Hi all, So I just wanted to have a bit of fun using a sentence I (ashamedly) used recently: "The walls were painted white and the carpet was brown and dirty" This is obviously both passive and incredibly dull (and non-descript), which got me thinking about the evolution of sentences in general. Below are my efforts at spicing it up but I'd love to see some examples from you guys as to how you would improve such a bland and generic sentence. The setting is a hospital room that has suffered years of neglect. Still crap: "The walls were cracked with white paint that flaked onto the dirty brown carpet below" Better: "Yellowish-White paint flaked from the walls onto the dirty brown carpet below" Best? "Scabs of yellowish-white paint flaked onto the dirty brown carpet, tired from years of neglect" I can't do much better than this so I'd love to see what you guys can do without overdoing it... NC
I’m not so sure there’s any passive voice there. Definitely not in the carpet phrase. The walls...hm.
My pet peeve aside... The walls and floor took two different strategies with regard to the filth in the room—the whiteness of the walls flaunted every finger mark and smear, while the brown shag carpet on the floor maintained an ominous secrecy.
Yeah. The word 'was' (or 'were') isn't a sure-fire indicator of passive voice. What would make your situation passive would be: 'The walls were being painted white by the maintenance people, and the carpets were being dirtied by everybody's unwiped shoes." The use of 'was' in your sentence is merely descriptive. The walls were painted white. The cat was an orange tabby, and it was mean. The pipes were choked with sludge.
Thanks for the explanations. I regret using the word passive when I should have simply stuck with 'dull'! The purpose was only to see how others spice up mundane descriptions. NC
I think if you're looking for a one-word marker to help pinpoint passive voice, it's probably more likely to be 'by' than 'was or were.' Not that 'by' is always passive either. Tricksy....
I'm not. I was looking at ways of improving description by exploring examples that others may provide to the dull sentence I typed above.
What is the sentence trying to achieve? Why do the colours matter? Could you get away with just "X entered the dirty room, ..."?
Is the scene written from someone's perspective? If so, you could color it with their personality. For example: The would-be white walls were covered in smudges and dirty hand prints, which when combined with the filthy brown carpet made the room feel more likely to give disease than help cure it. vs: The walls which were once a clean, crisp white were now grimed by fingerprints and dirt smudges, and the brown carpet that would've looked lovely when freshly laid wasn't doing much better against the mud and dirt tracked onto it every day. vs. The nice white walls only had a few smudges on them, and the brown carpet, though dirty, was comfortable enough to sleep on.
Your "still crap" sentence: the paint is flaking right now, but then how can the walls already be cracked - and actually, if it's "cracked with white paint" then... Ok your "still crap" sentence doesn't make any sense. You need a comma: "the walls were cracked, with white paint flaking..." What you seem to mean is: Cracks ran through the walls. Or perhaps: The paint on the walls was cracked. Also, there's honestly nothing wrong with passive voice. If you're trying to convey a certain void and silence, passive voice is excellent for that. As with most things, used appropriately, it's an excellent tool. Now, onto the task of "up-leveling" the sentence (it's the term we use at my school lol)... The original: My process (these aren't sentences - just what comes to my head): White walls cracked, spider - cracks spidering. Myriad. Handprints. Faded walls, browned with age, yellowed, grown yellow/brown with age Brown carpet. Colour of murk, of mud, cloudy, reminds me of dirt. Smear. Looks as if it were turf without the grass (lol) Dirt - grubby, dirty hands, ingrained, dirt deep in the grains of the carpet. Trampled. Children's feet. Caked. Next I'd be looking to drip emotions into this. Notice I'm already inserting possible emotions with words like "age" and "children", which imply memories. Of course this would depend on the context of the sentence, if it's appropriate. But I'd probably be looking to throw the room in light of its past, what might have passed between these walls. I'd be looking for echoes of history. Depending on whether I'm going for nostalgic or tragic or horror or what, I'd tailor the memories to suit. And then I'd start cobbling together the context, emotions, atmosphere probably using some of the words/phrases above. I never go for straight-up description - I'm always looking for associations. Dirt - who/what could have made it dirty? Children. Pets. Spilled milk. Don't cry over spilt milk. See how fast it could become emotive? Anyway, that's just me
