When I first started writing, I couldn’t see anything wrong with saying something like, “The cyclist was knocked over by a swerving car.”
I heard people at my writers’ group talking about the passive voice, but I really couldn’t see what the big deal was. At last I learned that it boils down to, “Do you want your novel to be boring or exciting?”
First let’s establish what the passive voice is. I’m assuming that, for a start, you know the basic parts of speech: subject, verb, and object. The subject is the doer of the action. The verb tells what the action is. The object is the recipient of the action.
In the passive voice, the action is received by the subject rather than the object, and often the use of the passive voice involves some form of the verb “to be,” a nothing-is-happening kind of verb.
The cyclist (my subject), rather than doing an action, is the recipient of the action. He was knocked over by the car.
You might say, “What’s wrong with that? It’s correct.”
Yes, it’s correct, but it’s boring. It takes all the punch out of what could have been a much more exciting sentence.
This sentence – “The cyclist was knocked over by a swerving car,” has me yawning.
Change it around so that the subject is the doer of the action, and it is much more interesting. The doer of the action is the car, so the active version of this sentence would be: The swerving car knocked over the cyclist. Now my reaction is, “Yikes! Call an ambulance.”
In an earlier post I used an example of active and passive verbs. Here it is again, showing the difference:
Passive:
The Corolla was driven up the new highway by Marlie. A bear was seen by her. The car was being parked at the side of the road by Marlie. The camera was picked up by her shaking hands. Just then, she was charged by the bear.
Active:
Marlie drove up the Corolla up the new highway. She saw a bear. Marlie parked the car at the side of the road. Her shaking hands picked up the camera. Just then, the bear charged her.
Imagine how boring the writing would be if the passive tense were used throughout the book.
So why have the passive tense at all?
Once in a while a passive tense is a good thing, especially if the doer of the action is anonymous or he is not the focus of the sentence. Possibly the doer of the action wants to stay in the background.
Example:
The store was robbed by two hooded men.
Department stores were looted every weekend.
This kind of sentence structure might more often be used by a news reporter than a novelist, but it keeps the information vague when nothing more specific is known.
I recently read a novel that had a great plot and lots of action, but way too much use of the passive voice diluted the action. It was a shame that the author ended up watering down a good story.
My suggestion is to avoid the passive tense as much as possible.
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