Comments on: Bad Creative Writing Advice

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:01:56 +0000

ohhhhh. . . I thought the explanations were the nonsense found on the web. The tips are pretty good. I am a creative writer and I teach university writing, and if i used ejaculate/exclaim/whisper/breathe in long, convoluted, murkey, complicate sentences, you, dear, reader, might think that I thought a little too highly of myself and be turned away from the execellent prose of a many-lettered woman of exceptionalism.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:45:08 +0000

Thanks for this, Gwen. You’re right, the passive voice is “demonized” too often when it should merely be mildly discouraged.

I’m a writer who likes to write long, complex sentences with lots of dependent clauses and extraneous adverbs. So using the active voice, for me, often has the added benefit of cutting the sentences down to a more easily digestible size.

By: Gwen

Gwen — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 18:41:17 +0000

Re: passive voice:
Strunk and White claims that “Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.” (”There is” isn’t in the passive voice. And “can be made” is. Ironic? Just a little.)
People seem to think that just because some instances of passive voice (notably “X was done by Y” when the emphasis is on the doer, not the receiver, of the action), the passive voice is always bad. It isn’t. There is a time and a place for both active voice and passive voice.
Simple rule: if you’re putting the emphasis on the object of the action, put it in passive voice (useful if you’re trying to keep a certain POV in third person, but another character is doing something to the POV character), but if you’re putting the emphasis on the doer of the action, it goes in active voice.
“It was decided by the Democrats that John Kerry would be the nominee for president” is better as “The Democrats decided that John Kerry would be the nominee for president” (and better still as “that they would nominate John Kerry for president”) because “It was decided by X” is awkward and, yes, unnecessarily wordy when “X decided” is possible.
To take one famous document for examples: Sure, “that the Creator has endowed them with certain inalienable rights” works, but “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” puts the emphasis where it belongs, on the men among whom governments are instituted (the men among whom they institute governments?). “All men are created equal” should be what, exactly?
So when the agent of the action is either unknown, or multiple (”blog posts, articles on grammar, grammar textbooks, grammar books not meant for grammar classes, editorials, English teachers, and just about everyone else have all demonized the passive voice recently” vs. “the passive voice has been demonized recently” if you’re not trying to convey that a lot of people have demonized it recently but rather that it has been demonized at all), what’s wrong with the passive voice?
(It’s not weak-sounding, either, or wishy-washy, or anything that the word “passive” tends to connote in this phrase: see for instance a passive-voice analysis of Churchill’s descriptions of war at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003414.html.)
The passive voice myth should also be filed under “bad but well-meaning creative writing advice.” It holds true sometimes (and I have seen plently of people misuse it), but overall, it’s unhelpful to the point of being harmful when people bend over backwards to avoid making that “mistake.”
-Gwen.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:42:12 +0000

Barbara, I’ve always just seen it done as one long monologue punctuated with ellipses (…) to denote when the person on the other end of the line is speaking.

By: Barbara Washington

Barbara Washington — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:22:41 +0000

How should construct sentences or paragraphs of someone talking on the phone.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:06:15 +0000

Oh, definitely. I think that many of these tips are quite appropriate for technical writers (and business writers and press release writers and web writers and journalists and so on).

I guess my point is that these rules shouldn’t necessarily apply to *fiction* writers. Different audience, different message, different style.

By: tommyspoon

tommyspoon — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:17:12 +0000

“Don’t be too wordy.” Telling a writer that she’s using too many words is like telling an artist she’s using too much paint.

Um, well, sorta. In my line of work (technical writing), wordiness is a sin. There is something to be said to the use of “spare” language. Quoth the pop tune: “Sometimes words get in the way…”