Heresy of an one story writer.

[gauchecritic]

Natural talent

That is really really funny Octavian.

Apart from that.

A long long time ago, in a place very close to where I am now, I had a 'writer in residence' critique a play for me what I had wrote, apart from not likiing any of the characters and the play being far too 'televisual' he did poiht out several passages, literary images and ploys of which I was totally unaware.

Even longer ago and in a place far far away I asked the playwright Barry Hines (Kes being his most notable work) how he managed to fit in so much imagery and literary ploys within his work. His answer was "I don't. Other people find them there afterwards"

I suppose the lesson to be drawn here is that, certainly in my case, literary ability is an unconscious thing stemming from experience, actual or literary (literal?) and is governed not by learning how to write but learning by reading.

Gauche

For wht it's worth

 

[Un-registered]

Re: Natural talent

... I asked the playwright Barry Hines (Kes being his most notable work) how he managed to fit in so much imagery and literary ploys within his work. His answer was "I don't. Other people find them there afterwards" ...

Dylan Tomas, long after Under Milk Wood was asked if he had any ambitions still unfulfilled, and he said that he wanted to learn French. Asked why he replied, "So that I can read Rabelais and understand when people say I was much influenced by him."

 

[Pure]

dr. mabeuse said,


Some passives I would use:

"There was a knock at the door."
I don't even know if this is really passive, but I had a grade school teacher who actually insisted I write "Someone knocked on the door". It's not the same at all.

"In the morning, her body was found by a vagrant searching amidst the trash."
Not the same as "In the morning a vagrant searching amidst the trash found her body." The passive voice gives us a kind of chilly distance from the action.

"The knife had been thrown by a man who disappeared into the shadows."
Not the same as "A man who dispappeared into the shadows had thrown the knife."

Passive has its uses.

I think these are good points. And I could easily see, say, 10% passives as quite decently readable.

It's to be noted (p) that the subject of the sentence is changed(p) with the passive. That gives variety. It's very boring if you say:

A. "The woman yelled. She woke up the neighbors. She wasn't sorry, even though they were pissed off."

B. "The woman yelled. The neighbors were awakened by the screeches. Regret was something, however, that she never felt, though they were very riled up."

The last phrase shows the blurring of the passive and past, a topic mentioned by another. IMO, the line is not so clear.
He was hit. He was clubbed to death (by the attacker.)


Also the passive allows one person not to be specified.

A. "She was stabbed; the knife was not found"

B. "Someone stabbed her. The searchers never found the knife."


The passive allows there to be no agent.

A. The cry was loud. The black night air absorbed it.

B. The loud cry was absorbed in the black, night air.




The passive will sometimes permit the subject to be maintained (p).

A. "She was quite fearless. She never thought of danger. Her jealous fiance murdered her last year"

B. "She was quite fearless and never thought of danger. She was murdered by her jealous fiance last year."


Passive voice evolved in scientific writing out of tye scientist's unconsciious desire to absent himself from the proceedings. "The crystals were treated with hydrochloric acid." was deemed better than "I treated the crystals with hydrochloric acid." In chemistry, at least, passive boice is still the accepted norm.


By the same token, however, sometimes one wants the agent specified; science writing needs clarity. APA guidelines recommend against the passive, in some cases.

A. The students were instructed at the outset. Later their papers were graded.

B. The principal researcher instructed the students; three of his grad student assistants graded the papers.

As has been said, the 'art' of writing is hard to give rules for (p).
A rule designed for one abuse, if mindlessly followed, yields another.

J.









__________________

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

I read a story, oh twenty years ago, but it remains in my mind for two reasons: One, it was told in one long run on sentence in the frist person; Two, how true that was the "voice" of the story as it was a young girl recounting her rape. Young girls don't often take a breath when speaking as it is, and in this story you feel her fear as well as her emtional trauma and how she is just going to say this once, relive this once, and wants to get it out as quickly as possiable.

More recently a friend asked me to edit his story. He's writing a gay vampire love story. The frist five pages were back story, muddled and confused. I axed them and replaced them a paragraph and told him to start with page six, when the story actually began. He read the paragraph and said "That's what I ment to say!"

Dorothy Parker, poet and columist, wrote "I do not write five words that I don't revise seven."

 

[Weird Harold]

dr. mabeuse said,

..."In the morning, her body was found by a vagrant searching amidst the trash."
Not the same as "In the morning a vagrant searching amidst the trash found her body." The passive voice gives us a kind of chilly distance from the action. ...

Passive has its uses.

I think these are good points. And I could easily see, say, 10% passives as quite decently readable.

Passive voice can be very readable but it is seldom interesting or engaging for the reader. Dr. M said "The passive voice gives us a kind of chilly distance from the action," and that is precisely the problem with passive voice -- it distances the reader from the story.

One important thing to note about passive and active voice sentences -- roughly 90% of sentences in a story are "neutral voice." If a story has 10% passive voice sentences, then virtually every time the author had a choice of active or passive voice, passive was chosen.

Passive voice does have a place and is often the best way to say something. However, authors do need to be aware of the effect it can have on how the story engages the reader. If the goal is to engage the reader's interest, then passive voice is NOT the right choice in most cases.

The main problem with passive voice is that most authors don't purposely choose it to produce a specific effect, but use it indiscriminately.

 

[jon.hayworth]

PoliteSuccubus, nothing is really new or original is it? Whilst I agree with you that a young person - when they get talking seems never to pause - not even for breath.

As a literary device may I direct you to James Joyce's "Ulysses", the final section (I hesitate to call it a chapter when it is initself of Novella length) Penelope. This is told in Molly Bloom's voice and again it purports to be the voice of an unconventional, "free" woman reminiscing; and regretting her loss of freedom; and her disastrous marriage, marred by the death of their only child.

In this case although the voice was appropriate. I found that used in such a lengthy piece, it made it uncomfortable to read without the reader inserting mental stops and para's. When can you put it down to go make a coffee or anything else?

Of course Joyce was experimenting not only with words, but also with punctuation, and grammer. He experimented with the very structure of a novel.

jon

 

[SlickTony]

There's an FSW where I work that uses passive voice so mind-numbingly often that I change it to active voice whenever I find it. It's all very well to use passive voice if you're one of a group of scientists working with chemicals; in my business, we're working with people, people, people, fer fuck's sake. This is in addition to her convoluted, overly wordy style that would make anyone who cares to the extent of a fart in a hurricane cringe. My ruthless editing since I started transcribing her chronos has probably saved at least one tree. There are two other people who commit similar sins. I refer to these people privately as the Unholy Trinity.

Other than that, I agree that Grammar Checker is an idiot. It's always accusing me of having committed a sentence fragment when I have not.

 

[Weird Harold]

Other than that, I agree that Grammar Checker is an idiot. It's always accusing me of having committed a sentence fragment when I have not.

I've found that ambiguous words -- like naming a character Frank -- can confuse the hell out of MS Word's grammar check. I still find it a useful tool for finding possible problem areas.

 

[SlickTony]

I've found that ambiguous words -- like naming a character Frank

I know. There's a child in one of the cases I am transcribing whose name is--let me say, for the sake of confidentiality, in the name of which, I had to sign ten zillion forms upon being hired--Summer. This bothers Grammar Checker something fierce and it is always scolding me for capitalizing the name.

 

[Pure]

Hi WH

You said,


One important thing to note about passive and active voice sentences -- roughly 90% of sentences in a story are "neutral voice." If a story has 10% passive voice sentences, then virtually every time the author had a choice of active or passive voice, passive was chosen.

Passive voice does have a place and is often the best way to say something. However, authors do need to be aware of the effect it can have on how the story engages the reader. If the goal is to engage the reader's interest, then passive voice is NOT the right choice in most cases.

I don't know what the heck 'neutral voice' is, but I looked through some prize winning short stories, and certainly you're correct that 10% passive would be high. I saw about one per page, usually of the form "The door was shut." A figure of 1% is more reasonable, as was earlier posted.

Possibly you mean by 'neutral' that many sentences don't have a person for a subject. But in my book "The rock hit the ground' is active, whereas 'The ground was hit by the rock' is passive.

Possibly you're thinking of verbs which are intransitive--have no object. But in my book, 'The man died' is still active. "The leaf fell" also. True, there is no simple 'passive' reformulation.

So, with this clarification, I've seen lately 99% active voice in the short stories I've looked at.

Best,

J.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

In college some years ago I did a paper on ee cummings, and one of his poems comes to mind while reading this discussion...well, actually, I don't remember the poem, but I remember when writing it he had laid it out as if it were a piece of music on graph paper.... Every writer searches for the best 'voice' to fit his/her writing. cummings was master of twisting words every which way but loose.

 

[Weird Harold]

I don't know what the heck 'neutral voice' is, but I looked through some prize winning short stories, and certainly you're correct that 10% passive would be high.

Possibly you're thinking of verbs which are intransitive--have no object. But in my book, 'The man died' is still active. "The leaf fell" also. True, there is no simple 'passive' reformulation.

"Neutral voice" is my way of referring to sentences where there is neither active or passive voice -- probably intransitive is the correct term.

"The Man died" is preferable to "Death came to the man." The latter, while not "passive voice" is certainly a more passive phrasing, and is typical of mindset that would choose passive voice if it were an option.

One other thing I've noticed in stories where the "flat and uniteresting" effect of passive voice is a problem -- passive voice seems to cluster with two or three passive voice sentences in one paragraph. An entire story might be fairly low in passive voice as an overall percentage, but the clustering of passive voice seems to multiply the negative effects -- often in critical scenes where the reader loses interest and skims over important plot points.

 

[Un-registered]

... I looked through some prize winning short stories, and certainly you're correct that 10% passive would be high. I saw about one per page, usually of the form "The door was shut." ...

That can be either active or passive in English. It is passive if the door's state was changing from open to shut, and the verb is "shut". It is active if it is a simple statement of fact, subject and predicate where "was" is the verb and "shut" is an adjective.

"Neutral voice" is my way of referring to sentences where there is neither active or passive voice -- probably intransitive is the correct term ...

Transitive and intransitive verbs can be active or passive. The two are not connected.

..."The Man died" is preferable to "Death came to the man." The latter, while not "passive voice" is certainly a more passive phrasing ...

There are times when the passive is needed, for example "The man was killed before his eyes" when neither he, nor the narrator, nor the reader knows (yet) who or what did the killling.

This whole "active" versus "passive" disputation reminds me of the mediaeval theologians who argued how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. I would beg to disagee with the premise that passive is bad. If the author wishes to express a thought which is best expressed in the passive, then it is right. Any grammatical construct which feels unnatural to the writer will probably read badly, be it a forced active, or a split infinitive, or whatever.

And that, I promise, is my final word on this topic.

Edited to insert an apostrophe and adjust a tense

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

I just love you guys

I learn as much here as I do in a professional writing course.

I shower you with praise.