room.
Were you a little more interested when I told you the man was a priest? That’s because he became more specific, and you could see him better. If I had told you that a senator, a garbageman, or a Lithuanian had entered the room, you still would have found him more interesting than a mere man.
Specific nouns have power. In fact, I recently bought a book because of a specific noun. The name of the book is The Last Goodbye Kiss by James Crumley (Random House), and I plunked down $2.75 for it after reading Crumley’s opening sentence. Read it yourself and see if the same specific noun that forced me to part with my money grabs you.
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bull-dog named Foreball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
What specific noun hooked me? Bull-dog. If Trahearne had been drinking with an alcoholic dog, I might not have bought the book. But the specificity of bull-dog brought into focus not only the dog, but also the bar, the beer, and the fine spring afternoon. Why? Because by telling me what kind of dog it was that drank with Trahearne, the author convinced me that he had actually seen the dog. I believed the author’s words.
When you take out a general word and put in a specific one, you usually improve your writing. But when you use a specific word, readers assume you are trying to tell them something, so make sure you choose the specific word that delivers the message you want delivered. If your character is driving a car down the highway and you change it to a Jaguar, you increase interest, but you also characterize the driver. You build connotations of money and speed. So make sure you choose a car that is consistent with all the other messages you are trying to send the reader.
7. Use the Active Voice ... Most of the Time
When a verb is in the active voice, the subject of the sentence is also the doer of the action.
The sentence “John picked up the bag” is in the active voice because the subject, John, is also the thing or person doing the action of “picking up.”
The sentence “The bag was picked up by John” is in the passive voice because the subject of the sentence, bag, is the passive receiver of the action.
Generally the active voice makes for more interesting reading, and it is the active voice that you should cultivate as your normal writing habit. The active voice strikes more directly at the thought you want to express, it is generally shorter, and it holds the reader closer to what you write because it creates a stronger sense that “something is happening.”
Listen to how the following passive voice sentences are improved when they are turned into the active voice.
Try to use the active voice. But realize that there are times when you will need to use the passive. If the object of the action is the important thing, then you will want to emphasize it by mentioning it first. When that’s the case, you will use the passive voice.
Let’s say, for example, that you want to tell the reader about some strange things that happened to your car. In the active voice it would look like this:
Three strong women turned my car upside down on Tuesday. Vandals painted my car yellow and turquoise on Wednesday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched my car into orbit around the moon on Thursday.
The example shown above is not wrong, but it sounds choppy. To give the story a flow, you would want to use the passive voice, keeping the emphasis on your car:
On Tuesday my car was turned upside down by three strong women. On Wednesday my car was painted yellow and turquoise by vandals. On Thursday my car was launched into orbit around the moon by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In the passive
Were you a little more interested when I told you the man was a priest? That’s because he became more specific, and you could see him better. If I had told you that a senator, a garbageman, or a Lithuanian had entered the room, you still would have found him more interesting than a mere man.
Specific nouns have power. In fact, I recently bought a book because of a specific noun. The name of the book is The Last Goodbye Kiss by James Crumley (Random House), and I plunked down $2.75 for it after reading Crumley’s opening sentence. Read it yourself and see if the same specific noun that forced me to part with my money grabs you.
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bull-dog named Foreball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
What specific noun hooked me? Bull-dog. If Trahearne had been drinking with an alcoholic dog, I might not have bought the book. But the specificity of bull-dog brought into focus not only the dog, but also the bar, the beer, and the fine spring afternoon. Why? Because by telling me what kind of dog it was that drank with Trahearne, the author convinced me that he had actually seen the dog. I believed the author’s words.
When you take out a general word and put in a specific one, you usually improve your writing. But when you use a specific word, readers assume you are trying to tell them something, so make sure you choose the specific word that delivers the message you want delivered. If your character is driving a car down the highway and you change it to a Jaguar, you increase interest, but you also characterize the driver. You build connotations of money and speed. So make sure you choose a car that is consistent with all the other messages you are trying to send the reader.
7. Use the Active Voice ... Most of the Time
When a verb is in the active voice, the subject of the sentence is also the doer of the action.
The sentence “John picked up the bag” is in the active voice because the subject, John, is also the thing or person doing the action of “picking up.”
The sentence “The bag was picked up by John” is in the passive voice because the subject of the sentence, bag, is the passive receiver of the action.
Generally the active voice makes for more interesting reading, and it is the active voice that you should cultivate as your normal writing habit. The active voice strikes more directly at the thought you want to express, it is generally shorter, and it holds the reader closer to what you write because it creates a stronger sense that “something is happening.”
Listen to how the following passive voice sentences are improved when they are turned into the active voice.
Try to use the active voice. But realize that there are times when you will need to use the passive. If the object of the action is the important thing, then you will want to emphasize it by mentioning it first. When that’s the case, you will use the passive voice.
Let’s say, for example, that you want to tell the reader about some strange things that happened to your car. In the active voice it would look like this:
Three strong women turned my car upside down on Tuesday. Vandals painted my car yellow and turquoise on Wednesday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched my car into orbit around the moon on Thursday.
The example shown above is not wrong, but it sounds choppy. To give the story a flow, you would want to use the passive voice, keeping the emphasis on your car:
On Tuesday my car was turned upside down by three strong women. On Wednesday my car was painted yellow and turquoise by vandals. On Thursday my car was launched into orbit around the moon by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In the passive
Similar Books
