Voice

Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

If your prose is to be vigorous as well as vivid, if your characters are “come to life,” you must make use of the active voice. The active occurs when the subject of a sentence performs the action described by the verb of that sentence: She spilled the milk. When passive, the object of the active verb becomes the subject of the passive verb: The milk was spilled by her. The subject is acted upon rather than acting, and the effect is to weaken the prose and to distance the reader from the action. (Writing Fiction)

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Sources

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Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition.

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The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

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The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. David H. Richter.

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

Literary Theories and Schools of Criticism. Purdue Online Writing Lab. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

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