In my training years ago as a publicist for General Electric, my
manager taught me how to write tight press releases. People have a short
attention span, he’d say, especially editors who get thousands of press
releases a day that they need to sort through to find the real news.
While a press release is a different form of writing than a novel,
readers still want you to get to the point of your story – clearly and
without, as Mr. King says, “using a lot of tiresome, unnecessary
adverbs.”
I’m looking over some of the sentences in the book I’m writing and removing adverbs, especially those that emphasize or amplify a point, for example: At first he had been very charming. He made her feel incredibly desirable. I deleted “very” and “incredibly.” They are unnecessary modifiers. A book overflowing with adverbs can be tedious to get through. Still, it’s hard to let some words go and they’ll creep into the work of the best authors.
The same holds for the passive voice. Again, to quote King in On Writing: “Two pages of passive voice – just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction – make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well.”
Yes, there are occasions when the passive voice makes sense and may be unavoidable, as in business or legal documents. For example: Our position was made clear in the original proposal. Still, the author of this memo could have written: We made our position clear in the original proposal. It’s a bolder approach so perhaps not good if the document is contributing to a negotiation.
In fiction, forceful action verbs paint a clear picture of what’s happening. Active verbs show a character doing something. Passive verbs show something being done to a character:
Active: He moved back around to his side of the desk and brushed her lightly as he passed.
Passive: She was brushed lightly by him as he moved back around to his side of the desk.
Active: Three months after becoming CEO, Karl Ernst fired Jim Pandera.
Passive: Jim Pandera was fired by Karl Ernst three months after he became CEO.
Put these two points to work to improve prose.
I’m looking over some of the sentences in the book I’m writing and removing adverbs, especially those that emphasize or amplify a point, for example: At first he had been very charming. He made her feel incredibly desirable. I deleted “very” and “incredibly.” They are unnecessary modifiers. A book overflowing with adverbs can be tedious to get through. Still, it’s hard to let some words go and they’ll creep into the work of the best authors.
The same holds for the passive voice. Again, to quote King in On Writing: “Two pages of passive voice – just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction – make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well.”
Yes, there are occasions when the passive voice makes sense and may be unavoidable, as in business or legal documents. For example: Our position was made clear in the original proposal. Still, the author of this memo could have written: We made our position clear in the original proposal. It’s a bolder approach so perhaps not good if the document is contributing to a negotiation.
In fiction, forceful action verbs paint a clear picture of what’s happening. Active verbs show a character doing something. Passive verbs show something being done to a character:
Active: He moved back around to his side of the desk and brushed her lightly as he passed.
Passive: She was brushed lightly by him as he moved back around to his side of the desk.
Active: Three months after becoming CEO, Karl Ernst fired Jim Pandera.
Passive: Jim Pandera was fired by Karl Ernst three months after he became CEO.
Put these two points to work to improve prose.
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