Tips for eliminating Passivity

[Steerpike]

Does it read like a legal document? It's probably passive.

Except the trend in legal writing over the last decade or so is to avoid passive writing and write in active voice, particularly for persuasive writing

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Writing that would have Faulkner rolling over in his grave you mean?

My goal is to make Faulkner spin at a high enough RPM that I can attach magnets to him, coil wire around his grave, and use him as a power source.

 

[Steerpike]

My goal is to make Faulkner spin at a high enough RPM that I can attach magnets to him, coil wire around his grave, and use him as a power source.

Oh, the sound and the fury!!

 

[Zophos]

My goal is to make Faulkner spin at a high enough RPM that I can attach magnets to him, coil wire around his grave, and use him as a power source.

Even getting close to Faulkner would be a bonus. Unparalleled storyteller, IMO.

 

[Zophos]

Oh, the sound and the fury!!

Always been a fan of Light in August, myself. I've always thought he started with the Ch. 6 lead paragraph and built a book around it.

Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like blacktears.

 

[SeverinR]

I use word 2011 so it highlights the passive voice when I spell check. If I let any in I correct it. When I did my first book I was appalled to find out it was filled with passive voice. So I rewrote the entire thing to eliminate the passive voice. Although I kept it in one or two sentences to make the character out to be a victim. Anyway, the more you write and correct the passive the less you do it. spelling checks and stuff like that really help.

I forgot about that, I got a couple flags for passive, haven't got one for a while.
MS Word 2007 doesn't have it?\
Just checked, MS Word 2007 does flag passive style.

 

[Butterfly]

For those who can't find it - to use word (2007) to check for passive sentences:-

Click the circle at top left corner - (the one with a red, orange, blue and green square in it)

At the bottom of the drop down menu you will see 'Word options' - click it

Look for the 'proofing' tab

At 'Writing style' - select 'Grammar and style' from the drop down menu

Word will now highlight in green squiggly lines, passive sentences, fragmented sentences, end of sentence prepositions, etc.

Also another tip:-

Follow the same path and you will see an option for 'custom dictionaries', click on it, then 'Edit word list' you can then add fantastical names, places and words to the dictionary so every time you have a Smurfelian it won't highlight it as a spelling error, and will also tell you when you spell it Smurfelliaann = incorrectly.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Always been a fan of Light in August, myself. I've always thought he started with the Ch. 6 lead paragraph and built a book around it.

If that paragraph is representative of Faulkner's writing style, then I'm probably not going to enjoy reading him. Not really my cup of tea.