Passive restraint

Want to make your writing more interesting, and draw your readers into the action? Avoid the passive voice, at least most of the time. Use the active voice instead.

Which sentence would you rather read?

Passive voice: A long pass was launched toward the end zone by quarterback Tom Brady.

Active voice: Quarterback Tom Brady launched a long pass toward the end zone.

I chose the football example deliberately. Sportswriters almost never use the passive voice, which usually makes for pretty dull prose. No sportswriter can afford to be dull. Publisher, author and editor Nick Lyons would sometimes tell me jokingly: “The passive voice is liked by this author a lot.” If I was editing the book in question, he would invariably instruct me to extirpate the passive voice almost everywhere it reared its ugly head.

Is the passive voice always bad? No. If the subject is more important than the action, or if the performer of the action is unstated, the passive voice is fine—especially in a brief sentence:

The treasure ship was discovered in 1985.

But if you’re going to specify who discovered the ship, or include other details, it’s better to use the active voice:

Salvage diver Mel Fisher discovered the treasure ship off Key West in 1985.

Strictly speaking, the passive voice isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not very interesting, either. In a long sentence, the passive voice can sound ridiculously dull and convoluted. The longer and more detailed the sentence, the worse it gets:

An enthusiastic group of NRA leaders in Phoenix was spoken before by personal development expert Marsha Petrie Sue.

Naturally, a good editor (or better yet, a conscious writer) will choose to go active:

Personal development expert Marsha Petrie Sue spoke before an enthusiastic group of NRA leaders in Phoenix.

Keep your writing as active as your lifestyle. Use passive restraint. When the passive voice is used too much by this writer, his readers get put to sleep by him.

Here are this week’s editorial funnies to test yourself. See how many errors you can spot. Each example contains at least one.

5. After we had conquered the mountain, we got off the horses and lead them down a steep tallow slope.

4. She was a gorgeous, elegant lady and reminded him of a movie star, like Marilyn Monrow swan eye in a platinum mink stole.

3. Every week, the Spotlight shits on a different member and highlights their professional accompaniments.

2. Navigating the river and knowing which stretches the fish prefer along with knowledge of subtle nuisances in drift and presentation really make a guide on the Cumberland one of the best investments you can ever make.

1. During the First World War, troops from the Royal Norfolk Regiment were fighting the Turks in Dardanelles, France, when witnesses reported seeing several strange clouds hovering above the battlefield, unaffected by the day’s strong winds.

Here are the answers to last week’s editing follies:

5. The sun began its slow but steady ascent into the cloudless, azure blue sky.

Redundant; azure means sky blue, so one of these adjectives should be deleted. I’d remove blue.

4. It is the slight of hand that the left does with rediculous name reversals (like “family planning”) that implies something that in fact does just not happen.

Wrong word; slight is an adjective meaning minor. This should be sleight (from the same word root as sly), meaning crafty deception. Misspelling; should be ridiculous. Transposed words; should be: . . . just does not happen.

3. The last undimmed major steelhead river in California, the Smith and its tributaries, the Middle and South Forks, offer 300 river miles officially designated Wild and Scenic.

Wrong word; should be undammed.

2. This doesn’t have to be about a hero who actually saved people’s lives, like that boy in Holland who stuck his finger in the dyke–it could be just ordinary people and there day-to-day heroism.

Wrong word; dyke is an unflattering slang term for a lesbian, especially one considered to have a masculine appearance. Should be dike, synonymous with dam. Wrong word; should be their.

1. Even when hatched from the incubator, Gordon said that out of a hundred eggs he would be lucky to get one bird that passed his inspection.

(Yikes! Sounds like something from a Star Trek movie.) Dangling modifier; this says that Gordon was hatched from the incubator. Rewritten thus: Gordon said that, even with roosters hatched from the incubator, out of a hundred eggs he would be lucky to get one bird that passed his inspection.

Expressing your outdoor experience

I’ve been a freelance author for six years, and it’s really only since moving to Montana that I find myself writing about outdoor adventures.

Southern California lent itself to the occasional beach story or body-surfing essay–the reminiscing about how I used to be able to pull off wearing a bikini in my younger years! But this Big Sky Country really brought it out in me.

Fly fishing was the obvious choice, as it is easy to transform the experience into something about learning life’s lessons–a curious insight came to me while standing in the river. From there, every hike I took, every outdoor breath I breathed–well, I’m sure you can imagine the rest.

I encourage you all to elevate your experiences to a new level by uncovering a universal truth–some small nugget that is common to humankind–when you play and work in the outdoors. Write it down. Set it aside. In a week, read it again and stay focused on your topic, on your “truth” about the experience you had. Add anecdotes, something your hiking partner said that has a “double meaning,” like when the fly-fishing guide commented to me after I apologized that he wasn’t catching more fish along with us . . . “It’s all good.” Indeed it was, the entire day on that river, and so I wrote about how without cell phone, sound or distraction–heck, even without fish–it was all good.

Visit the websites of the outdoor magazines that fit your story. Find their submissions link and follow the directions. Publishing is hard these days–the economy is not really the industry’s best friend right now. But the process is exhilarating nonetheless. Send your piece to your local paper. I did, and ended up with a column. You never know.

~Kathleen Miller