Way #10 — Use Active, Not Passive Voice

Your Brain on Verbs

How easy to use was. How that word just slides off our fingertips and onto the page as we merrily write along. Maybe the word actually resides in our fingers and shows up as automatic writing. Maybe it asserts itself like our heart, an involuntary muscle. Though in was’s case, there’s not much muscle involved. Was is a weakling of a verb. So is its present tense form, is. Both versions are forms of the verb to be. (Count how many to be forms I used in that paragraph and win a lively replacement verb of your very own.)

The to be verb comes in various forms (there are, it is, we were, I was), including present and past tense and a couple of participles, all of which we won’t get into here. I don’t want to go all English teacher on you, so for now, let’s just say active verbs are almost always preferable to weak ones. Active verbs are more direct and more colorful.

(Warning: sometimes we can get so colorful we draw too much attention to our fancy dance. A reader should never see a writer sweat.)

To summons the was police, use the “find and replace” tool in your word processing program: find all the to be verb forms (was, is, are, were, etc.) and replace them with livelier verbs. Check for all the adverbs, too, those words ending in “ly.” Often we use adverbs to muscle up our verbs, but the technique just serves to make the whole thing muddier. For example: She ate quickly vs. She gobbled her turkey sandwich. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) We want verbs that can lift and carry heavy loads, verbs that can block and tackle. We want verbs with heft, verbs with presence, verbs that give life to the piece.

Here’s another opportunity to map your page with highlighters. Mark all the passive verbs in neon yellow or that vivid pink that makes you squint. Do the same with the adverbs, using a different shade. A sheet of paper brightly colored as a kid’s birthday party can be a dose of “show, don’t tell” consciousness-raising for a writer.

Want to find out more about active voice? Here are a quick couple of links: Grammar Girl  About.com (this one has some entertaining examples.)

 Today’s “make it better” assignment: Replace three lazy verbs in your current draft with livelier verbs. Verb me your experience.