#active voice

To clarify, active voice is when the subject is performing the action, experiencing the emotion, etc. and passive voice is when the subject undergoes the action, emotion, etc. These basically come up in sentence structure as a way to make a character feel like they have more or less agency

The way to identify the difference, or at least the way I’ve used for years, is to put ‘by zombies’ after the verb. If it’s coherent, it’s passive voice, and if it isn’t, it’s active. Let’s use some examples:

“She was killed (by zombies)” -> coherent, passive

“Zombies killed (by zombies) her” -> incoherent, active

And the effect of these techniques in your writing is to make the subject read as though they have more or less agency depending on the situation, even without changing what’s going on in the scene. Neither is necessarily better than the other, it’s all about utilisation in the correct circumstances

Now some longer, Tumblr friendly examples, and you can try and practice identifying active and passive voice if that can help you:

“You kneel before my throne unaware that it was built on lies”

“It may not be that deep, but the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig”

“I hope I make it a little softer here for someone”

“If they won’t match your effort, they don’t want to be in your life”

Looking up the definitions of words when you feel even a moment of uncertainty about using them in a sentence in a novel can really save some of your sentences.

I second-guess my understanding of a word's usage all of the time, and I always, *always* google its definition even before I type it into my first draft. 9 times out of 10, I am indeed using the word correctly, or find to my chagrin that the word is indeed being correctly used, but has multiple contradictory definitions, and if I want my meaning to be explicit about which one I mean, i need to add more context to the sentence or choose a different word.

Such as chagrin.

Which can mean either "slight annoyance".... or ...."absolute mortification".

And "mortification" can also mean "extreme embarassment".... or "Furious enough to commit murder."

Looking up and double checking the meaning of a word will save you the embarassment of writing this kind of paragraph...

(Platform Decay spoilers).

Leonide hung limply from my grip, making no effort to grab the ladder. On the floor below, fluids spattered as they dripped down, and it wasn't just my fluids. I had to get the hatch closed or the hostiles would swarm down after us. I should just drop Leonide, but her body didn't feel like dead weight.

So. Leonide is hanging limp and unresponsive from Murderbot's hand, and is bleeding.

Murderbot then says that Leonide, who is *limp and unresponsive*, "didn't feel like dead weight".

In 2026, Martha Wells is apparently under the impression that 'dead weight' can only refer to the weight of an explicitly dead body.

Dead weight, when describing a person, animal, etc, does not mean literally dead -- it means limp and unresponsive, even unconscious.

Anyone who has watched the 2002 Lilo and Stitch knows what dead weight looks like:

[ID: A gifset from the 2002 animated Lilo and Stitch movie, showing Nani and Lilo as they argue at the beginning of the film. Nani is stopping Lilo from running away by holding onto one of her arms as they argue, and Lilo ends the argument by flopping limply to the floor as dead weight, to Nani's exasperation. End ID]

Dead weight does not mean literally dead, and having to read this paragraph was baffling--

Not only with literally describing dead weight, but then saying 'she didn't feel like dead weight', but also all of the other..... choice.... word choices in the construction of this paragraph.

The sentences are passively constructed, leading to a detachment on the reader's side from the dramatic things happening, and the mention of "fluids dripping down, and it wasn't just *my* fluids" completely draws the reader even further out of the scene by bringing to mind a completely different euphamism and making this scene unintentionally hilarious to read, when we're supposed to be taking it extremely seriously.

It's also all very passively constructed.

"On the floor below, fluid spattered as it dripped,"

instead of

"Blood spattered on the floor"

Here, I'll even fix that paragraph for you all, to show how easy it is to make this scene actually dramatic and tense!

Blood spattered on the ground below us, sheeting down from the shrapnel impaled in my shoulder-- but there was *too much* blood to just be mine. Leonide hung limp, unresponsive, and I couldn't see where she was hurt, not with how I'd barely caught her. I needed to get up there and close the hatch, but I couldn't do that without letting go of her dead weight, but I didn't want to hurt her worse if she was still alive.

See how easy that is? And that was just a few minutes. This is the first dramatic action scene in this book ( a whole 26 fucking percent in! that's one quarter of the whole book!) and paragraphs like this completely remove all tension, both by the complete passivity of the descriptions, but also the euphamisms for blood that remove the reader from the scene entirely.

(it is also, to no one's surprise, more racism, dehumanization, and slavery apologism that Murderbot's blood is never allowed to be called blood, we *must* reinforce at all turns that it is not a person, it's a machine that is happy to be enslaved an fufill its programming of protecting slave owners no matter how horrifically it gets hurt doing so, and how much those slave owners are horrible space nazis)

If you want to write a dramatic scene, you can't write it passively, and use euphemisms for blood as being "fluids". You have to also actually know the meaning of the words you are using, otherwise you're going to sound *incredibly* ridiculous when you describe dead weight and then say that she doesn't feel like dead weight because the protagonist doesn't think she's dead-dead.

Leonide is a space nazi, by the way.

This entire 'dramatic' paragraph and rescue by Murderbot is redundant and made moot like, less than 16 short paragraphs later when Leonide dies via mercy killing by euthanasia overdose from a medkit by one of the cardboard cutout slave owners of the week. Its supposed to be a dramatic, solemn scene and all I could do was stifle laughter at 3 in the morning as this book tries its *damndest* to make us feel bad for a genocider colonizer dying.

A genocidal, slaver colonizer who explicitly owns slaves and is in charge of multiple planet-wide colonization and enslavement programs, where she leads people to the slaughter or directly into concentration camps. Leonide is a genocidal space nazi, and we're supposed to sympathize with her and find her death tragic and sad~

This scene is the literal equivalent of saying its soooooooo tragic that Charlie Kirk was shot after years of downplaying gun violence for his own profit, no one should be celebrating his death, uwu!

meanwhile, I was trying to avoid cracking up laughing, groaning in disappointment when Murderbot caught her from falling, cheering when she fucking died, then rolling my eyes to the heavens above when we started in on the

"oooooh its sooooooo saaaaddd when the space nazi colonizer slaver diedddddd it makes Murderbot so saaadddd even though it knew she was a horrible person she didn't deserve *this* ~ "

What's that saying?

All Art is Political?

Hmm, it's almost as if this book series, which promotes itself as progressive, has some very explicitly conservative ideals baked into its very core which it reinforces at every turn through framing and word-of-god narration directly to the audience...

Take for example the passive voice. Most of us have been told that the passive voice is a 'weak' way to word a sentence so we should omit it from our work. For the most part, they're right: a typical sentence in a piece of fiction tends to be stronger and more emotional when the active voice is used.

Passive: 'I am being chased by someone.'

Active: 'Someone is chasing me.'

The active sentence sounds more exciting, right? Well, sometimes. Sometimes the passive sentence is better for emphasising the chasing rather than the someone. And check out this next sentence, where the passive voice is used to add a bit more mystery:

'I am being chased.'

Using the word 'someone' implied that I know it's one measly human being, which can take a lot of mystery and tension out of the sentence. But if I'm being chased by something I can't (or won't) describe, that can make it more interesting and not show my hand too early in the scene.

The passive voice has a similar use in nonfiction or academic writing. Even if we know who did it, the passive voice can add clarity and emphasis on topics by not focusing on irrelevant things like who did what. (For example: how many times have I used the passive voice in this post? Would it be as clear if I'd reworded everything to have active subjects? The active voice can make the tone of a post more friendly, or it could make the tone less mature or even a little aggressive!)

And of course, the same techniques can be used in fiction too. Maybe a specific word needs emphasis. Maybe a character's being shifty by trying to downplay their role, or maybe somebody who is making an announcement is being gracious enough to lift the blame off the culprit as a way of subtly showing forgiveness or mercy to them. Maybe the passive voice is considered to be the polite or 'correct' way to word things by a character due to their upbringing or personal values.

All of this is useful to a writer!

The answer is neither to stop doing something altogether because the rule says so, nor is it to just keep doing it because rules don't matter. It's about being aware of what you're choosing. Both 'good writing' and personal writing styles are about knowing what you're putting on paper (though you don't have to worry about lots of these things on the first draft).

Generally, you'd want to ditch adverbs, use said, omit the passive voice, and so on. But writing 'rules' are not rules, they're just indicators so you can tell which things should only be done deliberately. Adverbs are effective when they're picked precisely in order to help the scene, not so much when they're thrown in there for flavouring. Words other than 'said' are pretty effective when used to give clarity to a person's tone or intent or emotion, but isn't so useful to add drama. And the passive voice helps us do all the things I mentioned above, but it can also make actions feel limp or vague.

These 'rules' shouldn't be implying that your writing is bad if you do these, or saying they should never be used if you want to write more effectively. In fact, breaking these rules is often pretty important in effective writing! The 'rules' should just point out that if you're going to do a thing, you should have some idea of why you're using it and how it affects the sentence or scene.

*Use of the active and passive voice is according to the tone of the language and use of subject or object. Mostly active form is used in direct form when subject is active while passive voice is used to express something in indirect or passive tone, means subject is passive.

Present Tense

1. Present Indefinite / Simple Present

// S + V1(s/es) +O **Active Voice

// O + is /am/are + V3+ by + S **Passive voice

Active :She loves the cats.

Passive : The cats are loved by her.

Negative sentence : // S+ do/does+not + V1 + O ( active)

//O+ is / am /are+ ( not) +V3 +by + S. ( passive)

E.g

She does not like him. (A)

He is not liked by her. (P)

2. Present Continuous Tense

To change Continuous Tense into Passive form is/am/ are + being +V3 is used.

E.g: They are reading a newspaper. ( Active)

A newspaper is being read by them. (Passive)

Negative sentence : She is not holding a meeting this week. (Active)

A meeting is not being held by her this week. (P)

3. Present Perfect tense

The has/have +been +V3 form for Present Perfect tense is changed into O +has/ have + been +V3+by + S

E.g:

//The teacher has completed the lesson.

One way to improve your writing is by strategically using active voice and passive voice.

Active voice is when you have a subject + verb combo to lead the sentence. For example:

"He threw the ball."

"He" is your subject and "threw" is your verb. "Ball" is the object because it is the thing receiving the action.

Passive voice turns the focus of the sentence onto the object.

"The ball was thrown by him."

"Ball" is still the object, but it takes the lead in the sentence.

Active voice should be your default, go-to for sentences. It's less awkward and generally sounds better.

Compare:

"She sat on the couch"

vs.

"The couch was sat on by her."

However, if you are going to use passive voice, make sure it is a conscious decision and you want the reader to focus on the object.

Active example: "He broke the law"

Passive example: "The law was broken by him."

Hello.

Have you read the title yet? Go on, read it one more time. It's fine, we have time.

Done?

Yes, we will be learning about active and passive voice today. A simple part in the vast world of literature and language. Grab your detective coat and let's ask the most important question in today's material:

"Who did this?"

That's correct. That one question will open a whole new wonderworld right before your eyes. The world of 'Active and Passive Voice'.

...It doesn't sound that interesting, you say? Well, deal with it.

Without further ado, let's dive right in, shall we?