Passive vs Active Verbs

Exercising is Action

I noted a comment on Facebook yesterday that made me stop and ponder for a moment. A memoir writer, new to writing I'm guessing, asked a question about verb tense usage and then added that she noticed an awful lot of the word was in her writing. Let's take a look at verbs like was.

The use of the passive verb was and others like is, was, are were is pretty common while writing a first draft. When we're trying to get the main idea down in an initial draft, we aren't thinking about the kind of verbs we use. The very experienced writer will automatically steer to the more active verbs because--well, because of long experience. More of us have to give serious thought to the kind of verbs we use, and it's a very good reason why we must, must, must proofread and edit those beginning efforts.

In our clipart above, we take note of a person performing a series of exercises. He is active. Consider some of the verbs you might use to describe his exercising:  bend, tilt, stretch, rise, pull.  The man is active and your verbs should follow his example. 

In Gary Provost's boo 100 Ways to Improver Your Writing, he says "Generally speaking, verbs are weak when they are not specific, are not active, or are unnecessarily dependent on adverbs for their meaning."  In this instance, he was discussing strong verbs vs weak ones. 

Take a look at these examples:

                      Weak                                                                Strong

There was a curio cabinet in the corner.                    A curio cabinet towered in the corner.

There are two men on the curb.                                Two men sit near one another on the curb.

In the first example, using the verb towered in place of was gave a much better picture. It tells us the size of the cabinet. Note in the second example that the stronger sentence tells us exactly what they are doing, sitting not standing. In order to use a different verb in this sentence, I had to change the order of the sentence a bit, and I added a little more.  

Sometimes, you need to change the order of a sentence when changing to a more active verb. And that's fine. You can't always pluck the weak verb from the sentence and plop a better one in the same spot.  Did you notice that was is often accompanied by the word there? Some writers get in the habit of using There was, There are, There is, There were and it becomes habitual. 

Some writers might say Who cares about passive verbs. I use them all the time. No big deal. You can use them; we have no law that says you're forbidden to use passive verbs. However, if you change as many as possible to active verbs, your writing will be stronger and more interesting. We're always advising writers to show rather than tell. Those active verbs will help you do more showing.

Just for fun, get one of your stories, essays etc out of your files and go through it, marking all the passive verbs. Underline each one with a color that will stand out. You might be surprised at how many you find. Then, as a writing exercise, replace as many as possible with active verbs.