Red Ink -- Passive Verbs

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William Bernhardt started me on the path to writing as craft. (He also ruined my enjoyment of using the exclamation point -- only one per novel -- which also restricts my ability to comment on Facebook posts.)

Bill admonishes us to "show, don't tell" and eschew the passive verb. Ernest Hemingway advised against adverbs, championing the mot juste, meaning the right verb needs no adverb.

Passive verbs and adverbs weaken a sentence and distance the reader from the vision we create. Let me show you. This is the opening from John Lescroart's first Dismas Hardy crime thriller Dead Irish.

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy had a clear view of the stewardess as her feet lifted from the floor. She immediately let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke -- although strangely it didn't drop, but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

To rewrite this using active verbs and removing adverbs, it would look like this:

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy saw the stewardess's feet lift from the floor. She let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke. The drink didn't drop but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

Nothing is lost from the meaning. The word 'strangely' is unnecessary because the Coke that Lescroart shows us floating is strange enough. We don't need to be told that it is strange with an adverb. (I also replaced the imprecise pronoun. And being an old poet, I enjoy the alliterative d's which are by their nature sudden, strong sounds, even if we read without moving our lips.)

In the heat of writing, it's hard to keep all the good advice in mind. My flash fiction blog Danger from earlier this week contains the following:

   Rain and wind were being sucked into the storm. Once outside the false harbor of my car, I could feel the storm's pull. It was too close.

Open plea to editors and beta readers: Please help us writers to avoid passive verbs. You don't have to figure out what we should say instead, just point out the problem. It may take a while, but we'll figure it out.

One final example from John Lescroart's Dead Irish:

   Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he'd gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

There you go. Something to be chewed upon. Blech!

Think I'll park my editor's cap and read the rest of John Lescroart's very good book. Good enough that this is my second time through. Alas, we always read faster than our favorite writers can write.