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Before I launch into this, I've perused these threads and they don't quite answer the specific question I have in mind:
When to keep the passive voice and when to remove it
When *should* I use passive voice?
I'm making decent progress on a story, and I tend to do my drafts in Microsoft Word and use Grammarly to get additional grammar checking as I go along. One of the features of these that I have been working on is active vs. passive voice, for which these tools are immensely helpful. I've found that I have gotten much better at writing in active voice, but there are times when I am certain that mangling a sentence to use active voice, as suggested by the tools, ruins the mood or feel of the scene.
Therein lies the real question: How peevish are editors about the use of passive voice in fiction, really?
I worry that I'm spending too much time agonizing over voice, when I should be spending more time just writing. (See: The "Rules" of Writing) Even if I just stop and start blasting out volumes of text, I might later blindly follow every voice suggestion to my detriment.
I find myself in need of advice from those who actually have experience. Therefore, I turn to you.
Thanks in advance.
And yes, I'm a first-time writer.
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You should use the passive voice in complex pieces of writing and/or it is in a grammar lesson about passive voice. Pretty obvious if you ask me.
This is decent advice everyone is giving. However, not knowing how to use active vs. passive is the mark of an amateur.
Someone who over uses passive is new to the writing game. Why use passive voice when you can get straight to the action? Passive voice can be confusing, and dull. Active voice gets it over with.
Use active when the scene is fast paced, if it's a slow scene then passive may be okay.
It also matters if you are using first person, or third. If someone is using first person, and the narrator's desire is to make the main character seem passive then it can be okay to use passive voice. However, it is almost always better to use active voice; so the story moves along in a more direct fashion.
To sum it all up, it is important to take time to consider why a scene should have passive or active. A good balance will slow the story down when it needs to, and speed it up when the action is moving.
Passive voice is not exactly incorrect. There is no rule against. But your readers will usually put down a book filled with passive voice. A passive voice sentence is usually extremely boring. Is that what you want?
The problem isn't so much passive voice. The problem is really "weak sentences." It just so happens that 90+% of the time that you find a passive voice sentence it is also a weak sentence.
Weak sentences are only bad at release time, though. Weak sentences are great for writing time! Just finishing a novel is a lot of work and if you need to use weak sentences to get your story out, do it. Now that your story is out, fix the weak sentences in a revision.
Here is an example where I discuss that a sentence can be weak even after changing it from passive to active voice. jabrambarneck.com/2012/09/17/painting-away-passive-voice/
I was tired and sleepy.
Just changing the sentence to be active doesn't make it a good sentence:
I felt tired and sleepy.
Feeling tired, sleepiness overwhelmed me.
Both these have active verbs but they are both still weak sentences. After some analysis of the characters and setting, you should formulate a strong sentence that grabs the reader in a way that puts them in the story:
My heavy eyelids dropped involuntarily until I forced them back open.
My lower back complained as I asked it to ache for a few minutes
longer.
Every reader has one time or another had to fight to keep their eyes open; has had to ask their tired and aching body to stay awake longer than it should. So these sentences allow the reader to better identify with the story and the character.
If your story is filled with weak sentences, you will get rejection after rejection.
Forget any rules you've heard about passive voice! Instead, learn exactly what is happening when you use a passive voice, and use it well. How do you learn? Through close reading! A good writer is able to predict the range of inferences stirred up in a reader by her sentences.
Here's an example:
The officer hit Jeff. --VS-- Jeff was hit by the officer.
The officer hit Jeff.
- Without context the reader assumes the officer hit Jeff intentionally.
- Emphasis on the officer's agency/power to act.
- Emphasis that the officer acted and not someone else
- The sentence reveals almost nothing about Jeff other than having been hit
Jeff was hit by the officer.
- Unclear whether the hit was intentional.
- Emphasis that Jeff was the one hit and not someone else.
- Emphasis on the fact that the act happened (Jeff was hit)
- Jeff loses agency in the world
- The officer perhaps acted as a part of a larger system rather than as an individual
The key is to ensure the sets of inferences your sentence structures generate are the ones you want. In a story about police cruelty, you would probably write, "The officer hit Jeff." In a story in which Jeff is a powerless character, you might write, "Jeff was hit by the officer."
Go with your gut. Quit worrying about voice. Get it down on paper, walk away, come back and revise it, find a beta or pay an editor. Let your reader worry about the passive voice for the first draft. Tell the person to keep an eye out for it, and if your reader comes back with "yeah, this part sounded egregious," you can cut it.
You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Just write. Polish later.
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