When to use the passive voice in fiction

(and when to avoid it)

Buckle up folks, because I’ve got another weird hill to die on: the passive voice. Specifically, I will absolutely fight any grammar aid that blanket-rejects the passive voice as somehow always wrong.

Riddle me this, Hemingway app (which I actually love, by the way): if the passive voice is always bad writing… then why does our language even have it as an option?

Exactly.

The passive voice is a respectable, useful, and — yep — necessary part of written English. It’s only a problem if it’s used when the active voice would be a better choice. And how are you supposed to know when that might be? Like just about everything in writing, the answer is “It depends.” But before you start throwing things at me, let’s have a look at some of the things it depends on.

What is the passive voice?

First up, a definition. Quite honestly, I’m not sure I ever learned this as part of my formal English language education in the UK, but I’m given to understand that other Anglophone countries take this stuff more seriously. (A friend who was educated in the US showed me how she was taught to parse the elements of a sentence, and it was beautiful. But I digress…)

Anyway, let’s start by establishing what we mean when we talk about the passive voice. Good old Dictionary.com defines it thus:

“A verb is in the passive voice when the subject of the sentence is acted on by the verb.” (source)

Let’s break that down. And the easiest way to do that is to look at how everything in a sentence functions in the active voice, which is how most simple sentences are constructed.

Let’s say, for example, you write the following sentence: “The author drinks the cup of coffee.” The subject of an active sentence is the person or thing performing the action — in this case, the author. The action they are performing is drinking. The object of the sentence is the thing being acted upon — here, it’s the cup of coffee. Active voice: the subject —> performs an action —> on the object.

In the passive voice, though, the subject and object are switched. In the passive voice, the subject is the thing being acted upon by the object. If we change our sentence above to the passive voice, it becomes: “The cup of coffee is drunk by the author.”

The focus of the sentence has shifted from the doer of the action (in active voice) to the receiver of the action (in passive voice).

Clearly, that sentence is a clunky mess in the passive voice. There’s no good reason to switch the subject and object like that. It also risks making the whole thing unclear, too — “is drunk” is technically the passive form of the verb to drink, sure… but that phrasing is more often used to mean that someone’s had a bit too much alcohol. In context, we’d understand that, no, the cup of coffee has not been on the lash, but the point (kind of) stands.

When the passive voice is needed

I’ve just given you an example, actually — “when the passive voice is needed” is in the passive voice. Phrase that in the active voice and you can see why: it contains a hidden “you” as the action doer. The active voice needs a clear doer, so rephrased in the active voice, the sentence would be “When you need the passive voice.”

Which is also fine. I’m clearly talking to an implied “you” — you, the reader — so the active voice works more or less as well as the passive. I chose the passive voice, though, because I’m not only talking to you, the reader. I’m talking, in general, about the needs and requirements of the English language as a whole. The active voice restricts me to one, defined subject. The passive voice doesn’t.

So in this case, for the very specific requirements of this sentence, the passive voice is more accurate.

And it’s not alone. Take, for example, the following sentences:

“Sarah Smith was elected president by over 50% of voters.”

Who elected her? Over 50% of voters did. The voters are the doers and the action they are doing is electing Sarah Smith. But what’s the most important element of the sentence? Sarah Smith’s election as president. Even though Sarah Smith is the receiver of the action, the outcome of that action is important enough to place her in the position of subject. Look at the sentence in active voice to see what I mean: “Over 50% of voters elected Sarah Smith as president.” It’s… not wrong, per se, but it’s clunky and feels kind of anticlimactic. That’s because it’s burying the lede, and sucking all the energy out of the words as a result.

“The victim was murdered in his own home.”

Who murdered him? Well… we actually don’t know right now. Investigations are ongoing. Also, the victim is surely the person that we’re most primed to focus on in this particular bit of information delivery, so it makes sense to make him the focus, even though he’s the receiver of the action. Change this into active and… yikes. “Somebody unknown murdered the victim in his own home.” Now the focus is on the person who did the murdering. I think we can all agree that person shouldn’t be rewarded with the limelight, right?

“The subject of an active sentence is the person or thing performing the action The object of the sentence is the thing being acted upon. Active voice: the subject —> performs an action —> on the object.”

The passive voice can be distancing (so use it with care)

With all that said, though… let’s take a quick hairpin turn into sales copy. I promise I have a point.

Sales copy is a really great way to see up close and personal how the passive voice creates distance. Sales copy is the carefully constructed words that corporations use to persuade customers and potential customers to buy their stuff. Sometimes, that looks like “Buy our stuff! It’s super cheap and you’ll really like it.” Often, it’s more subtle than that, and that’s where you really see the passive voice start to suck.

Take, for example, McDonalds’ famous slogan: “I’m loving it.”

Who’s loving it? I am! What am I loving? It! The wide range of delicious fried products, sweet treats, and fizzy drink accompaniments that have made McDonalds one of the most recognised brands in the world. By using the active voice, McDonalds has insisted that I place myself in the role of satisfied hamburger consumer. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but “I’m loving it” puts me in that role.

“It’s being loved by me!” …not so much.

Now let’s bring this back into the world of fiction.

“John was sent away to school at the age of 6.”

Passive voice. Nothing overtly wrong with it. The focus of the sentence is John, who was sent away to school at a young age and presumably has some narratively significant feelings about that. All of this is heavily implied by the sentence as constructed, and so it might very well slip past an eagle-eyed editor. And that might not even be a bad thing. But notice how there’s an omniscience to the statement? It’s delivered from a point somewhere outside the story, a point where we’re not fully engaging with John or the potential narratively significant feelings we’re sensing are hovering in his future. We’re distant from John, the action, and the repercussions.

Now consider:

“John’s mother sent him away to school at the age of 6.”

By moving the sentence into the active, we have to specify a doer. In this case, it’s John’s mother, and we are in the moment with both John and his mum as she’s sending him away to school. Now, we’re right there as this little 6-year-old boy is leaving the family home, in response to the actions of a person that we could reasonably expect to want to keep her small child near. We don’t have enough information to decide how John’s mum feels about the whole thing — if she’s coerced and heartbroken, or overwhelmed and breaking down, or detached and cold — but we’re now forced to imagine the options. The distance is gone. We’re in the scene with our guys, for good or ill.

Final thoughts: Mistakes will be made (and that's okay)

Bottom line: I’ve definitely used the passive voice where the active would have been more immediate, more immersive, more engaging. I’ve almost certainly never used the active where the passive would have been better, because it’s much more obvious that way around. If in doubt, err on the side of caution, is my advice — it’s almost always the case that more active and closer will be most effective in establishing connection between your readers and your text.

But don’t fear the passive voice, is what I’m saying. Don’t let Hemingway (again, not bashing that lovely app) or Grammarly (okay, I might have some beef with Grammarly) convince you that it’s inherently bad news. It exists for a reason, and one day your sentence might just be saved by the passive voice. Not that last sentence, which was awful… but a sentence, maybe.

You won’t know until you try.

Does the passive voice delight you? Or are you delighted by the passive tense? Let me know in the comments!