So let’s beat on this dead horse some more.
Many faithful readers here on Killzone Blog know my opinion of passive sentences, and just as nauseating, adverbs, but there are thousands of would-be writers out there who haven’t read anything we’ve discussed on this site.
To them, and others, please read Stephen King’s excellent book, On Writing, and David Morrell’s Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing. Full disclosure, I get nothing from the sales of these books, but it was these two volumes that taught me more than I ever imagined about the art of writing fiction.
Finding passive sentences in a novel, yours or someone else’s work, is nothing new. I have thousands of volumes in my home, in hardback, trade paperback, and the now stupidly abandoned defunct format, mass market paperback. Many of the books on my shelves are first editions by authors I enjoyed and admired through the years, but that has no bearing on the sins these mainstream writers committed through the years.
For example, at one period in my life, I loved science fiction, fantasy, and sword and sorcery. At an antique store not too long ago, I picked up a 1999 first edition volume of a familiar old sci-fi series and looked forward to settling into my chair for a frosty winter afternoon of reading.
The first page furrowed my brow. Was this the same guy? I checked his photo and byline. Yep. It was him, so I read on (to page 2) until coming to his passage where the protagonist and his girlfriend escape from a high-security area with stolen crypto-currency.
“The engine roared forcefully, the air rushed by swiftly, and we held hands compassionately as our transport of delight soared skyward.”
This ly-ing, tail-wagging pack of adverbs made my stomach roll.
If I’d been reading this as a judge, this backsliding famous and influential author would have been on the naughty list in a flash.
But the dialogue is even worse.
“Robot policemen!” I chortled. “Therefore, we don’t have to hold back and spare their lives. Because they have no lives! To the junkyard with the lot!”
Please take a moment to absorb that short paragraph.
I wept.
Let’s continue.
(The narrator continues)
We were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
“And running out of ammo,” Angelina said, echoing my own thoughts.”
In this case, the protagonist hadn’t offered his internal thoughts. This was a statement of fact, and the unnatural, clunky dialogue in both examples is stilted and unrealistic.
My literary senses are tuned to a high level these days, because I’m judging a nation-wide contest. Some of the entries are brilliant, and my list of winners will reflect the authors’ writing skills.
However, more than half are weasel-filled, adverb-laden passive sentences that were probably inspired by watching too much HGTV.
“The outdated kitchen was completely gutted, and an open-concept layout was created to maximize space. At the same time, the walls were painted a bright white to add light, and the old carpet was ripped up to reveal original hardwood floors.”
I’m wondering if some of those who submitted novels learned their writing skills from those scripted “reality shows.”
In one novel I threw against the wall, “Jack introduced them and greetings were exchanged.”
I wonder why the editor didn’t suggest a re-write of that sentence. Sparkling dialogue provides necessary information about characters and the two (as yet) unidentified walk-ons might provide much needed tension at some point, or maybe that they became immediate friends.
Of course, we don’t need, “Hello,” he said.
She replied, “Good morning.”
But “greetings were exchanged,” is lazy writing.
Five pages later in this same submission, “Ellen watched Davy stride determinedly to the hen house with the basket in hand. When he entered the hen house, she went into the kitchen and began the ingredients for chocolate cake.”
She began the ingredients.
Let’s pause here so you can absorb this scene and write it a different way.
To wrap this discussion, here’s a brief list from the first fifty pages that put this novel into the junk pile.
“James amazingly didn’t object.” (I hate the word amazing, and even more so if it becomes an adverb)
“The headlights bounced erratically as it (not they) slowly traversed the rough course. I expected it (them?) to keep coming our present location, but it stopped at the old site. The headlights were dimmed and the engine killed.”
By whom?
And the kicker for me was the following sentence in a novel set around 1910 in rural Idaho. “The sheriff read him his rights.”
This lack of research did it for me. Back then, no one was Mirandized. “You’re under arrest,” was probably the closest the western or rural accused would come to hearing their rights.
I admit, I’m not without fault when it comes to adverbs and passive sentences. They crop up in my works all the time, and it’s shocking when I find these nauseating weasels in something I’ve written and edited half a dozen times.
We can all do better. I know, because I’ve been the victim of memory lapse before when it came to researching certain rifle calibers. We’ve all experienced that problem, and readers always point them out, along with a reference to our intelligence or maternal history.
Now, another book I had to chunk was full of head-hopping scenes without any kind of transition, but that’s a subject for another time.
The truth is, mistakes were made. Try not to let that happen to you.
My publisher, Severn House in London, uses the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. It’s a little more staid that its American cousin, Merriam-Webster, but I love the research for its Word Stories.
