I’ve been a user of Critique Circle long enough to see certain pieces of advice crop up again and again. Long-time critiquers cite them as rules across multiple submissions. New users pick them up and begin to spread the same advice to others. But sometimes rules are cited as absolutes without regard for subtleties. Sometimes we find ourselves following the letter of the law but neglecting its spirit. That spirit is what we must understand to gain true mastery of this concept and reap the benefits. But in order to reach that level, we need to first ensure a common understanding of grammar.

Stick with me as I cover a few basics. Every complete sentence has a subject and a verb. The subject is a noun (a person, place, animal, or thing). A verb describes an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. In the simple sentence “I ran”, “I” is a noun and “ran” is a verb describing an action. “I exist” uses a verb that describes a state of being. “I became an adult” uses the verb “became” to describe something that occurred. In all of these examples, the subject is “I”, but the last example has two nouns in it: “I” and “adult”. Why is “I” the subject? Because the subject is the noun that performs the verb. The verb is “became”, so who or what became? I did. “I” is the subject.

This is important because the subject of a sentence does not always come first. Consider “This morning I ran a mile”. “Morning” is a noun, but “morning” is not the who or what that ran.

Now we can consider another type of sentence: “This blog post was written by someone”. The verb here is “was written”. What’s the subject? Well, this blog post is what was written. But who wrote it? “Someone”, the noun that appears not before the verb but after it. The subject (this blog post) is being acted upon rather than acting. This is an example of passive voice.

I could change this sentence from passive to active by having it focus on the subject performing the action instead. “Someone wrote this blog post” or “I wrote this blog post” would do the trick.

If I was writing a memoir, I likely would want to keep the focus on myself and my accomplishments. “I wrote this blog post” is therefore a stronger sentence than “This blog post was written by me”. It’s also a simpler sentence, and therefore a little clearer.

A Warning

The example given above starts to get at the reasoning behind the rule, but we’re not done yet. Now that I’ve established what passive voice is, I also need to cover what it isn’t. I’ve seen examples of sentences being misidentified as passive, and it seems to come from applying, not what I outlined above, but what is meant to be nothing more than a handy little trick for spotting it.

It is true, as many will point out, that when a sentence is written in the passive voice, it will use a form of the verb “to be”, followed by a past participle. “Written” is an example of a past participle, a special form of the verb “to write”.

But does this mean that every sentence that uses a form of the verb “to be” is passive? No. “The ball is red” is a sentence that uses the verb “is”, but the subject is “the ball”. The ball is not being acted upon; therefore the sentence is not passive. At the same time, however, we can’t really say that the ball is performing an action in this sentence. This means that while the sentence is not passive, the verb is creating a similar effect to that of passive voice.

This is an important distinction, and not only for semantic reasons. “To be” is actually an example of a linking verb, and the truth is that all linking verbs can create the same effect. By understanding the effect of linking verbs, you can start to keep an eye out for others as well. “To become”, which I used above, is one such verb. Other examples include “to seem”, “to look”, “to smell”, “to taste”, “to feel”, and “to sound”. Many of these are words that invoke one of the five senses, but it’s important to note that some of these can be used in more than one way. “She looked beautiful” uses its verb in a different way than “she looked at the scenery”. The first example is a classic linking verb construction. It’s using the verb to link the subject to a description. The second uses “to look” to describe the action of looking.

Now we start to see the complexity of the English language. A “to be” verb does not always indicate passive voice. “To look” is not always used as a linking verb. It’s necessary to consider the effect these words are having in each individual sentence, not just search for all occurrences in the document and say, “that’s how many passive sentences there are”.

Making Decisions

Going even further, we need to consider individual sentences in the greater context of the paragraph, the passage, the work as a whole. Ask yourself what the sentence is trying to accomplish before you determine whether it should be active or passive.

Yes, some sentences should be passive. Some sentences can be passive without sacrificing anything. The same applies to linking verbs.

The active voice works well for sentences in which you want to place emphasis on the subject of the sentence and what they’re actively doing. They can bring characters to life and keep the readers focused on the action. The passive voice, on the other hand, can remove the subject altogether, so that the reader doesn’t even know who’s performing the action. It can create a sense of distance or give the impression that a character is weak or helpless.

Fiction writers will likely want to use the active voice the majority of the time, but that doesn’t mean the passive voice should never be used. In fact, understanding the effect of the passive voice can allow a writer to use it specifically because they want to create a sense of distance or convey a feeling of helplessness. A skilled writer can also play with transitions from one voice to the other, conveying a sense of change or development or accentuating sentences by providing contrast. In other cases, the subject of a sentence might be unknown. The subject might not even matter. Sometimes, changing a sentence to the active voice may not accomplish anything.

Let’s take a look at an example of passive voice, from Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

“In the beginning the Universe was created.

"This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Both these sentences are passive, but in the first case, the use of passive voice sidesteps some potential religious controversy by ignoring the question of who created the universe. In the second, it’s unknown exactly how many people regard the creation of the universe as “a bad move” or exactly who they are, but it doesn’t matter. These sentences, written exactly as they are, are clearly understood and create a humorous effect, which was exactly the author’s intention.

As for linking verbs, sometimes a simple description of the subject is exactly what a passage calls for. A character who’s coming out should be allowed to proclaim, “I am gay”. He shouldn’t have to twist around to avoid a linking verb and come up with something like, “I only experience attraction towards men”. The sentence with the linking verb is stronger, whether in dialogue or in first person narration.

Imagine a world without Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be”. Without Charles Dickens’ “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or Jane Austen’s “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”. Shall we skewer Tolkien for beginning The Fellowship of the Ring with a sentence that includes the word “was”? Or contemporary authors like Jennifer Egan for using it three times in the first paragraph of her Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit from the Goon Squad? How about Stephen King, who himself cautions against the use of passive voice and encourages the use of active verbs in his book On Writing? I count seven instances of a “to be” verb in the first two paragraphs of The Shining. Eight instances in the first two paragraphs of his latest novel Fairy Tale. If that doesn’t give some pause to those encouraging others to eliminate every single instance of a “to be” verb in their manuscripts, I don’t know what will.

By all means, keep an eye out for passive voice and linking verbs in your own work and in the pieces you’re critiquing. Be certain, however, that you’ve first identified it correctly, and second that you’ve considered the effect the sentence has and the effect the author desires. Eliminating passive voice and linking verbs can strengthen sentences, but doing so without reservation can be likened to throwing out the baby with the bath water. No “rule” of writing is meant to be an absolute.