Hey everyone! I’m here again this week for another post. My finals are almost over and I’m finally feeling like I have enough free time to tackle these last two really hard topics of the ten writing commandments. So without further ado, commandment nine out of ten is…..
Ten Writing Commandments: Only Sometimes Use Adverbs and Passive Voice
Adverbs and passive voice are not always the same thing, but they are both equally good and equally bad when it comes to writing. So, because they are related but not enough for me to really explain them together this post is going to be broken into two different sections. The first section is going to be about adverbs and second section is going to be about passive voice.
Adverbs
Adverbs are really interesting and should be used occasionally but they should not be used all the time and when they are used, they should be used sparingly. There is a really famous quote by Stephen King that says, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” I feel like this isn’t too far off the mark. Adverbs can make your writing look messy and lazy when you use too many of them. But what is an adverb?
An adverb is a word that modifies a noun or an adjective. There are all kinds of adverbs but the most famous adverb is the -ly adverbs such as quickly or angrily. These adverbs generally modify the noun in sentences such as, “He slammed his hand angrily”. We are modifying the noun ‘he’ here to show that ‘he’ is angry. There is nothing wrong grammatically with this sentence in fact it sounds like a perfect English sentence. But the difference in being perfect in English and being a good writer is that your writing needs to be more interesting than perfect English.
In one of the posts in my Small Skills series we talked about showing and telling and that as a writer you need to show rather than telling. In the end this skill comes down to adverbs at its most basic. In the previous example sentence, “He slammed his hand angrily” are we telling or showing?
That’s right, we’re telling. You can’t tell that the ‘he’ in this sentence is angry, I just told you he was. Adverbs turn a showing sentence into a telling sentence. A showing sentence that doesn’t use an adverb would be, “When he slammed his fist into the tabletop, it shook with the same force his body did as his face turned red.” In this sentence we have eliminated any -ly adverbs and have created a sentence that shows his anger rather than telling about it.
Sometimes adverbs are helpful when it comes to modifying verbs in sentences such as “She ran quickly” (which tells us how fast she was running) they should be used sparingly if at all.
Passive Voice
There is one simple way to explain passive voice with several different reasons as to why you shouldn’t use it. My favorite reason to cite is that is wordy and complicated. Generally passive voice makes it harder to read large portions of a story because the reader has a hard time understanding what is going on. When they have to dig through miles of words to reach a simple meaning reader can get bored or distracted.
Passive voice is simply explained as a sentence where the noun is the receiver of the verb. When the noun in the sentence in acted upon rather than acting. For example a passive voice sentence would be, “The money was counted.” The money (your noun) was acted upon, which turned this sentence into a passive voice sentence.
The opposite of passive voice is active voice. When active voice is used in writing the noun acts rather than being acted upon. They are the giver of the verb rather than the receiver. In the example used previously, “The money was counted” we know that it’s a passive voice sentence. To turn this into an active voice we need the noun to act. So, we create an active voice sentence, “The man counted the money.” Now we have a noun that is acting rather than being acted upon.
I’ve had many people talk to me and tell me, “But spotting passive voice is hard!” And I will admit that spotting it is hard. I definitely suggest that searching out passive voice is a nitpicking editing skill and shouldn’t be done during initial writing stages however, it’s the perfect thing to understand about editing and crucial to making a story better. I heard from another writer at a writing conference the perfect trick for spotting passive voice.
If you can add “by zombies” at the end of the sentence, and it makes sense, it’s a passive voice sentence.
Using our previous sentence “The money was counted [by zombies].” Does this sentence make sense with adding “by zombies”? Yes! It’s a passive voice sentence. “The man counted the money [by zombies]”. Does this make sense? No! It’s active voice.
That’s all for this week’s post. I hope that it helped you to understand better what adverbs and passive voice are and why it’s important to rarely if ever use it in writing. Keep in mind that both of these are things to look at in the editing stages rather than the writing process. Remember to never nit pick edit while you write. I hope to be back next week with the last post in this series and the new series announcement. After the end of this series I will be taking a short break to start work on the next series. If you enjoyed, don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, become a member, or follow me on social media for more updates. Have a great week and remember…
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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