posted
I thought I understood how to identify and eliminate the passive voice.
For instance, obviously this is passive voice: The blue ghost was eaten by Super-pacman.
However, in a recent crit, one of the things brought to light was that my writing was riddled with the passive voice. In fact, the following sentences were highlighted as examples:
In the den, the ceiling had caved in, support beams, insulation and dust covered the room, mixed with blouses, dresses, bellbottoms, boy-band posters and girl-power stickers.
A wave of anger clenched Abe's stomach, his hands tensed.
Is there something about the passive voice I don't know? What makes these in the passive voice? Was the person mistaken?
posted
I don't see glaring passive voice, but I do see you have a problem with clauses. Both your sample sentances are two independent clauses with only a comma separating them. There should be a sei-colon or a period.
"A wave of anger clenched Abe's stomach; his hands tensed."
The issue with this sentance is that the wave of anger doesn't really do the clenching, the stomach does. the wave would cause the stomach to clench up, turn over, tighten or whatever.
This might be considered a shadow passive voice since your subject isn't the cause of the predicate.
Make sure your clauses are separate or you have run-on sentances.
posted
These sentences are run-ons, but not passive.
"In the den, the ceiling had caved in, support beams, insulation and dust covered the room, mixed with blouses, dresses, bellbottoms, boy-band posters and girl-power stickers."
In the first part of this sentence, the ceiling is the subject and the ceiling is doing the caving in. After the "caved in" though, you either need a period or a semi-colon as the secdond part is a self-sufficient sentence with it's own subject and verb. In that part, the support beams, insulation, and dust are the subject performing the action: covering.
"A wave of anger clenched Abe's stomach, his hands tensed."
In the first part of this, a wave of anger is the subject and it is performing the action of clenching. After stomach, you need a period or a semi-colon. The subject in this second part is his hands and they perform the action of tensing.
posted
You certainly have no passive voice in these sentences.
All I can think of is that the critiquer objected to the description as static; nothing is happening. The caving-in has already happened, and everything else is just there, not doing anything. But, from the limited amount you have here, that sounds totally appropriate.
I'll agree with the Verdant's and Christine's comments, though.
posted
Most anytime you do or could have a statement "by _______" the sentence is passive. (The exception is when the "by" is positional like in: The toaster is by the phone.)
The mail was delivered. The mail was delivered by me.
Are both passive structure, even though the doer of the action is present in the second case.
Basically passive means that whoever is doing the action (performing the verb) is not the subject of the sentence.
In the above example, the mail is the subject and "was delivered" is the verb. Since the mail didnt deliver anything, the sentence is passive.
posted
The original poster's sentences in question are not passive. Not every critter knows what they are talking about. Whoever called those passive is in error.
Posts: 370 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I want to concentrate on the last example, though. (Before I do, I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not indend to make fun of ChrisOwens specifically.)
A wave of anger clenched Abe's stomach, his hands tensed.
It's not unusual to have things that shouldn't be acting some way act that way just to avoid using adverbs, or to make it more colorful:
Abe extended a friendly hand.
instead of:
Abe extended his hand warmly.
I've seen this a lot, and I actually think it's stupid. Why is his hand friendly? What makes a hand friendly? Does it win friends and influence people better than Abe does? What is it about the hand that makes it a better candidate for a modifier than Abe himself? Just the fact that you don't have to use an adverb?
Silly. It's like the hoops poets jump through to keep things in iambic pentameter (or whatever).
Anyway, in the same vein, I have some suggestions for the original sentence:
Abe's stomach clenched angrily; his hands tensed.
Not much worse, is it? His stomach is angry now, but before a wave of anger was clenching his stomach.
Abe's stomach clenched in anger; his hands tensed.
Not much better, but at least it avoids the adverb.
Abe clenched his stomach in anger; his hands tensed.
Hmm. I don't think that the clenching of the stomach was intended to be intentional.
Abe was angry, and became even more angry when he realized that his stomach was clenching involuntarily; his hands tensed.
Nope. Oh, here we go:
Abe clenched his tense hands around his angry stomach.
Bah.
Abe waved his tense hands at his clenched-up, angry stomach.
Well, that settles it. You can't win this one.
[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited August 09, 2006).]
posted
If you go through something like ^^this^^ and you're still not satisfied, you should probably just kill the sentence and rewrite it completely. Some sentences just can't be contorted into a decent shape. Sometimes it's a better use of time to fix it by replacing the sentence instead of rearranging words for 45 minutes.
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posted
I like the image of a friendly hand being extended, actually. I'm not an adverb nazi, but it also helps to vary the sentences a bit and using similes and metaphors adds color to your writing.
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posted
yeah, I'm ok with extending a friendly hand, but will be sure never to do so to Mr. Writing Person.
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posted
Passive voice is this: If instead of A wave of anger clenched Abe's stomach you said Abe's stomach was clenched a wave of anger Then that's passive voice. This fits with P And it sounds lame and slows down the action.
However it does have a place especially in dialog.
[This message has been edited by Aust Alien (edited August 09, 2006).]
posted
The problem with passive voice, which does not exist in the examples you gave, is weakness. It makes your writing dull. If you want a dull moment in your fiction then passive voice might be appropriate.
ChrisOwens, if these word and punctuation choices express what you want your readers to read, then keep these passages exactly as they are. Personally I prefer Verdant and Christine's versions; they "ring" nicely as I read. But thet doesn't make them right.
posted
I know this has been said before, but sometimes I find that avoiding passive voice and/or to be verbs creates more writing problems then it solves. And the same goes for the total adversion to adverbs and adjectives, again, as was stated above.
Or the show verus tell. Right now I have a sentence: One man contorted himself until he almost fell over. And I am sure somebody is going to say, no! no! no!-> show him contorting himself and prove how the viewpoint character knew he almost fell over. Well, maybe if it were a novel, but for a short story, I can't dedicate that much showing and wordcount for a minor blip of a character. But then, I'm sure, some would object to the word almost, ect, ect...
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited August 12, 2006).]
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