I do a lot of passive 'telling', or at least I think I do. But I only use it to summarise the passing of time and to 'tell' the reader stuff they wouldn't be interested in me 'showing' them. I think
I've not the vaguest idea. I don't even know what the expression means. I just used it because others had. Or maybe they didn't. I just know 'passive' and 'telling' have been said a lot in this thread. I don't really know what I'm talking about. Suffice to say I use telling a fair bit when summarising the mundane, passive or otherwise.
And this is why I think it's important to keep trying to make terms precise, even when people like the OP don't appreciate it. Otherwise things can too easily descend into a sort of telephone-game of partially understood or totally misunderstood jargon and the words become meaningless.
Passive voice and telling have nothing to do with one another. The verbs in the initial list given by the OP are two different groups of verbs that are usually used as examples of two seperate phenomena. {is, was, were, are, am, be} are the verbs usually used as markers of passive voice for writers who wish to weed out passive voice from their writing. They are also red herrings in that these verbs occur in uncountable places where passive voice is not in evidence. To mark tense, as the linking verb in categorical statements, etc. {seem, realize, think, thought, wonder} have nothing to do with passive voice and are instead typical filter verbs, a very different phenomenon. Unfortunately, the word passive as regards writing has a tendency to get used in a very unspecific way to mean writing and syntax that lacks punch, so all those things that (are thought to) take away punch from one's writing get grouped together in one confusing mass. ------------------------------------------------- Passive voice is more than just a verb; it's a syntax structure that requires other words to dance along with a past participle in a particular way so that there is a logical subject in the sentence, but no grammatical subject. The door was closed. In this structure, it can sometimes be difficult to note because a past participle is a verb serving as an adjective and that's usually how we receive it, as an adjective, so it often doesn't seem verbie to us at all because it can either be engaged as describing the state the door is in (adj.), or the action that was done to the door (v.). Regardless, it is most certainly passive voice. An action took place for which we have no actor and we only have the thing that was acted upon, the door. The door is the logical subject, but it is not the grammatical subject because it is in fact the direct object. There can be no sensible "list of passive voice verbs" because nearly all verbs have a past participle form that can logically be used to form a passive voice structure. ------------------------------------------------- Filter verbs are an additional verb that stands between the readers and the character they are engaging in a piece of writing. Instead of engaging the world through the character, the narrator reports to us the character's engagement and how the engagement happened. Maria turned to the window. Headlights shone in the distance, beyond the moor. vs. Marie turned to the window and saw, in the distance, headlights beyond the moor. In the first example we are not told that Maria sees the headlights with her eyes because all humans have in common the fact that the only bodily organ any of us possess to receive and interpret photons are two spherical thingies in the sensor array we call our face. We don't need to be told she saw. In the second example we are told this and instead of it being Maria's engagement, its the narrator's engagement of Maria, which then gets reported to us. But it's more important to know what these syntactic structures do, because they have their place and purpose. Sometimes the effect they cause is the very thing we want. ETA: Moved to Word Mechanics where it belongs.
Uhm, not to quibble with your excellent post: But this sentence is a bit convoluted and also (I think) a run-on. Is it? Shouldn't it read e.g.: Maria turned to the window. Headlights shone in the distance, beyond the moor.
I noticed that as well and reworded it just as you were quoting me. I like yours better, so I'll be swiping it for a re-edit of the edit.
Frankly, I believe Bayview has made up his mind and not even an act of God would change it. So, I'm not going to try. As for the rest of you, I think you might like to see some real world evidence. I have a WIP which is 9,362 words long. I applied the tool mentioned in the original post. I found 338 uses of these words and highlighted them. Then, I went back and edited them so as to get rid of the problem words. As no one wants to look at 338 list items, below I've included the old sentences and the new sentences for just a few scenes. Not all of the old sentences get replaced (as I said, every tool must be tempered by the writer's intuition) and not all weak sentences are weak because they are passive sentences. Nevertheless, these verbs certainly do help identify weak sentences. I was twelve years old. Keep as is. I guess, maybe, I still hoped to find him alive. Keep as is. He was seven years old. Keep as is. He was my brother, Jason. Keep as is. old: I am afraid she’ll find it. new: I fear she’ll find it. old: the words are building up pressure behind my teeth like water behind a dam. new: The words press behind my teeth, like water behind a dam. old: Jason’s funeral service was a few days after I found the body. new: We held Jason’s funeral service a few days after I found the body. Jason was my step-brother, but he was Tommy’s son by birth. Keep as is. old: It is March, dusk, and early spring in Colorado Springs. new: The cool March winds hint of spring. old: Bears are waking from hibernation and we are in a part of town with easy access to garbage bins. new: As they wake from hibernation, bears forage and this part of town has easy access to garbage bins. old: US-24 is an endless march of headlights as people head home from work. new: An endless march of headlights fills US-24 as people head home from work. old: My back is tight from sitting in the terminal for the past two hours. new: Two hours sitting and waiting has tightened my back.
@JustinRocket - I think you may have misunderstood my message, but--I also think you're not interested in trying to understand it. So - yes, editing is a good thing. I think at least some of your sentences are improved by the changes, although I don't think it's possible to to be sure without reading them in context.
Hi there. Coming in to the conversation here. I don't know what tool you are using, but I see nothing wrong with any of the first sentences here. In some cases your changes are okay, but in others you seem to have either added more information, or actually made the sentence read more awkwardly. The words press behind my teeth, like water behind a dam versus The words are building up pressure behind my teeth, like water behind a dam? I know which of these is more evocative of the force a dam exerts on a barrier. Press (verb) and pressure (noun) have different connotations as well as being different parts of speech. You press a button, but pressure builds and the pipe bursts. Your bears example is another sentence I feel you've weakened with your change. In the first sentence, bears are waking from hibernation implies 'now.' They are waking up now—and there you sit with your garbage cans. Something needs to be done ASAP. Your second sentence weakens the immediacy of the situation, because you could be discussing the problem months ahead of time. As they wake from hibernation, bears forage—that sentence might have come from a government brochure on bear nuisance prevention. Nothing wrong with It is March, dusk, and early spring in Colorado Springs either—although March IS early spring everywhere in the northern hemisphere, so I might be inclined to rethink that bit, especially as you use 'spring(s) twice in the same short sentence. In your second sentence you've completely removed the time of day, the location, and added the hint of a wind instead. That's fine, if that's what you meant, but you've actually changed the whole thing to a vague statement about March wind in general. I get a much more specific picture from the first sentence, which is definitely the stronger of the two and carries a lot more information. I am afraid she'll find it, versus I fear she'll find it? If you were saying this out loud, you'd be very unlikely to choose the 'fear' option, wouldn't you? You'd say "I'm afraid she'll find it." Rather than strengthening the sentence, you've made it much more formal and old-fashioned. Something Charles Dickens might have written, rather than 21st Century you. I would suggest that you abandon your sentence strengthening tool, and start looking at your sentences within the context of the piece you're writing. Make sure they convey exactly what you want them to convey, and don't worry so much about ferreting out passive voice or weak words. All words exist for a reason.
What I want to know is why Justin won't tell us what this tool is. Is it a State secret or something? I personally think many of those sentences have been improved with the passive voice removed, so would quite like to have a look at this tool myself.
I think the tool is the list. (But the list doesn't actually have anything to do with passive voice, so...?)
Oooh, I thought it was some kind of 'search and find' software that looked for instances of passive voice.
Except that passive voice wasn't removed in most cases, because there was no passive voice. And that's part of the problem--you're being lured into using that term incorrectly. The only one where I have doubts is the funeral one. The form is essentially the same as "Dinner was at seven." Is there an implied actor there? I feel that it's not passive voice, but am open to argument.
Yes. It is "we" as in "we had dinner at seven". Context might change it to "they" as in "they had dinner at seven" or "you".
It doesn't fit the "by zombies" test for passive voice, which, admittedly, is a somewhat crude test. I think for it to be passive voice there needs to be two verbs? The "was" or whatever form of "to be" and then also the actual verb that's doing the action. I don't know the formal terms for those... auxiliary verb plus transitive verb, maybe? ETA: So "Jason's funeral service was held..." seems like it would be passive voice? But just plain old "Jason's funeral service was..." doesn't seem like passive. @Wreybies?
THIS is an example of a truly helpful post. At the risk of being inflammatory, @Justin Rocket, doesn't this strike you as quite a lot more helpful than your original post? I know the intent was the same, but this is what I was referring to when I said you could take the time and transform the original post into something actually helpful.
I agree that this one has turned distractingly archaic. Old was much better. "Building up pressure..." is a much better image/metaphor Structurally, they're about equal. But they imply different meanings. Is the person who found Jason's body responsible for planning his funeral? If not, then the second sentence isn't an option, and other possibilities ("The church housed Jason's funeral..." "Jason's family held his funeral...") might be too cluttered. I'd say that neither is better than the other out of context, but they have very different moods. IMO, they don't belong in the same piece. I personally find the first one more engaging, but I tend to dislike the over-poetic. The first one is much better. I agree that the second one sounds like a brochure. I strongly prefer the first one. The "Proper noun is" structure has a lot more impact than the "adjective verbed-noun verb proper noun...." structure. Again, I strongly prefer the first one. The second one has been twisted and drained of impact, out of fear of the word "is".
I think the best approach is not to agonise over this and just write, tell your story. You can work on this in the editing stage, leave what works, change what could be improved.
Doesn't make sense to continue arguing the OP. At best, its bad advice to be ignored, at worst it is harmful to new writers. The value in this thread has been the subsequent commentary. New writers seeing the thread will see the discussion.
Include verbs sleeping, slouching, compound verb lazing round the place, sitting, yawning and death, oh.
Continuing this discussion, I make more sentences. Dinner was at seven. Dinner was at City Hall. City Hall was at the shore. I think that there's no implied actor. You could say, "Someone built City Hall at the shore," but that just takes the facts and creates a sentence with an actor--it doesn't mean that the original sentence had an implied actor. I'm pretty confident that the funeral sentence was never passive voice.
