I get the impression from some people that they don't necessarily know how to read when they complain about even the slightest use of the passive voice in the work of others.
One author who wrote in the passive voice effectively was James Baldwin. He was one who inspired my own writing and may have set some of the tone in my work, though my approach, just as much influenced by Another Country, was more influenced by Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which was written in present tense. I chose 3rd person past tense omniscient.
When I read the passive voice, it can clearly show us a story set in the past with a bit more presense to the situation. Was walking, and you view someone walking at the same time you see him end up at street corner where people were talking, all of this in effect is happening in the past. It has a very moving quality.
I chose to have the same effect in my writing, and I see that it can be done well. Of course, you may change it up and use both active and passive.
Is anyone having trouble with the submissions as far as the passive voice goes? I personally admire the use of it sometimes when it's done right, but some people don't care for it whatsoever, possibly because someone else told them it was a rule not to use it. What's your opinion?
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Comments: 9
Literature is about offering feelings for which we do not have to pay. It allows us to love, hate, condemn, hope, take risks, so on.. For some, they believe in order to move your reader, the standard advice runs, "Show, don't tell." This dictum can be confusing, considering that words are all a writer has to work with. The writer's job is to focus attention not on the words nor on the thoughts these words produce, but on the experience, where the vitality lies. I believe you used vivid descriptions which made some scenes seems real. In the end, as you said it is important for writer to find his/her own voice because he/she knows their experience more than anybody else.
That's just my preference. It's not something that was drilled in to me; I happen to prefer an active voice that makes a sentence shine.
However, like Brian said, when it's done well, passive voice can make a story come alive.