Sometimes in writing for school, teachers/professors will ask for you to use active voice in your essays rather than passive. And, the reason is that active voice often creates a stronger feel to your paper; it makes you sound less uncertain about your argument since the subject of the sentence directly performs the action or verb in the sentence. For fiction writing, it really depends on your writing style, and I personally prefer passive over active in some instances. I'll explain my reasoning for why down below, but I first want to cover the basic distinctions between the two.
-Active: the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed by the verb.
Ex. By the entrance to the cave, the scared explorer shines a light into the darkness. Here, the subject, or the explorer, performs the action of shining a light, which is expressed by the verb "shines."
-Passive: the noun or noun phrase that would be the object of an active sentence appears as the subject of the sentence.
Ex. By the entrance to the cave, the darkness was illuminated by the explorer. In this case, the phrase "by the explorer" performs the verb's action "illuminated," not the subject "darkness." Where in the sentence above "darkness" was part of a noun phrase, it now becomes the subject for the passive sentence.
With passive, it's helpful to note that the verb phrase will include a form of be (was, am, are, been, is <verb>), but if there is a form of the verb "to be" present in the sentence, don't always assume that the sentence will be passive. For example, the sentence "Tom was at the bus station" is not passive; it's simply stating where Tom is.
Given these distinctions, I personally like using passive voice in my writing because it helps to create an element of suspense since the thing causing the action is delayed in the sentence. Yes, you still have the subject at the beginning, but you don't know who is acting on the subject until later on. An example sentence is "Scared, Priscilla darted through the forest, (but she soon was ripped back by the creature's right hand)." Focus on the section split off by the parentheses. Now, here's how active would look, "Scared, Priscilla darted through the forest, (but the creature's right hand soon ripped her back)."
In passive, the creature's presence, or hand, is stalled in the sentence. The reader doesn't know who's ripping Priscilla back immediately. They have to wait to figure that out. The difference in knowing that the creature is there in the sentence might only be a few seconds, but it still creates a small amount of suspense, and that really can add up in an intense scene in your book. Anyway, I hope that this helps!
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