Thought I would share this post I wrote during one of my copyediting courses because I’ve been thinking about passive voice in stories recently. (I know, I know… you wish you lived in the thrilling place that is my brain!)
The passive form: Many writing workshops have drilled into me that passives, as well as most uses of the verb to be, are forbidden and I now understand why they are (usually) right. Passive sentences are super cumbersome to read! Each sentence in the homework took me several readthroughs just to grasp the basic meaning before I figured out how to reword it. Not only do these passives add extra unneeded words, but they also weaken the subject. And since you generally want the subject to be the actor, passives are not a good choice for conveying that (most of the time).
Now, if you wanted to emphasize something other than the actor, such as the data of a research study or the results of a new clinical trial, passives are good,. This makes a lot of sense, specifically in fields where the actors aren’t as important (as in the above cases with the researchers), but I feel that this could be acceptable to all fields as long as you do it sparingly and with intention.
What didn’t occur to me was the use of passive for journalism or other writing where the subject is not known. It makes perfect sense and probably also explains why some news articles are frustratingly vague.
(Incidentally, one of the big things we as writers are taught to look out for is this concept of “copula spiders”–where if you circle all the forms of to be on a page (and words acting like it: seem, have etc.), you can draw a diagram from the central one that looks like a spider (8 or more on a page). While this blanket statement can be useful for new fiction writers who get bogged down in description, I see how it can also become a type of boogeyman, scaring them away from ever using a form of to be. This lack of passive could also be potentially damaging by creating extra wordy or confusing prose that then becomes the poster child for writing guides’ warning on (lack of) sentence variety. If you want to read more about this concept, you can check out the book Attack of the Copula Spiders.by Douglas Glover or read a brief description here.)
To conclude, besides learning the various ways to rewrite passive, the main takeaway I got is that this construction is just another tool in your writing toolbox rather than a forbidden concept that should be avoided at all costs.
Overall, I’m excited (and terrified) to move forward with this knowledge and look at my own writing to see how I can improve!
