentence contains all the elements of an active sentence. Noun, active verb, object. If it does not have all of those elements then it is passive.

Actually, I like the idea of middle voice. It makes sense to me.

Here are a couple of informative sites.

www.uta.edu/english/fritz/subject1.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_voice

The plans were finalized.

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Yes, that's a passive sentence because the subject of the sentence is receiving the action, it doesn't seem active in any way, and there's no reason at all to use it, unless you're in a situation where you want to have the writing be plain and boring for effect.

Sentence stucture and word order are really the same thing most of the time, but either can cause passive sentences, and using active verbs stops the writer from putting the subject in the wrong place.

"Middle voice" and "Neutral" are the same things. In order to be either passive or active, a sentence must have a verb that's active or passive. If the verb is active, the sentence is active. If the verb is passive, the sentence is passive. If the verb is neutral, the sentence is often called "Middle."

If the sentence has no verb, and some very short sentences don't, the sentence is neither active nor passive.

Third person writers do sometimes throw in the name of the person, just as first person writers should use the word "I" on occasion, but one of the best tools to avoid overuse of pronouns is by beginning declarative sentences with articles and by beginning questions with verbs.

But first person or third, it's never necessary to use passive voice to avoid overuse of pronouns. There certainly is a time and a place for passive writing here and there, but only for effect, and never to avoid such things as pronoun overuse. Use passive voice in the general scheme of things, and readers will hunt another writer.

As for doors opening themselves, this isn't the issue. If the verb is active, the sentence is active. Doors may not open themselves often , though I've seen it happen, but we don't necessarily have to know who opened the door for the sentence to be active, and even if we do know who opened the door, the sentence can still be passive.

'The door opened" is middle voice.

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Or not, depending on who you're listening to. These kinds of verbs often come in transitive/instransitive pairs, with the Subject of the instransitive verb being the Object of the transitive.

I opened the door : Active
The door opened : Middle
The door was opened (by me) : Passive

But the grammatical structure of 'The door opened' is the same as 'I sleep', which is not Middle (I am performing the action, but I am not the recipient of the action). Active and Passive have different grammatical characteristics, but the difference between Middle and Active is a semantic one.

For example:

The sergeant marched the men across the square : Active
The men marched across the square : Middle (??)
The men were marched across the square (by the sergeant) : Passive

The second sentence fits same pattern as 'The door opened' above, but is it then Middle Voice? Only if you knew that the action of marching was being initiated by the sergeant.

Anyway. 8o

"The door opened" or "The men marched across the square" are both active. They do not require an object. An inanimate thing can act: the sun rose, the moon shone. The door opens.

Thing is, the example does not read like first person at all. If someone had asked me is this first or third, I would have said third. Does that make sense? It's not first reading as third, it reads as third. When you do toss in an I or a me or my it's going to jolt the reader and make them think you have a POV issue.

You can do first that reads like third, but you have to mix in the clues that it is first.

Shawn

Maestro, a sentence with a subject, whether animate or inanimate, that both does the action and receives the action is in the middle voice.

In the context of story telling, we only care about active and passive voices. This "middle voice" is generally considered active.

Why do we only care about active and passive in the context of storytelling?

Actually, I'll be honest--I don't care about voice. I just write it.

I don't care about voice

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Heretic.

:b

Quote:
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I don't care about voice
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Heretic.

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If he is a heretic what am I?

As long as we're on the whole subject... what's the deal with "had" "had been" "had had" etc.

"She watched the wrecking ball deliver it's first blow to the building that had been so important to her grandfather. He'd lived his entire life there. Now he was gone, and his legacy was crumbling to dust."

How passive is that paragraph? How could it be written better?

"She watched the wrecking ball deliver it's first blow to the building that had been so important to her grandfather. He'd lived his entire life there. Now he was gone, and his legacy was crumbling to dust."

How passive is that paragraph? How could it be written better?

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There really isn't anything wrong with that paragraph. It is just a matter of style and what you want to achieve.

It might be made more passive to show her helplessness. It might be more descriptive of the things you want to emphasize: How helpless she feels, the massive power of the wrecking ball, the pointlessness of having something so important that will be nothing at some time in the future, its effect on her.

It might be made more active, to show the power of the destruction.

Or both active and passive might be combined to achieve your desired effect.

What do you want to achieve?

As long as we're on the whole subject... what's the deal with "had" "had been" "had had" etc.

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Had can be easily over done -- But it is a complex little critter.

It can indicate ownership, or indicate one of the past tenses, or indicate the subjunctive mood(Which I prefer to call hypothetical because I really don't know what the word "subjunctive" is or where it comes from.)


Ownership = I had a dog. His name was Spot. He had this one big spot on his right eye right here.

This shows I owned a dog who possessed the attribute of a spot on his eye. When the word had shows ownership it acts as a verb. Right now I'm so confused about verbs I don't know what kind of a verb it is, active, passive, middle, or linking, but I don't think it matters a whole lot. Here it is a verb.



Past perfect = I had eaten my dinner when the bell rang.

Two events are needed in the past perfect. One happens, then the next. The first is now "perfectly" in the past. The second may be happening right now so it is not really perfect yet, but no doubt it soon will be.

The dinner is finished, zapped, kaput, gone. Now the doorbell is ringing.

I had eaten is therefore in the past perfect.

Past progressive = I was eating my dinner when the doorbell rang.

The dinner is progressive because it is in full progress and the person trying to eat, who has just started to take a bite is saying, "Can't they let me finish my dinner?"

Hey, here is a mind bender: Past perfect progressive = By the time I had finished eating my potatoes the doorbell had rung three times.

Now that sentence is past perfect because those potatoes are gone, and in grammar you aren't going to get any more perfect that that. Once an action is completely completed it is perfect. But it is progressive because that doorbell is progressing right along. Progress with dinner isn't doing too well, but the doorbell is progressing... In fact I gotta go answer it again.


OK, you ask about had had.

First you gotta know that the word have is sometimes used as a verb. It shows ownership, possession, or an attribute. Had is the past tense of have.

I have a dog. Once I had another dog. Before that I had had another dog. I named all those dogs Spot. I have had three dogs named spot. And when he dies I will have had three dogs named spot.

Present tense = I have a dog.

Past tense = I had another dog.

Past perfect tense = Before that I had had another dog.

Present perfect tense = I have had three dogs named Spot.

Future perfect tense = I will have had three dogs named Spot.

The subjunctive mood, which I call the hypothetical mood because it is more descriptive and makes more sense to me, is usually characterized with "were", but sometimes only "had" is used.

If I were a millionaire I would have gone on a world tour.

If I had been a millionaire I would have taken a world tour.

Had I been a millionaire I would have toured the world.


Now if you are like me and you just naturally use the right words in the right places this is going to sound like lunacy to you, and in a way it is -- But once you get into it it is fun lunacy.

If you don't use the right words by instinct, then it is still lunacy, but it doesn't matter if it is fun or not, you really need to master this stuff.

It may seem like hard work, but it will be worth it.

My last post somehow got split into two posts so I recombined them into one post.

That is the post before this one, by the way.

Hmm...

She watched the wrecking ball deliver it's first blow to the building that had been so important to her grandfather. He'd lived his entire life there. Now he was gone, and his legacy was crumbling to dust.

The imminent reality felt frustrating to absorb, yet futile to deny: what once stood for fifty-six years of a man's life, was about to collapse into rubble...

... and then the wrecking ball slammed through the stately building's foyer, demolishing both her reverie and Grandfather's legacy in one gut-crushing blow.

"She watched the wrecking ball deliver it's first blow to the building that had been so important to her grandfather. He'd lived his entire life there. Now he was gone, and his legacy was crumbling to dust."

... How could it be written better?

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Whether the passive construction needs changing isn't as glaring as the incorrect use of the apostrophe indicating possessive.

Correctly: ...the wrecking ball deliver its first blow...

The spelling it's is a contraction meaning "it is" or "it was" or "it has" etc.

The problem is the "be" word: had been, etc. "Be" words are passive.

Without completely rewriting the original, I'd probably do:

"She watched the wrecking ball deliver its first blow to the building, one so important to her grandfather for he'd lived his entire life in it. Now he'd passed on; his legacy was crumbling to dust before her eyes."