Lecture three, writing in the active or the passive voice. Remember, as a writer, your goal is to tell your story in a direct way that engages the reader. Using prose that is easy to read, and doesn't distract from that story. Many writers enthusiastically start to get their words down on paper and slip into a way of expressing action that is drab and not dynamic. This is often the case when we use the passive voice and not the active. So what is the difference?
An active sentence has the subject doing something to something else. That's something else is called the object. And of course, what is done is the verb in this simple sentence, Jason is the subject. Hit is the verb. And the ball is the object. Jason hit the ball.
In fact, that doesn't even have to be an object in an active sentence. In this sentence, the rain falls, the rain is a subject and falls is the verb. Now in a passive sentence, the subject is not doing something is having something done to it. For example, in this sentence, the book was written by Jason in an active form, it would read Jason wrote the book. We cannot identify this sentence as a passive action because a participle of the verb To be is used in conjunction with another verb in the past tense. In this sentence was written tells you that this is a passive sentence.
Write it with other variations of the verb to be. And this is still a passive sentence, because something is being done to the subject, which is the book. The book will be written by Jason is also a passive sentence. Even though the sentence the book will be written by Jason is in the future, it is still a passive sentence. So, when do we use the active voice? the active voice should be used whenever you can and many people say between 80 and 90% of your pros should be active.
In general, active sentences are more forceful. They contain less words and are easier to follow. They are direct, and it's generally clear who's doing what the energy directness of the active voice, who keep your readers turning the pages. So when do we use the passive voice? Well, it's useful when the doula is not too important. Who He is or known.
For example, in this sentence, my windows were painted last year. It isn't really important who painted the windows. The important thing is, is that they were painted. An active version of this sentence would be Someone painted my windows last year. With doesn't sound quite right. It almost sounds like an act of vandalism and it changes the intention of the sentence.
We could also use a passive voice if we want to avoid naming someone for wrongdoing or to blame for an accident. For example, in the passive form, we would say laws were broken. In the active voice, we would say someone broke the law. If the active version of the sentence we used the obvious question of who broke the law may arise and be unwelcome. Let's recap what we've learned in this lecture. In an active sentence, the subject performs an action in a passive sentence.
The subject is acted upon. Remember, particularly if your manuscript is well advanced. There are some useful tools included in lecture 12 including how to find passive sentences in your writing. In the next lecture, we're going to look at the way to use some special punctuation