WHAT IS PASSIVE VOICE AND HOW DO I KILL IT?
Do you frequently get
told your writing contains too much passive voice? I know mine does
(lawyers preface everything with 'maybe' or 'that depends.') The
problem with passive voice is it's ... well ... passive.
"Look ... a pretty, placid pond. I think maybe I'll swim."
[
goes for a swim]
"Ahhh! Something's got my leg. Help!"
[
editor rejects your manuscript ... writes 'passive voice' on it]
Okay
... so how do you find something so passive lurking beneath the surface
of your beautiful manuscript? Well, you can take lots and lots of
grammar classes and then go through your entire 250,000 word fantasy
novel with a yellow highlighter marking all the 'passive voice' words
such as:
BE
AM
IS
ARE
WAS
WERE
BE
BEING
BEEN
...and then rewrite it....
[
Zzzzzzz ... boring!]
It may be boring, but here's a website that teaches you what to look for:
http://tx.english-ch.com/teacher/jocelyn/others/active-and-passive-voice/
Or you can use this handy-dandy FREE web tool to pink-flag all those nasty little uses of the passive voice FOR you.
www.editminion.comNow
not every single use of a passive voice word is bad. Sometimes you
WANT to use the passive voice. That's why Editminion is so helpful. It
has a Star Trek style color-coded alert system. Red means 'this sucker
is so passive you should use it as a door mat instead of a book.'
Yellow means 'hey buddy, do you think maybe your story is stammering a
bit?' Green means your good ... the overall percentage of passive to
active voice is acceptable. Not only is it helpful for fiction work,
but I used it to pare down the worse of the legal-snoozers in my
non-fiction book.
Editminion can only handle around 5,000 words
(an average chapter) at a time before it cuts off editing. But that's
okay ... it's FREE ... and all you can probably handle de-passifying one
stretch at a time before poking out your eyeballs with your pen is one
chapter anyways. Why not give it a try and make YOUR manuscript more active today?