How to Edit Out the Passive Voice
The passive voice feels like our default as we write. Even though it takes more time to write and creates more confusing prose, we fall into it anyway. Then perhaps an editor or a craft book told you to cut out the passive voice. But how? What now? Let’s edit together.
Can you see the difference between these two lines? The passive voice is less concise—it has no snap and takes too long to reach the point. Let’s analyze how I fixed it.
Make the Actor the Subject
Passive voice is called “passive” because the subject of the sentence often acts passively in the action (it receives rather than acts). The easiest way to fix a sentence in the passive voice is by asking, “Who is acting in this sentence? Who is receiving?” Then I rearrange the sentence to make the actor the subject (first in the sentence) and put the receiving noun after it.
In the example above, I changed “I was scared by the thunder storm” to “the thunder storm scared me.” The thunder storm caused me to be afraid, therefore I put it first.
Change Past Perfect to Past Simple
In case you never learned in school all the fancy words that label English grammar (like me), here’s a quick review: Past perfect refers to an event or action in the past that happened before another event or action, while past simple refers simply to a past event. Words like was and had are past perfect.
We can use this to edit out the passive voice. Consider the first part of the example sentence: “Last night as I was falling asleep” versus “Last night as I fell asleep.” I changed “I was falling” to past simple to make the phrase more concise and to the point instead of meandering through multiple words to communicate the same action.
Don’t Get Obsessive
While we should regularly strive to remove the passive voice from our writing, we must guard against doing so obsessively to the point of ruining our writing. Passive voice exists for a reason, and we can make our work more confusing or too terse by removing it.
Don’t forget that this is a tool for editing—don’t allow your attempts to write a first draft without passive voice form writer’s block and hatred for writing. At times, we simply need to write and let the story or argument pour from our fingers to the page, even if it the entire event takes place in passive voice. Get the words down first, then return with a pen ready to slash out all the useless passive voice.
Still feeling unsure or need a bit of help editing out all that passive voice in your writing? Reach out to me for some one-on-one editing on your piece.
