"Writing Tools" Notes - Verbs

What I wrote down: Active verbs move the action and reveal the actors. Passive verbs emphasize the receiver, the victim. The verb "to be" links word and ideas.

As a reminder, active verbs are when the subject is doing the verb. Examples: John threw the ball. The ball hit Alice. Alice knows where John lives.

Passive verbs, on the other hand, give the object of the sentence precedence: The snowball was placed in John's pillowcase by Alice. The pillow was soaked by the snowball.

As for the last part of my note, Clark explained, "A verb that is neither active nor passive is a linking verb, a form of the verb to be." (His italics, not mine.) He says that all verbs are either active, passive, or "to be."

Generally, people discourage passive voice for its wordiness and mellow tone. Writing Tools author Roy Peter Clark doesn't discourage passive voice, though; he says to use it for a purpose. What do you want to emphasize? Usually, it will be the subject, but if it is the receiver, then go for it. Use passive voice.

Read this example Clark used and see if you can pick out the passive and active:

Presently I saw a man leaning on a two-strand barbed-wire fence, the wires fixed not to posts but to crooked tree limbs stuck in the ground. The man wore a dark hat, and jeans and long jacket washed palest blue with lighter places at knees and elbows. His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare and his lips scaly as snakeskin. A .22 rifle leaned against the fence beside him and on the ground lay a little heap of fur and feathers - rabbits and small birds. I pulled up to speak to him, saw his eyes wash over Rocinante, sweep up the details, and then retire into their sockets. And I found I had nothing to say to him ... so we simply brooded at each other (John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley)

There was only one passive sentence, but it was there: "His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare ..." Imagine if Steinbeck had used the active. That sentence would have said, "Sun glare frosted his pale eyes ..." Do you hear the difference? The first sounds lazy to me.

But that's the point, isn't it? He comes across as a lazy, laid-back character, and all that Steinbeck did to make it that way was to make him lean back, not move much, and suffer through a single passive sentence. Without that one passive sentence, he seems much more hostile, mainly because then the emphasis would be on "glare," not "pale eyes" and "frosted."

Another note from the book, while we're on the subject of verbs: A good adverb (those exist?!) changes the meaning of a verb. It does not increase the intensity of what is there. Use the correct verb if possible, but use an adverb if necessary to convey the correct meaning. Examples of adverbs Clark would excuse: smiled sadly, killing me softly, sweetly faked.

Using adverbs is lazy if they are doing unnecessary work (backward, isn't it?). Remember that great quote by Robin Williams' character in The Dead Poets' Society?

So avoid using the word ‘very,’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.

Yes, "very" is an adverb.