After reading through a chapter of my WIP, a writer friend pointed out that I kept drifting into “passive voice.”
I think I shouted “hallelujah!”
Using passives is one of those bugaboos that new writers are encouraged to avoid. It’s really up there in the hierarchy of “writing rules.” And adherence to these rules is of utmost importance. For instance, one multi-published romance writer said this during an interview on a popular writing site. She was asked about “pet peeves” concerning the industry:
With so many writing rules that new authors have to follow, it’s hard for me to read writers who don’t follow the rules. I can’t hardly read one writer who was one of my favorites for years because that person tells instead of shows, head hops, and has lots of author intrusion. I never noticed those things before I became a writer, but now they jump out at me and can ruin the story.
The “writing rules” this author is referring to is not the Strunk and White type of rules (although Strunk did warn against excessive use of the passive voice), the standard principles of grammar and composition. There’s “other” rules for contemporary novel writing, formulas for publication which some hold to be just as binding as rules of spelling and punctuation.
Some of those rules are:
- Show Don’t Tell — Use action and dialog rather than exposition
- POV — Maintain a consistent, realistic narrative point-of-view; don’t “head hop” from one person to the next in the same scene
- Avoid Passives — Keep tenses active; Dean killed the cat is better than The cat was killed by Dean
These are the rules the aforementioned author was referencing.
What’s rather fascinating (and illustrated by the above quote) is the inordinate emphasis placed on new authors to learn to follow these writing rules.
(Which is why I am now feeling so liberated.)
Like any good legalist, when I officially began writing, I followed these rules to the letter. I toiled to eliminate passives from my m/s and maintain tight POV’s. And I made it my mission to enforce those rules on unsuspecting newbies.
Until something happened — I started reading. Closely.
Frank Peretti’s The Oath, had sold over one million copies worldwide, so I knew it must be terrific. Besides, it was the recipient of the 1996 ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award for Best Fiction, and one of Peretti’s most critically acclaimed novels. Since I was writing in that genre, I dug in, not only to be entertained, but to be wowed by his craftsmanship.
I read about 50 pages of The Oath before shelving it. Why? The “head-hopping” was driving me nuts!
Here I’d spent a solid year learning the rules and diligently applying them… only to find that Peretti did not do POV’s. In the same scene he’d bounce from one character to another, almost in “omniscient” manner (another writing no-no). Being that POV’s are one of the most elementary of “writing rules,” Peretti’s loosey-goosey head-hopping completely turned me off.
Now, not so much.
You see, after having sold two novels, attended writers conferences, read a dozen craft books and oodles of novels, and been involved in several critique groups, I’ve reached this conclusion:
The writing rules aren’t as important as I was being taught.
After my early indoctrination, I must say it was refreshing to learn that I might be overusing passive voice. Is it something I want to continue? No. Is it a relevant critique? Yes. However, the more I’ve grown as a writer the more I’m interested in unfolding a story rather than nit-picking the process.
Anyway, it launched our critique group into a discussion: “Do passives really matter?” We went around the table and arrived at a split vote. To some of us, passives mattered and their misuse / overuse drew us out of the story. To the other half, passives were inconsequential.
So what say you — Do passives really matter?
Here are two thoughts I have about “the rules”.
First, you have to KNOW the rules before you can break them. So, if you’re a new writer, I strongly recommend that you follow these (sometimes unwritten) rules to the letter. That way, you know what strong writing is. You’ll have a good definition of it. You’ll be well versed in it. You’ll get lots of practice. If you’re a new writer, and agents and editors are supposedly look for these things, it’ll help to follow the rules so you’ll get noticed. Or, more accurately, so you don’t get noticed as the one who broke them.
Second, I believe “the rules” ARE made to be broken. However, in my first point, you have to know the rules well before you can break them. Once you know them, you can find places in your story where it’s acceptable to break them. For instance, in your story, if you want a period of time to move forward rapidly, such as one character providing background for another character about something, or providing background for the reader so you can dive back into the live action, then it’s okay to tell. In fact, there’s really no other way to accomplish this WITHOUT telling. Otherwise, you’ll wind up boring the reader with the mundane, or with some points that have already previously been covered in the story. As for passive voice, sometimes it’s more suspenseful to use it. Like, if you want to draw attention to the fact that the actor in the sentence is unknown. Like, “the body was dumped in the river”. Well, who dumped it there? We (the readers) don’t know yet. That’s the point! You want the reader to wonder, to speculate. You want the story to have an air of mystery about it. Sometimes a character will speak in passive voice, and that’s OK too, because that’s the way people talk. It may sound artificial if you try to enforce the active voice into someone’s dialogue.
Anyway, there’s my two cents on the subject.
I don’t know about some of the more granular rules. I read tons before I ever started writing and I never noticed/cared if I came across the passive voice. Maybe I wasn’t smart or observant enough to be annoyed by i. I highly doubt it’s supposed to work subconsciously.
Sometimes I think writers are the only ones who focus on some things.
I agree. Before I took writing seriously I never noticed. Now I do, but I find when I turn the editor off while reading someine else’s work those things don’t bother me as much. It’s the story that matters most.
FIRST, I have to say that passive voice is a legitimate tactic. Sometimes, for certain things, and not overused. Sometimes, one *does not know* who is performing the action. Sometimes, the “object” of the action needs emphasis. Sometimes, it softens the statement. And here’s my biggie–far too often, writers call “passive” on sentences that are NOT written in passive voice. Please, people, hear me now: The word “was” is not the devil. Just because you see the word “was” does not mean you are reading something in passive voice. “He was walking” is NOT passive. Not, not, not!
Sorry, huge pet peeve for me!
Also, I think we confuse writing “rules” with writing “trends” and start spouting absolutes about things that are really contemporary stylistic trends. Deep pov vs. omniscient, short and tight sentences vs. long and melodious, fragment use, thoughts in italics (with a switch from 3rd person to 1st) vs. thoughts included in the narrative without changes, heavy description vs. light description, and even telling vs. showing. We’re taught now to show, show, show—but who’s to say in ten or twenty years writers won’t be taught that “showing” is too round-a-bout and it makes more sense to just state things out clearly for the reader?
The Oath was published in 1995, which is almost 20 years ago! Writing style trends have changed. Nouns are still nouns, modifiers shouldn’t be misplaced, and participles shouldn’t dangle, but the style of writing in books now is different than 20 years ago. It means we have to be aware of those things, so we’re writing something that will sell in the current market–but trends are not “rules” and it drives me crazy when writers get so legalistic about certain things.
My thoughts exactly, Kat. Cathilyn recommended The Bourne Identity for its psychological tension, and warned me to ignore out of date trends in his style. I have to try a little harder to read with a guard against adopting these out of date trends (head hopping for ex.), but what he does in the psychological tension area is well worth the read.
Kat, it’s funny that you mention use of the word “was.” For the first couple of years, it WAS the devil in my m/s. I worked SO hard to exorcise it from my writing. Until I finally began to see that obssession was hindering me from jus telling the story.
I think it often comes from a misconception of what passive voice is. We are told that “was” is a “sign” of passive voice. Well, that doesn’t mean it IS passive in EVERY instance. Numbness in your fingertips is a *sign* of a heart attack. It means, “Caution, this might be happening, take a closer look!” But it could just be your hand has fallen asleep :P.
Exactly, Kat. There are at least three different usages of the linking verb. One is used in a progressive verb like you did, “was going.” That is just usage of tense, not voice. And then there is its use as *passive usage* (not voice) usually in description (the car was red). There’s no action going on, but it isn’t passive voice. Then there is passive voice which makes the one recieving the action the subject of the sentence, which usually involves using a linking verb (The dog was hit by a car).
Each of these tend to get way over used by new writers, so it is good for them to focus on them. But they also need to learn they have their purposes and the goal isn’t to get rid of every instance of them. Rather, early on I did a search on every was and made a decision if it served a purpose or needed to be changed. My writing became substantially better for it and I don’t have to think so much about it any longer, I just write with that in mind. I noticed that when I would do a search and didn’t find 30 wases on each page. lol.
But in answer to Mike’s question on whether it matters, I think it does to the reader. Not usually consciously, but if a lot of passive voice is used, I think it takes away from the impact and action of the protag. Everything is being done to them instead of them being active. And the reader will pick up on that without specifically noticing “Hey, the writer is using a lot of passive voice here.” It simply affects the feel of the story.
But there are times you want to use it. I think I did a blog post on that once, and showed times these things could be used effectively. But as with many things in writing, usually less is more. Overuse something, even good stuff (like showing) and it will negatively affect the work.
I had a debate with a critique partner one time who said you should show everything. I argued that you shouldn’t, that some parts need to be told or you’ll bore the readers to death. I believe I got that from that “Self-editing for Fiction Writers” book.
I was taking creative writing classes in college in 1995 and they were harping about passive voice then, so I don’t think Peretti gets a pass there. I think he got away with it because normal readers care more about a good story than the rules that we newb’s are required to follow.
Mike you have your foot in the door. You’ve proven yourself to some extent. The publishers know you can write a novel. I think you will be able to get away with more rule breaking because they already have some trust in you. They know you know the difference whereas people like me…(a newb)…are eyed with skepticism. Agents, editors and the like go into it assuming I don’t know what I’m doing.
If Stephen King hadn’t sold so many books, he’d get reamed for some of the stuff he does. Fact is, if an author is bringing in big bucks, they get to break the rules and when they do they are often “geniuses”. This is what annoys me with literary criticism. It’s subjective, and a lot of it is flattery.
Take for instance the last quarter of my 1995-ish American Literature textbook, Volume 2 (which would be the relatively recent stuff). I found it odd that white males are no longer producing anything of literary value, certainly nothing worthy of study, but if you have some odd ethnic background or are a woman (especially if you are a lesbian), than you deserve a spot in an anthology. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. After semester and semester of this, it all made me throw up in my mouth a bit.
but I digress…
I’m with you on breaking rules. “Show, don’t tell” drives me crazy sometimes…do we really need the nonstop action, with no time to explain things? This is why I read the classics–though they’re sometimes quite slow-moving, at least the characters are fully developed and we can slowly MERGE into their worlds, instead of being rudely thrust into them.
That said, I’m just getting ready to teach a homeschool co-op class on passive vs active…gotta keep with the trends, I suppose.
FINALLY!!! Reading this post WAS a great moment of meeting of the minds. Over the last year of so you and I have batted back and forth this thing of subjectivity in writing. This is what I mean by that term. Writing is a craft – the rules can be taught but the craft must be mastered. Part of mastering the craft entails knowing the rules, knowing when to follow the rules, and knowing when to ignore them.
That part of writing is very subjective. Some people want nothing but action in their books, movies, and life. Others enjoy reveling in the beauty of words and scenes. Some can’t wait for the pay off and if it doesn’t come quickly and often that book is history. Others, like me, can hang in there with Dean Koontz in his new 77 Shadow Street because I know the payoff will come at the right time. From the look of his Amazon reviews, the majority of today’s readers cannot. That is the subjective part.
Sometimes I wonder with all the writer’s conferences, webinars, etc … if we aren’t in danger of beating the creative life right out of most fiction. This was never more apparent to me when I received my critique from a contest last week. Some of the observations made were very helpful. But the majority were nothing more than cookie cutter “never use was” type of suggestions.
With that said, I concur with others here; learn the rules before bending them. There is a difference in bending rules and never knowing what they WERE to begin with.
Like everything in writing, passive voice (and head hopping) have their uses. Passive voice is fantastic for negating responsibility; it’s the difference between “The cat was killed” and “I killed the cat.” Sometimes you don’t want active voice.
(For folks who don’t know, I’m a professional freelance writer and editor.)
Sad thing is, the “rules” are “rules of thumb,” because they often make things easier for newbies to write well. But somewhere along the line, the “of thumb” gets lost, and folks pitch a fit and say that “good writing” follows those rules by definition, which isn’t the case.
I don’t tend to notice Passive vs. Active. However, the others can really bug me because they seem like lazy writing. What do I mean? I’ve seen POV hop between two characters every other sentence within the same paragraph. Usually, that’s to tell me what character A thinks then what character B thinks. Sorry, that’s not good.
In the day of TV and movies, we are accustomed to figuring out what someone is thinking and feeling from their actions and words. I think that’s where show don’t tell came from. While POV is obviously a huge pet peeve or mine, telling is only a huge issue for me when it becomes overdone and slows things way down.
I agree that these rules can be broken, but they need to be done with thought and intent, rather than justifying lazy writing by saying “Rules are made to be broken.”
When there’s too much passive voice, it sounds like the author is afraid to say anything. But sometimes you do need it. As Stephen King points out, it just sounds better to say “She killed him with an axe”.
You do need some passive sometimes, just like you need narrative sometimes. I think it helps lower the tension a bit.
Now there’s a subject that hits close to home–Not so much the ‘passive voice’ issue, where I feel it is easy to abuse and that there are times it is appropriate, but the POV ‘rule.’
As someone who honestly has to work to struggle through anything written in the 1st person (I’ve always found it too limiting, or just plain distracting, save for more colloquial ‘story telling’ styles like Drama One-Acts or Monologues), hearing that Omniscient Third or ‘Head Hopping’ in a single scene was strictly discouraged was a bit of a shock. Doubly so, as in 90% of what I write is in that wonderful third person omniscient, changing POV on cue with the dialogue.
I was discouraged, until my editor marked a note on one of my scenes circling just a thing with, paraphrased, “It’s nice to see the two points of view of the same scene–authors don’t seem to do that anymore.”
I think it just stressed the point that you just have to do it well in whatever style or point of view that you choose–if your readers are confused about who is thinking what, it’s possible cutting down to one might be the right path, otherwise ‘good to go!’ 😀
I think I burned my copy of Strunk and White. I’ve never been much of a rule follower because I’ve studied rhetoric and understand the uses of passive voice, as well as the other taboos, including adverbs and authorial intrusion. All of these are beautiful, lost arts. Adverbs give text rhythm. Doesn’t anybody else hear that? The last CP I had literally highlighted every use of “was -ing” and “had –” in my text. Without these supposedly passive verb tenses, my writing made zero sense on a time progression level.
Kat has a point that The Oath was written over 15 years ago. Another point I haven’t seen yet is that it was written by FRANK PERETTI. The name and reputation of the author is often more relevant than the rules. What Frank Peretti gets away with and what *YOU* or *I* can get away with are two different things, even if we assumed equal writing experience and skill.
Once you’ve wooed an audience, they (readers and editors) tend to be more willing to “overlook” whatever style quirks you may have in favor of just enjoying the story. Readers will BUY Peretti’s books whether he’s paid strict attention to the rules or not because, well, he’s FRANK PERETTI. The editors know this. The “rules” get relaxed. If Peretti were willing to submit a manuscript he wrote (and I assume he DOES know the rules and when to break them) with “Brad Jones” in place of his name, you can bet the same editors would NOT be as forgiving.
In my lifetime I’ve read more than 5000 books.
The good ones all have one thing in common: authorial confidence.
I’m of the opinion that these Big Rules have evolved as more folks become interested in writing while at the same time critical thinking and reading comprehension skills are dwindling. It gives people something to “critique” without having to REALLY say anything about the actual story or the author’s skill in telling it.
“Too much passive voice” sounds like the critic knows what she’s talking about while at the same doesn’t really commit her to answering honestly about the story.
Mike,
Head-hopping drives me crazy, yet I see it in best sellers. Go figure.
Avoid the passive voice? There’s no rule that says you can’t use it, just try to keep most of your writing in the active voice. I notice that you don’t mind using it, as in “These are the rules the aforementioned author was referencing.”
Rules are like the white line in the road. They keep us on track, but sometimes we have to cross that line–just do it safely.
Thanks for getting a stimulating discussion started.
I wanted to write like Lois McMaster Bujold in The Curse Of Chalion. I LOVE that novel. If I can ever write anything that absorbing and moving, I will count myself a success.
When my out-of-print book was picked up and the edits were sent to me, nearly EVERY sentence had to be reworked????!!!! Aaargh! Well, now that I am through the revisions, I do think the book is much better and I am grateful to the copy editor. But….. I went back to The Curse Of Chalion and found out that almost all that had to be changed in my novel were the things that were prominent in Bujold’s novel….. OK. New times, new rules. And let’s face it, after reading thousands and thousands of novels, (starting at age 10, about 300/yr for 49 yrs) at least 99% of them older than twenty years, I am willing to read and write what is not acceptable style for genre works today. I need help to write what is acceptable for today’s audience. I need to learn the new rules. And I need to not flatter myself that I am such a great writer that I can write any way I want.
“The rules must be learned by new writers,” I said.
That’s wrong, Mike thought.
—
When you know why that doesn’t work, then you can find a way to do it that does work. The “rules” are really guidelines, but it’s good that we call them rules. By the time you’ve built enough maturity to question writing rules, you know why they exist and you understand the exceptions. I’ll bet a lot of new writers would be faster to dismiss “guidelines” and miss this learning curve.
Passive voice isn’t such a turn off to me – though I hate passive voice in my own work – but POV is the thing that drove me nuts, for awhile. Like you’re saying, I attended Borderlands Writers Bootcamp, learned about POV, applied it to my writing…then suddenly found I couldn’t read tons of novels because they violated all this strict learned I’d come into about POV.
The problem was, I’d developed some very rigid – and simplistic – rules about POV. Omniscient third person is always bad. Limited third person is always good. F. Paul Wilson writes strict third person limited in his Repairman Jack novels, so I started holding those up as the only “right” way to do POV. (I’m sure Paul himself would’ve been mortified).
But then I discovered Robert McCammon. And he writes third person omniscient. I struggled with this at first, until I realized that while third person omniscient is HARDER to write well, it’s not WRONG. So I had to loosen my ideals a bit.
On pov, I think the real problem with it is simply people attempting it who don’t do a good job of it. It is a hard pov to write from. Simply because when you change heads, you need to keep the reader with you. If you do that, then it is fine. But what you don’t want is a thought to occur, and a couple paragraphs later have the reader realize, “Hey, when did we switch heads? How did I end up here?”
If you head hop, and you lose the reader, then that’s just as bad as starting off a new scene in a new pov and not establishing it in the first sentence or two. In either case, it is using good writing skills that work, no matter the pov you are in. It’s just using the scene-by-scene switch for pov is generally easier for the write to pull off well.
Most omniscient povs you’ll notice tend to also have an overt narrator, that can more easily guide the reader to the next head. But even when not using an overt narrator, there are ways to let the reader know “we’re switching heads now.” But what new writers tend to think even when it is done right, is that it is head hopping and so it is bad.
I haven’t yet, but someday I want to write a book using omniscient pov. Well, actually my first novel I ever wrote I wrote that way. My mom said it flowed well enough. lol. But it did head hop a bit.
I unfortunately don’t have time to read all the comments so if someone else has pointed this out, my apologies. For me, the key to the whole debate lies in the last sentence of your multi-published romance writer’s quote…
“I never noticed those things before I became a writer, but now they jump out at me and can ruin the story.”
Most of us readers are not writers. Many of us couldn’t recognize the passive voice if our collective lives depended on it. But we do notice when a story grabs us by the throat and refuses to let us eat, sleep, or perform any number of other bodily/societal functions until we have finished it.
Accomplish that and we really don’t care how many “rules’ you keep, break, or simply ignore. Write a compelling story and we’ll read it. Write two or three of them and we’ll likely read everything you produce no matter what it is.
Exactly, Dennis. I’m starting too feel like Workshopped books are too same-y to be enjoyable at this point. It’s like all the authors are auto-tuning their voices.
The “rules” aren’t the problem. It’s that we think of them as rules, when really — to quote a certain pirate — they’re more like guidelines. We should keep them in mind, and try to follow them when it’s reasonable to do so . . . but bending your style so out of wack, interrupting the flow of narrative, just to make sure a sentence isn’t passive? Or using a silly metaphor for the sake of originality (a big one among Christian fiction writers)? Not worth it.
In my opinion, the only rule in writing is: “If it reads well, keep it. If not, cut it.”
One of the best rules I learned in an English class is that there are nearly always exceptions to the rule. That’s the nature of English, though most old-school grammer teachers would never, ever tell you that it’s actually okay to use “But” or “And” to occasionally start a sentence.
While the obvious, laundry list type “show don’t tell” sentences are never good (look bad, too), some genres like fantasy are expected to have more exposition. Doesn’t mean you should make it read like a dry lecture. You can always tell when an author is trying to impress you with all his research and knowledge. How they deliver it, however, decides whether or not it engages the reader.
Generally, we are told, authors aren’t supposed to try and reinvent English their first time out. Even with established authors this can be gimmicky. Sometimes it does work as in The Road.
Overt omniscient narration is my one true way to go; I only read novels written in such a manner, and I cannot be deterred by any person whatsoever from writing this way.