Don't say that, Nik, i'm writing in the 3rd person!!

No-one critting my work has ever mentioned it, but that is one example of why i might end up using an editorial agency...if i can get my head around the expense

Casey

I shall be contentious here and say I don't agree you should seek and destroy examples of 'was'. By all means look carefully for sentences which have a similar pattern or structure falling close together, that's a given. But it seems to me that trying not to use the verb 'to be' is going to get new writers trying themselves in the most awful knots - especially when you consider how many of our English tenses are formed using that verb.

The term 'passive' is also misleading. Passive verbs are ones where you drop the perpetrator of the action and concentrate on the action and the recipient of that action, eg:

Hughes was stabbed several times.

There we don't know who did the stabbing, but the attention's been shifted dramatically onto the victim and the verb. There's absolutely a time and a place for the passive tense, and a writer can achieve some useful effects by switching into it at certain moments.

There's absolutely a time and a place for the passive tense, and a writer can achieve some useful effects by switching into it at certain moments.

Absolutely.

I think the important thing is to be aware of things like this and to use when the time's right. That goes for all sorts of things including (remember this old chestnut, Lammi?) adverbs.

But I also think that we shouldn't put too much emphasis on it, not in a first draft. Get the story out, as well as you can, and tidy it when you rewrite. In my experience things like this are far easier to spot and alter second time around.

Nik.

Indeed. You know me, hackles up as soon as any writer, even the mighty Orwell, starts saying Here are the Rules:-

I know his get-out clause is number 6;

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

but the fact that there is a 6 suggests to me the invalidity of 1-5 as anything other than his own stylistic choices.

Idioms (1) play an active part in rendering dialogue, and you can get some lovely bathetic or punchy effects with a well-placed idiom.

2 depends on the rhythm of your sentence, doesn't it? Ditto 3.

And 5 depends so hugely on context you just can't append 'Never' like that. I read a novel today (Jeremy Sheldon's 'The Smiling Affair' that used a foreign phrase to convey something important about one of the characters, and it was spot on.

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That was supposed to be a closed bracket after Affair, not a wink. Damn smilies.

I must say it makes things very difficult for a novice writer.

I'm about to finish my first draft and have noticed myself lighten up during the last few chapters. For most of the year i have strived to cut things out where possible, avoid adverbs like the plague, i've shown rather than told to the point of my characters continually being in a state of action.....i know when i come to edit some of it is going to feel very stiff and stilted.

I've now loosened up and even happily use the occasional adverb.

I think rules are good for beginners but - if like me you take them literally - it can make for some very contrived, unstylish prose. I think i've got a big job on my hands with the edit.

Casey

I think the whole issue with any set of rules like this is that they are to be used for advice, and are not compulsory[/b.

I thought there were some interesting and useful bits in there, and what we don't want to heed, we can ignore. If we stuck by the rules religously, we would end up with a completely sterile piece of writing, which was of no interest to anybody.

I guess different people will find different bits of it useful, so, hey take what you want and ignore the rest.

Katerina

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Oh bugger, don't know how that happened, think it's because I didn't close a bracket, but I just clicked on the icons above, so it should have done it properly.


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] is that better? If not - help!!!

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David, someone, please help sort this out]