How to Write a Good Story

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

Unless you intend your book to be promotion or propaganda, you should be writing with the reader's best interest in mind, and not that of some other entity. You want your readers to trust your words and to experience them as an accurate reflection of reality and/or human nature. Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, your writing should tell the truth, clearly, plainly, and specifically. You especially should communicate the truth that has yet to be said.

Writing in the active voice is a way for your narrator to be open and upfront about the truth. The exception is if you are writing in the voice of a character who doesn't know or wishes to avoid saying who is responsible, as in "The gun was fired from the grassy knoll" or "mistakes will be made." That's okay on occasions when you want to convey the narrator's limitations or personality. Just don't use the passive voice to be unnecessarily vague about your story.

Some studies have shown that people have a harder time understanding things written predominately in the passive voice. This is no surprise, since the passive voice is less specific and therefore less clear. It's harder to picture what is happening in a scene if you don't know who or what is doing the action. As we've said elsewhere, specificity and clarity make for stronger writing.

Using Unconscious Do-ers

Another way to use the passive voice is to describe situations where the thing doing the action is not perceived to be a conscious entity. When we write "a sleeping pigeon was drenched by the splash," it does not sound like we are avoiding assigning responsibility. Splashes are not conscious beings who act deliberately, so the passive voice makes perfect sense here.

However, you can often make your writing more interesting by treating unconscious entities as though they were do-ers. There's nothing wrong with putting the sentence into the active voice: "A splash from the fountain drenched a sleeping pigeon."

Generally speaking, the more action you incorporate into your prose, the more you engage your reader's attention. With this in mind, writers commonly use the active voice to write about unconscious do-ers. For instance, it's practically a cliche to write a sentence like, "The sun beat down upon the rider's neck." Readers will take for granted that the sun is not consciously trying to beat anything. And the sentence is more pleasing than, "The rider's neck was being beaten down upon by the sun.

On the other hand, treating unconscious do-ers as thought they were conscious gives you an opportunity to communicate something about your narrator or point-of-view character's personality...

"The sun beat mercilessly down upon the rider's neck, slowly searing his flesh, punishing him for his stubborn determination to travel in broad daylight and his stupidity that made him leave his hat at home."

Now we are writing about the sun from the point of view of a rider who imagines the sun is a conscious being who is intentionally punishing him for his faults. This sentence tells the reader that the rider suffers from paranoia. By saying "his stupidity" made him act in a certain way, we show that this rider thinks of himself as a victim of his own nature.

Other Ways to Make Your Prose More Active

Apart from the issue of passive voice versus active voice, you can also improve your writing by choosing active verbs over copula verbs. For example...

"The soup was hot."

This sentence is in the active voice. (To make it passive, you would write, "The soup was heated.") Yet, the verb "was" feels passive because it describes a state rather than an activity. You can add more action to your writing and make it more engaging by using fewer copula verbs such as "is," "was," "seems," "appears," "stays," "feels," or "sounds." Replace these where possible with verbs that describe activity. For example, we could change the previous sentence to show heat through action...

"The soup bubbled on the stove."

You can go a step further by replacing common verbs with more specific, less common verbs. Will your hero simply "run?" Or will he "scarper," "dash," "race," "cantor," "trot," "lope," "scurry," or "sprint?" Each choice conveys a slightly different image.

One Final Tip...

Another common but dull approach is to begin sentences with "It is...," "There is..." or "There are..." For example ...

"There were five men standing by the gate."

Whenever possible, rewrite these sentences to be more active:

"Five men stood by the gate.

Or perhaps...

"Five men loitered by the gate."

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