You know those books you can’t put down because the author’s writing is so beautiful? Chances are, those authors have figured out the right ratio of passive to active sentences. Sentences using active voice make readers feel like they’re involved in the novel and make the pacing move along at a better pace. Passive voice tends to come across more as description and to slow the pacing down.

What is passive voice? Passive voice is when you make the object of a sentence the subject. For example, let’s look at the following sentence: The food was burned. Food is what’s being burned, but it’s been brought to the beginning of the sentence, making it the subject. The easiest way to find passive voice is by looking for any “to be verbs.” This includes am, was, is, have, has, etc.—basically any form of the verb be. Take a look through your manuscript, and highlight every time one of these shows up. More than likely, you’ll be surprised by how often they do.

How do you fix passive voice? Sometimes, it’s as easy as putting the object in its correct place and reintroducing the correct subject: I burned the food. Sometimes, it’s a little more difficult. Let’s look at some examples that might help you understand how to fix your passive sentences.

Examples

“The book got ripped when he tripped over it.” This is an example of the object being made the subject. We can fix this by switching it back to the object position. “He tripped over the book and accidentally ripped it.” The boy tripping over the book should be the subject of the sentence, and switching him to be at the front of the sentence allows him to take that role.

“Until he was on his way home, I wasn’t going to believe he would.” This sentence is a little more tricky. In this case, the characters are the subjects and are in the right places of the sentence to be so, but the wording suggests that they are objects. We can fix this by changing the verbs to be more active. “Until he started home, I didn’t believe he would come back.” This change allows the action to happen without any type of qualifier in front of it (the “to be” verbs).

“The monkey was swinging from the branches.” This is another case where the subject is in the correct spot, but there’s an unnecessary word chopping up the pacing and the flow. “The monkey swung from the branches.” This is much simpler and lets the action go free.

Is passive voice always bad? No! Sometimes, passive voice is just the best way to structure the sentence for clarity, and sometimes, you’ll want to use passive voice to avoid incrimination of the subject. Let’s look at some examples where passive voice might serve you better than active voice.

Examples

“There’s a special way of doing this.” If you think about this sentence, it has a “to be” verb, but rewording it any other way would sound distorted or like the author’s trying to hard. In cases like this, It’s alright to leave them be.

“Mistakes were made.” This is a common rhetorical device used to avoid placing blame on any one person. If you pay close attention to how politicians speak, you’ll notice they do this a lot. It makes them look better if they made the mistake and helps them avoid looking like a snitch if someone else made it. In these cases, though you can make it more active, sometimes it’s best to leave it as passive for the tone and feeling of the manuscript.

Active voice generally trumps over passive voice, but ultimately, you, as the author, have final say. Change all the passive sentences you can, and don’t be afraid to fight for the ones that you make passive for a reason. Just make sure that, as with all rules on writing, if you break one, you understand the rule and have a good reason for breaking it.