Stay Active: How to Avoid Passive Voice Misuse as a Writer

Someone told you there’s too much passive voice in your writing. You’re not sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound great.

It isn’t, but not because passive voice is inherently bad. It’s just a spice that should be used sparingly and strategically.

That’s what we’re working on today. You’ll learn what passive voice is, why everyone seems to be allergic to it, and how to avoid it. And because clarity is everything, there will be loads of examples.

You’ll also discover that there are times when it’s actually best to use passive voice, and that’s important, because obsessively avoiding passive phrasing can be just as bad as having too much of it.

Now, before we get into the definition of passive voice, we need to tackle its opposite: active voice. 

What is Active Voice?

We’ll start with a quick refresher on relevant parts of speech within a sentence.

The subject of the sentence is the noun (person, place, or object) the sentence is about.

The predicate is the verb (action) the sentence describes.

In this super simple example:

Betsy interrogated the suspects.

…”Betsy” is the subject and “interrogated” is the predicate/verb.

In an active sentence, the subject performs the verb. 

Betsy interrogated the suspects. Dino accused Milo. Gladys confessed to the crime.

All those sentences are written in the active voice. (So was that one.) It’s easy to remember because the sentence is about a person, place, or thing acting. 

Okay, So What is Passive Voice?

In passive voice, the verb happens to the subject. In other words, the subject plays a passive role.

“Betsy interrogated the suspects” becomes, “The suspects were interrogated by Betsy.”

Both sentences convey the same information, but the change in structure drastically alters how the sentence feels and can even communicate a different type of message.

Here are a few more examples:

• Active: John told Betsy about the crime.
• Passive: Betsy was told about the crime.

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• Active: Betsy put on her trench coat.
• Passive: The trench coat was put on by Betsy.

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• Active: The perpetrator left shoe prints behind.
• Passive: Shoe prints were left behind.

You probably noticed a pattern emerging. That’s because passive sentences always follow a specific formula:

Subject + “to be” verb + past participle

For example:

Betsy (subject) was (to be verb) told (past participle).

Keep this formula in mind, because sometimes an active sentence can sound passive.

And we should probably talk about that.

Active Sentences That Feel Passive

There are a few common mistakes people make when distinguishing between active and passive voice. Let’s go over them so you don’t make the same errors.

Assuming “To Be” Verbs Always Signal Passive Voice

You can use “state of being” verbs when writing in active voice, too. For example (“to be” verbs in bold):

• It was a dreadful crime.
• There is a chill in the air.
• They were covering their tracks.

In order for it to be a passive sentence, the sentence must contain a “to be” verb and a past participle.

Mistaking an Adjective for a Verb

You also want to make sure the past participle is a verb and not an adjective. Here’s an example of a sentence that technically has the “‘to be’ verb + past participle” construction, but the participle functions as an adjective, not a verb:

Betsy was exhausted.

In this example, “exhausted” isn’t a verb that was acted upon Betsy. It describes Betsy herself, making it an adjective rather than a verb.

Identifying Passive Voice by the Verb Rather Than the Construction

We know that in passive voice, the subject receives the action. But don’t make the mistake of assuming a statement is passive just because it’s telling you that something happened to the subject.

Betsy received an anonymous threat.

That’s active voice, even though simply being the recipient of a threatening note is a passive experience. The verb is “received,” and Betsy is the one doing it. Passive voice would read like this:

An anonymous threat was sent to Betsy.

Or this, too, I guess:

An anonymous threat was received by Betsy.

Terrible sentence. Just awful.

I mention these common mistakes because you’re going to learn how to fix passive voice misuse in your writing later, and the first step is to correctly identify instances of passive voice in your story. And it’s hard to turn an already active sentence into a different active sentence.

What Counts as Passive Voice Misuse?

Now that we’ve laid out the definitions and formulas, what does it all mean for your writing? Who cares what’s active or passive? And why are your critique partners so hung up on it?

The short version is that active voice is clearer, as well as more direct and impactful. Those are things you usually want in fiction writing, especially when it comes to modern readers. 

That doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong to use the passive voice. In fact, old-timey authors loved to write that way. Read a Victorian novel, and you’ll find the “‘to be’ verb + past participle” construction everywhere.

But that’s not the fashion now. Your readers have an easier time reading the active voice and get more enjoyment out of the experience.

Now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for the passive voice in modern fiction. There are instances when the passive approach is the best way to achieve the effect you want, and we’ll go over those situations in a bit.

But for the most part, passive voice weakens fiction writing. Here’s how:

Passive Voice Misuse Examples

The passive voice is a problem when it lessens the impact or interferes with the clarity of a sentence. And it does those things most of the time.

As you build your writing skills and gain more experience, you’ll be able to sense why passive voice is tripping you up without much analysis. For now, while you’re still learning, it’s a good idea to get to know all the ways a passive sentence can torpedo your prose.

Obscuring the Agent

By “agent,” I mean the noun that actually performs the action described in the sentence.

If I say, “The body was discovered in the billiard room,” you’re missing a pretty important piece of information. Who discovered the body?

So suppose I say, “The body was discovered in the billiard room by the pool cue repairman.” That would answer the “who” question, but it kind of buries that detail at the end, creating the sense that it’s not that important. Your mind has already started imagining the scene without the pool cue repairman. 

Obscuring the Image

Which one of these is easier to imagine? This:

The pool cue repairman was eyed by Betsy.

Or this:

Betsy eyed the pool cue repairman.

The second one, right? That’s because the active voice often shows us what’s happening while the passive voice merely tells us. (You can read more about the show, don’t tell principle in this article or go super deep in this DabbleU Academy class.)

It’s crazy that it works that way, because the sentences contain identical components, aside from a couple of words. Neither sentence has more sensory details than the other.

The difference is that active phrasing shows us an event as it’s happening. We picture Betsy first, then we learn that she’s eyeing the pool cue repairman, so we picture her doing that.

Passive voice just hands us this little tidbit of information. “This guy got eyed and Betsy’s the one who did it.”

Slowing the Pace

One major reason writers try to show rather than tell is that telling tends to slow the pace. Think about reading a newspaper article about an event (which would be full of passive sentences, for reasons we’ll discuss later) versus a short essay written by an eyewitness, which is likely to be more active and “showy.”

The essay will feel faster paced because the author is essentially taking you by the hand and running you through all the action. 

Now, a slow pace isn’t always a bad thing, and some genres even embrace a gentle flow.

That said, if you’ve got a scene that’s plodding along, look for passive voice. It won’t be the only culprit, but if it’s there, it’s definitely not helping.

In addition to being very telly, passive voice tends to use more words than its active alternative. For example:

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• Active: Betsy gathered everyone in the drawing room.
• Passive: Everyone was gathered into the drawing room by Betsy.

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The second sentence is wordier and clunkier, and it’s going to interrupt the flow of your prose.

Underplaying Character Agency

Your character’s choices and actions are what make your story compelling. So you’re sacrificing something powerful when you emphasize what happened rather than who did it.

If the shadowy figure was followed down a dark alley by Betsy, our focus is on the shadowy figure. But when we make Betsy the subject—”Betsy followed the shadowy figure down a dark alley”—now we’re thinking about this elderly amateur sleuth making the decision to follow a dangerous person into the darkness.

Way more engaging, right?

Weakening the Emotional Experience

Passive sentences tend to take a more detached tone, for the reasons we just discussed.

The readers are hearing the facts of what happened rather than envisioning the act itself. They’re not feeling the tension that comes from watching characters make risky decisions or take bold actions. And the clunky phrasing is killing the emotional momentum.

Now, remember, these are all reasons to avoid overusing passive voice. You don’t need to cut all passive expressions from your story. These types of sentences have a place and a purpose, and when they’re used strategically, they can actually strengthen your storytelling.

When Passive Voice is Actually a Good Thing

Beginning fiction writers often learn to see passive voice as an enemy to good prose. In truth, it’s another tool in your literary toolbox. Like a hand saw. There are a lot of moments when it’s more harmful than helpful, but when it’s time to turn one piece of wood into two, nothing else will do. 

So before you start eliminating passive voice from your manuscript, make sure you’re aware of common situations where this particular tool can actually serve you.

Objective Tone

As we know, passive tone puts more focus on what happened than on who or what is responsible. This results in an objective, nonaccusing tone. 

That’s why you see so much passive voice in academic writing, legal documents, and news reporting.

Now, as a fiction author, you’re not usually aiming for objectivity. But there may be moments when the more detached approach comes in handy.

Maybe your narrator is meant to be comedically formal. Or one of your characters fears confrontation, so instead of saying, “You left the shop door unlocked when you closed last night,” they’d say, “The shop door was left unlocked.”

You can even use passive voice in narration to share a wink or eyebrow raise with your readers. Rather than writing, “Betsy had been out of the game for a long time,” you might write, “Her trenchcoat had not been worn for 25 years.”

By finding an overly formal way of saying, “This lady is rusty,” you create a sense of playfulness that isn’t in the original sentence.

Limited Point of View

First-person, third-person-limited, and (the very rare) second-person point of view are all limited points of view. This means you can only convey what one specific individual knows in a given moment.

If you’re writing the story through Betsy’s point of view and she has no idea who threw the eight ball through the billiard room window, you’d have to write “The eight ball had been thrown through the billiard room window,” as the acting agent is unknown. 

Emphasizing the Affected Object

Just to reiterate: It’s usually best to demonstrate a character’s agency in a situation by using active voice.

But there are times when drawing attention to the object impacted by the action is more important than emphasizing the acting agent. 

Let’s say Betsy receives an anonymous note made of letters cut from a magazine. The note warns her to stop the investigation or else. She notices that the B in Betsy is the same B from a famous toothpaste ad.

Then she borrows a magazine from her dear friend Gladys, wanting to copy the recipe Gladys used to make those scrumptious orange scones. As she flips through the magazine, Betsy stumbles across a page with the toothpaste ad on it. 

In this case, it’s probably more impactful to say, “The B had been cut out” than “Gladys had cut out the B.”

The passive version gets us to focus on the impact of the clue, just as Betsy would. We let the shocking discovery of the missing B sink in as we realize what it means.

The active version skips right ahead to a conclusion, and that jump actually lessens the emotional experience.

Deliberately Obscuring the Agent

Sometimes you just don’t want your readers to know who did something. Even if you’re writing in third-person omniscient and your narrator would definitely know who threw the eight ball through the window, you don’t want to hand that information over to your audience, because it’ll destroy the mystery.

Then there are times when it really doesn’t matter who did something. If you want to describe the dark alley where Betsy follows the shadowy figure, you could mention that “A garbage can had been overturned.” You don’t have to say, “A man named Derek had kicked a garbage can over in a fit of rage on his way to work that morning.” 

Of course, I should mention that there are a million ways to communicate the same image in the active voice.

Garbage spilled from the mouth of an overturned bin. A dented garbage can lay on its side. She nearly tripped over a toppled garbage can.

However, if you want your reader thinking about the mysterious people and raccoons who move through this eerie alley, “A garbage can had been overturned” is a good way to go. It doesn’t just describe the state of the garbage can; it emphasizes that something happened to it.   

How to Fix Passive Voice Misuse

Now that you’re an expert on good and not-so-good uses of passive voice, how do you fix the not-so-good?

We’ll go step by step.

Look for Passive Constructions

It’s not always easy to spot passive voice in your own writing, especially when the concept is fairly new to you. If you’re struggling to find instances of passive voice misuse in your manuscript, look out for that formula we talked about:

Subject + “to be” verb + past participle

Also keep an eye out for any sentence where something was done “by” someone or something.

The evidence was contaminated by Gladys’s spilled latte. The question was evaded by Dino. The case was solved by Betsy and her cat. (Oh yeah, I just decided there’s a cat in this story.)

A passive sentence won’t always have the word “by” in it and not all sentences containing that word are automatically passive. Even so, “by” can definitely be a signal to give something a second look.

Get Help Identifying Passive Voice

It’s easy to miss passive voice misuse in your own work, especially when the concept is new to you, so consider using style and grammar checkers like ProWritingAid, Grammarly, or Hemingway Editor. These programs will flag instances of passive voice for you.

(Side note: Dabble comes with ProWritingAid built in and integrates with your own subscription of ProWritingAid or Grammarly, so you can search for passive sentences right there in your manuscript.)

Just keep in mind that the technology isn’t perfect. It simply looks for the grammatical construction associated with passive voice. It doesn’t understand nuance and can make mistakes. 

So don’t put all your trust in the style checkers. It ultimately comes down to your own skill for identifying passive voice misuse and your judgment about when it’s actually best to go passive.

Make the Acting Agent the Subject

Once you’ve identified a passive sentence that needs fixing, find the acting agent. In other words, who or what is performing the verb?

Say the sentence is:

The crime was witnessed by a deer passing by the window.

The verb is “witnessed,” so who was doing the witnessing? The deer, right? Now rewrite the sentence so “deer” is the subject.

A deer passing by the window witnessed the crime.

Bam! Now you’ve got a new sentence written in the active voice.

Opt for Strong Verbs

As long as you’re cleaning up the passive voice, you might as well make your active version better by using stronger, more specific verbs.

If you start with this:

Milo was identified as a possible suspect by Mrs. Blitherblather.

…you’d fix the passive voice by doing this:

Mrs. Blitherblather identified Milo as a possible suspect.

But while that helps us envision the scene a little better, “identified” is kind of a cold, nonspecific verb. So let’s find something more pointed, like this:

Mrs. Blitherblather accused Milo.

Or this:

Mrs. Blitherblather confessed that Milo might have done it.

Those versions offer a lot more clarity, right? You don’t just know what happened and who did it, you also know how it happened—the feelings and attitudes behind the action.

And ultimately, that’s what fixing passive voice misuse is all about. You want to create a more vivid image your readers will connect with on an emotional level.

Talk About Keeping It Active…

It will take a little time and practice for you to feel comfortable identifying and fixing passive voice misuse.

This is where creative writing gets complicated. It’s not all quirky characters and nail-biting conflict. Sometimes you have to get out your magnifying glass and examine your story on the sentence level to make sure your intended meaning is coming through with the greatest possible impact.

Fortunately for Dabble users, Dabble Writer comes with style check powered by ProWritingAid to help you catch passive sentences that might be weakening your story.

In fact, Dabble is loaded with features to make the revision process a breeze. (Breezier, anyway.)

Use color-coded highlighting to identify specific problems in your manuscript. Use comments to leave notes for yourself or a collaborator. Use icon overlays to remind yourself when a scene still needs an edit.

And enjoy having all your planning notes and character profiles in the same place where you write and revise your novel.

To see what I’m talking about, click here and start your 14-day free trial. The trial gives you access to all of Dabble’s features, and you don’t even need to enter a credit card.

Who’s passive now? Not you, that’s for sure.