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Q&A Fiction Novels & Active vs. Passive Voice

This is decent advice everyone is giving. However, not knowing how to use active vs. passive is the mark of an amateur. Someone who over uses passive is new to the writing game. Why use passive vo...

posted 9y ago by Ace Berkeley‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:32:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17067
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ace Berkeley‭ · 2019-12-08T03:32:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
This is decent advice everyone is giving. However, not knowing how to use active vs. passive is the mark of an amateur.

Someone who over uses passive is new to the writing game. Why use passive voice when you can get straight to the action? Passive voice can be confusing, and dull. Active voice gets it over with.

Use active when the scene is fast paced, if it's a slow scene then passive may be okay.

It also matters if you are using first person, or third. If someone is using first person, and the narrator's desire is to make the main character seem passive then it can be okay to use passive voice. However, it is almost always better to use active voice; so the story moves along in a more direct fashion.

To sum it all up, it is important to take time to consider why a scene should have passive or active. A good balance will slow the story down when it needs to, and speed it up when the action is moving.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-05-04T18:40:09Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 0