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This may be coming too late in the competition to do the remaining contestants much good, but I though it may still be useful for future contestants. My goal here is to clarify advice on the use of passives, and thought maybe the thread could grow beyond that into something useful about good writing.
There has been a lot of advice bandied about in the form of "avoid passive" and "you used too much passive voice; don't do that". Which is not necessarily to say that the sentences that elicited the advice were perfect, but that advice on its own does not provide much specific guidance as to how to proceed.
So first, what is a passive?
Simply, it is an auxiliary + a past participle.
My car was destroyed by an elephant. ('was' is an auxiliary; 'destroyed' is a past participle)
The auxiliary is frequently a form of 'to be,' but it does not have to be -
My car got destroyed by an elephant.
This is a perfectly good passive sentence, but does not use any form of the verb to be, anywhere. A rule to avoid 'to be' would not catch this sentence. To be honest though, I wouldn't use it in formal writing either.
Passives differ from actives in the focus of the action of the verb. In the passive sentences above, the sentences are about my car. My inert, rather lifeless car that is just sitting there being destroyed. It's not terribly engaging for a reader to be focused on things that are having things done to them. And this is a very good reason to avoid the passive - it feels passive and dull. Compare the active -
An elephant destroyed my car.
Much better! So why would you ever want to use a passive, when the active is so much more active? To put it differently, why do good writers use passives well, and how can I learn to use them better?
It comes down to focus and what your sentences are about vs what they should be about.
Which of these two sentences sounds better?
1. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble.
2. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole.
Maybe you prefer the second - it is active, and avoids the passive used in the first.
Now consider them in the context of a short paragraph -
1. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
2. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
Personally I find the second (with the active sentence) to be far more awkward. The ideas don't flow together well at all. In the first, the first sentence ends with mention of a black hole, which is immediately picked up in the second sentence. They work together. This is what good writing should strive for - not to abandon the passive, but to use it when it should be used.
(example borrowed from this book, link goes to Amazon: Williams: Style)
So, to return now to a related point - when is the verb 'to be' not passive? And why might it not be a good idea to lump it together with passive, and avoid them both?
The verb 'to be' is incredibly useful. It is used with adjectives, with nouns, and with verbs, with nary a hint of a passive in sight.
Which is better?
I am hungry. (be + adjective)
I hunger. (verb)
I don't know. Maybe it depends on context, but the second sounds far more pretentious to me. If it's a problem, there may be a different way to fix it than with this verb, but that still avoids the verb 'to be'.
What about this pair?
Darth Vader: "No. I am your father."
Darth Vader: "No. I fathered you."
I can't imagine any way to make the first sentence better - would it have been so powerful or become so iconic without the verb 'to be'?
I have just one last nit to pick, to distinguish the passive from the progressive. Both rely on 'to be' with verbs. Progressives have their use too, but often do create writing that is weak.
Passive:
I was eaten by a bear. (auxiliary + past participle)
Progressive:
I am eating a bear. (auxiliary + present participle)
Note that the forms of the verb are different, and to keep me ("I") as the subject, I had to change who was doing what to whom. Progressives don't focus on things, they focus on ongoing, not-yet-completed actions. Passives are done; the actions detailed by the verb are over, unless they are combined with the progressive, of course. But don't go there lightly ;)
I hope that by knowing what these grammatical forms are, an aspiring writer will more easily learn to master them, and become at least a better writer, if not a great writer.
Great post.
To me, active voice usually sounds better (in roleplaying adventures anyway). Also, the word count is usually lower. Your examples illustrate that.
1. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
2. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
Personally I find the second (with the active sentence) to be far more awkward. The ideas don't flow together well at all. In the first, the first sentence ends with mention of a black hole, which is immediately picked up in the second sentence. They work together. This is what good writing should strive for - not to abandon the passive, but to use it when it should be used.
Rather than just flipping the subject and object and calling it a day, a good writer would reword the sentence so it sounds better *and* make it active voice. Yes, there are times where passive voice is better or sounds better... but writing in passive voice is a trap for far too many writers, and recognizing both types and knowing when to pick one over the other is a step toward being a better writer.
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Rather than just flipping the subject and object and calling it a day, a good writer would reword the sentence so it sounds better *and* make it active voice. Yes, there are times where passive voice is better or sounds better... but writing in passive voice is a trap for far too many writers, and recognizing both types and knowing when to pick one over the other is a step toward being a better writer.1. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
2. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
Personally I find the second (with the active sentence) to be far more awkward. The ideas don't flow together well at all. In the first, the first sentence ends with mention of a black hole, which is immediately picked up in the second sentence. They work together. This is what good writing should strive for - not to abandon the passive, but to use it when it should be used.
A good technique to develop is read the passage out loud. Active voice usually sounds much better (and more clear).
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Rather than just flipping the subject and object and calling it a day, a good writer would reword the sentence so it sounds better *and* make it active voice. Yes, there are times where passive voice is better or sounds better... but writing in passive voice is a trap for far too many writers, and recognizing both types and knowing when to pick one over the other is a step toward being a better writer.
The passive voice can be used to improve the flow and clarity of a body of work depending on the context.
Commonly, descriptive texts, technical manuals, and even great literature make use of nominalization, modality, and the passive voice to illustrate breadth, precision, and flow.
Now I don't mean to be especially obtuse; but, avoiding passivity for the sake of passivity is poor writing...or perhaps more accurately poor judgement.
Rather than just flipping the subject and object and calling it a day, a good writer would reword the sentence so it sounds better *and* make it active voice. Yes, there are times where passive voice is better or sounds better... but writing in passive voice is a trap for far too many writers, and recognizing both types and knowing when to pick one over the other is a step toward being a better writer.1. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
2. Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in profoundly puzzling ways.
Personally I find the second (with the active sentence) to be far more awkward. The ideas don't flow together well at all. In the first, the first sentence ends with mention of a black hole, which is immediately picked up in the second sentence. They work together. This is what good writing should strive for - not to abandon the passive, but to use it when it should be used.
This is an interesting point to elaborate on - why is passive such a trap? (I disagree that good writers would necessarily make something active; 'good writing' and 'active' are not synonymous, but my reasons for disagreeing should be made clear).
What the passive buys you is the ability to leave the agent of a verb vague and unspecified. I think this is how it becomes a trap - things can be left unsaid, and what has been left unsaid has often not been thought through. The active forces you to specify the agent of the verb. Normally specifying an agent leads to greater precision and greater clarity about who is doing what to whom. That's good - both for thinking and for writing. But there are also situations when vagueness is preferred or even necessary.
Consider -
I was attacked and my wallet was stolen. I'm a big guy, but I got kicked in the ribs and then tossed around like a sack of potatoes. Everything there is passive. The reader doesn't know who attacked me, who stole my wallet, who kicked me, or who tossed me around. Imaginations are free to speculate.
Compare it to -
A band of midgets attacked me and stole my wallet. I'm a big guy, but they kicked me in the ribs and then tossed me around like a sack of potatoes. The active forces the narrator to specify the agents, leading to a considerably different interpretation of the events and of the narrator, who may have wanted to keep some details hidden.
In other cases the agent is unimportant, unknown, or both, and should stay that way.
Grand Duke Ferdinand was murdered! properly omits the agent as an unimportant (or unknown) detail. The active with a vague agent (Someone murdered Grand Duke Ferdinand) or an unimportant agent (Joe McSurlyGuard murdered Grand Duke Ferdinand) puts the person that the reader wants the sentence to be about (the Grand Duke) in the wrong place, and puts too much emphasis on the vague or unimportant information.
So, use passive when you either can't or shouldn't (or don't want to) specify an agent.
A good writer will convey the necessary/important information in the most suitable way for the situation - active and passive are both tools to achieve that end. If a passive is the best tool for the job, rewriting the sentence in the active would not be the approach chosen by a good writer. The trick of course, is recognizing what information needs to be conveyed, what the impact of different choices on the reader will be, and then making the right choice.
The Language Log has some very enlightening articles about the perceived evils of the passive voice, for example this or this article. More articles can be found in this archive list. They are well worth the read.
I don't think the point is to avoid passives at all cost. It is to consider if a sentence can be written using an active....My reading is that because most people write in passives, the judges calls out to the contestants to try and write in actives.
Very astute, Bruno. That's exactly the purpose in which I've chosen to highlight it during the contest.
To Seabryn's credit, he probably knows more about passive voice than I'll ever care to learn. I'm not engaging in a lecture on the English language...or even writing, in general. It's just something a professional writer needs to know about and consider so they can strengthen their writing. And, rather than go into an entire lesson on passive voice (which I'm not qualified to do anyway), I'm just pointing it out for these competitors so they can go educate themselves about it and work on eliminating it (whenever and wherever possible) from their designs.
Personally, I just strive to write in active voice as often as I can. There are still times when I use passive voice in a manuscript, but very sparingly. Character dialogue, for example, is one place I feel very free to use passive voice (and conjunctions, for that matter), because it's far more indicative of how people actually talk. But in terms of narrative text, I typically skirt anything involving the verb "to be" as often as I can.
That doesn't mean I always succeed at eliminating every use of passive voice in my turnovers. But it definitely helps cut down on the majority of it. And I trust my editors and developers to rewrite anything that comes across too awkward or still too passive. That's part of being a professional writing team working on a product. And that's why I say you should always honor your editors and developers. They're the people who really make your work shine. But, as a professional freelancer, you'd better make doubly sure you hand them something that's at least 90% there or you're just dumping a whole lot of extra work on them as a lazy writer.
Or, if you're pitching a proposal to a publisher, you'd better make doubly sure you eliminate as much of your passive voice as you can...and therefore, write in active voice as often as you can...lest you also give the impression you're a lazy writer. In this business, lazy writers (meaning, those who rely too much on passive voice or don't understand it) usually don't get selected from a group of candidates to write something for a publisher. Or, if they do, and their turnovers are rife with passive voice, they usually don't get very many repeat assignments.
My two cents,
--Neil
Dedicated Voter Season 6
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A good technique to develop is read the passage out loud. Active voice usually sounds much better (and more clear).
Yes, that is a very good thing to do. Sometimes you don't quite feel the stumbling blocks or weak transitions in a sentence or paragraph that stop good flow.
However, a better practice is to have someone else read your own writing back to you.
You'd be surprised everything you catch when you see someone else stumbling over your sentences.
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
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I don't think the point is to avoid passives at all cost. It is to consider if a sentence can be written using an active.
My reading is that because most people write in passives, the judges calls out to the contestants to try and write in actives.
I agree with this.
However I also sorta agree with the OP.
The key is, if you can write in passive in such a way that a very detail oriented, educated english major doesn't catch it (or doesn't care if they do) because it flows so well in the sentence or paragraph... then go ahead, write in passive.
The problem is, that most folks are not literary geniuses and use passive as a crutch--indeed training wheels.
Getting the average writer to think actively instead of passively will greatly increase their writing acumen and vocabulary.
Does this mean they never delve back into passive? No... but when you see someone write a paragraph completely in the passive, or they keep jumping from active to passive, thus disrupting the flow of text, it isn't good writing.
I wouldn't say I'm the best at always writing in active or only using passive where necessary, but I do have some editing experience.
I edited almost all (except the ones I wrote) modules for Living Dragonstar. I had to do a ton of re-writing for certain authors, because they lived in passive voice. Doing the editing work and trying to be very diligent with it, really helped me, I feel, in my noticing my own passive voice.
The reason most adventure novels are better in the active voice, is because the reader can more easily put themselves in the action. At least to me, those are the books I truly enjoy. The ones I feel almost interactive with.
As such, roleplaying adventures should also be written more actively than passively, because it allows the GM and the Players to insert themselves much more easily into the story and the action.
Active voice = action.
Passive voice = lecture.
Many of the examples the OP gave above were scientific or historical theories or information. When you are talking about a history text book, passive voice seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Because you are talking about the past and what happened in the past with past people who are no longer alive. Scientific information is also better done passively, because you are talking in most cases, in theories, postulates or hypothesis, which as a rule are not absolute.
Active voice often assumes an absolute (i.e. "The elephant destroyed my car".
{I am well aware of the irony that most of my sentences above are passive}
Another problem with passive voice is that it is often vague.
To take the elephant/car example: My car was destroyed by an elephant is ambiguous. It could mean the same as An elephant destroyed my car, which is most likely what was intended (the speaker is merely more concerned for his car than the elephant.) However, the same sentence could just as easily mean My car was destroyed. An elephant was nearby.
However, when writing an adventure proposal, or for an RPG in general, I think the author really wants to avoid obscuring things. The point is to communicate as much information to the publisher, development team, and eventually customer as quickly and clearly as humanly possible. Particularly for complicated plots, the writer and the developers want the eventual GM to be crystal clear on who is doing what to whom. The GM, on the other hand, might make excellent use of the passive voice while running the game in order to create suspense and sense of discovery for the players.
Well said, sir.
As we used to say at Wizards, "Don't DM the DM." (Meaning, don't hide information from the DM because the DM has to know what's going on.)
Lots of good posts here. I'm not entirely sure I agree that scientific writing is better with passive voice, or that role playing is necessarily better with active. Dull is dull, and science writing is tough enough to make interesting without over-using the passive voice to boot!
I also don't mean to dispute the experience of the editors here, and I am not trying to argue that the passive should be used more often than it is, and am certainly not trying to argue that a passive construction should be used when the active is a better choice.
I do want to try to highlight when and how a writer can 'get away' with using passives, and when passive voice may not be the real problem with writing that 'feels passive.'
Two examples from this competition provide useful guidance.
The first was praised for being well written (and I think it is too), and the second was panned for over-use of the passive voice (by me too). I've bolded the passive verbs, and (for Neil) italicized the uses of the verb 'to be' with an adjective or noun, but that are not technically passive.
In youth, Rosiline was considered 'plain'; a benefit of age is that she is now politely deemed 'handsome'. Once, she embraced cosmetics and elaborate coiffures; now she simply sweeps her hair back, and only uses rouge on formal occasions. Nevertheless, she is well-dressed and matronly, as befits a Taldan noblewoman. Her face rarely betrays her inner thoughts; only when dreaming do her features show passion. Her eidolon is a slender, tall, near-human biped in dark robes and a broad-brimmed hat. Six sickle-wielding hands rise from the shadows of his cloak.
Tamonash is a proud, regal Vudrani. Born on Jalmeray, the superiority of Vudra over the barbarians of Avistan or Garund was instilled in him from an early age. He was admitted to the Monastery of Untwisting Iron where he showed great talent, but also great disregard for aesthetics from the Inner Sea. While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family.
They don't differ too much in their use of the passive voice, nor in their use of 'to be' in general (4 vs 5, counting 'to be' + passives). And I completely agree with Sean, that simply shuffling the subjects and objects to make the latter example active would not fix the all the problems with it. It needs more. But in a similar vein, I don't think the first example would benefit greatly from being recast in the active - the text is already good.
So what makes the second one worse, if not really passive verbs?
One thing that stands out to me is that the author uses a lot of abstract nouns as subjects and objects, rather than people. It's hard for readers to engage with abstract nouns, and so the sentence feels weak and passive, even if the passive voice itself wasn't used in these sentences.
For example - the sentence: While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death.
Removing the modifiers, it reads: "Use of techniques resulted in death" YAWN. The people are not taking prominent roles in this sentence. The verb 'resulted' is also not terribly dynamic. The modifier "while sparring" is modifying "use", which doesn't make a lot of sense. Simply replacing the nouns with verbs and putting the people in prominent roles helps this sentence a lot -
[i]While sparring, Tamonash used taboo techniques and killed his opponent.[i/] (I cheated a bit, and replaced both 'resulted' and 'death' with the single word 'killed'.) It's still not perfect, but it feels a lot more active, even though the original sentence also used the active voice. It's also two words shorter than the original.
I suspect these sorts of issues (using dull verbs and abstract nouns) contributed more to the passive feeling of the passage than the use of the passive voice itself.
The Language Log has some very enlightening articles about the perceived evils of the passive voice, for example this or this article. More articles can be found in this archive list. They are well worth the read.
I love Language Log, almost as much as I love Lamp! :)
and thanks for the kind words, everyone - if even one person benefits from this discussion, it's well worth it to me.
I don't think the point is to avoid passives at all cost. It is to consider if a sentence can be written using an active....My reading is that because most people write in passives, the judges calls out to the contestants to try and write in actives.Very astute, Bruno. That's exactly the purpose in which I've chosen to highlight it during the contest.
To Seabryn's credit, he probably knows more about passive voice than I'll ever care to learn. I'm not engaging in a lecture on the English language...or even writing, in general. It's just something a professional writer needs to know about and consider so they can strengthen their writing. And, rather than go into an entire lesson on passive voice (which I'm not qualified to do anyway), I'm just pointing it out for these competitors so they can go educate themselves about it and work on eliminating it (whenever and wherever possible) from their designs.
Personally, I just strive to write in active voice as often as I can. There are still times when I use passive voice in a manuscript, but very sparingly. Character dialogue, for example, is one place I feel very free to use passive voice (and conjunctions, for that matter), because it's far more indicative of how people actually talk. But in terms of narrative text, I typically skirt anything involving the verb "to be" as often as I can.
That doesn't mean I always succeed at eliminating every use of passive voice in my turnovers. But it definitely helps cut down on the majority of it. And I trust my editors and developers to rewrite anything that comes across too awkward or still too passive. That's part of being a professional writing team working on a product. And that's why I say you should always honor your editors and developers. They're the people who really make your work shine. But, as a professional freelancer, you'd better make doubly sure you hand them something that's at least 90% there or you're just dumping a whole lot of extra work on them as a lazy writer.
Or, if you're pitching a proposal to a publisher, you'd better make doubly sure you eliminate as much of your passive voice as you can...and therefore, write in active voice as often as you can...lest you also give the impression you're a lazy writer. In this business, lazy writers (meaning, those who rely too much on passive voice or don't understand it) usually don't get selected from a group of candidates to write something for a publisher. Or, if they do, and their turnovers are rife with passive voice, they usually don't get very many repeat assignments.
My two cents,
--Neil
I hope this doesn't come as a surprise, but I actually do agree with virtually everything you've said here. Writers should not be lazy, or even come across as lazy, and should absolutely make it easier for editors and publishers.
Where I disagree with you at all is with the technical distinctions involved in telling writers how to be less lazy. Maybe it's my own background and love of grammar talking, but I think these distinctions matter, and can be taken advantage of by inexperienced writers to help them improve.
I take a small amount of issue with this. The passive voice has nuances that are lost when you convert over to the active voice.
While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death.
When I read this, what I get out of it is that Tamonash was trying to give himself an edge, and was flirting with breaking the rules, and to his shock, he accidentally ended up killing his opponent. It paints a somewhat sympathetic bad-boy picture.
While sparring, Tamonash used taboo techniques and killed his opponent.
When I read this, what I get is that Tamonash deliberately set out to murder his opponent. I find myself asking "why'd he do that? did he have a grudge against him?" Ironically, the opponent becomes even more important, and I want to know more about him and his relationship to Tamonash - which is not where we want the focus to be right now. And overall, it paints a more starkly "I'm evil because I'm evil" sort of picture.
Now, can you retool the sentence so that it's in active voice while still keeping the appropriate emphasis? Probably, but it would end up costing you a lot more words. The original sentence had the emphasis where it needed to be in the right wordcount.
Rather than just flipping the subject and object and calling it a day, a good writer would reword the sentence so it sounds better *and* make it active voice. Yes, there are times where passive voice is better or sounds better... but writing in passive voice is a trap for far too many writers, and recognizing both types and knowing when to pick one over the other is a step toward being a better writer.The passive voice can be used to improve the flow and clarity of a body of work depending on the context.
Commonly, descriptive texts, technical manuals, and even great literature make use of nominalization, modality, and the passive voice to illustrate breadth, precision, and flow.
Now I don't mean to be especially obtuse; but, avoiding passivity for the sake of passivity is poor writing...or perhaps more accurately poor judgement.
Agreed. It's like playing bomberman, you need to know when to drop the bomb for killing an opponent vs. clearing an area.
I take a small amount of issue with this. The passive voice has nuances that are lost when you convert over to the active voice.
While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death.When I read this, what I get out of it is that Tamonash was trying to give himself an edge, and was flirting with breaking the rules, and to his shock, he accidentally ended up killing his opponent. It paints a somewhat sympathetic bad-boy picture.
While sparring, Tamonash used taboo techniques and killed his opponent.When I read this, what I get is that Tamonash deliberately set out to murder his opponent. I find myself asking "why'd he do that? did he have a grudge against him?" Ironically, the opponent becomes even more important, and I want to know more about him and his relationship to Tamonash - which is not where we want the focus to be right now. And overall, it paints a more starkly "I'm evil because I'm evil" sort of picture.
Now, can you retool the sentence so that it's in active voice while still keeping the appropriate emphasis? Probably, but it would end up costing you a lot more words. The original sentence had the emphasis where it needed to be in the right wordcount.
Let me clarify a bit first - both sentences are in the active voice. The original did not use passive voice at all. (sorry, that may not have been clear in my prior post)*
I don't know if I share your interpretations of the nuances, but for me the revised sentence is more engaging. It may paint Tamonash in a different light, but if it's crucial to portray him in a sympathetic light, the original sentence should still be revised to fix the problems of the modifier implying that "use" was sparring, not Tamonash, and of 'resulted' not being a very oomphy verb. It really would also be better with a human protagonist as the subject, not the abstract 'use'. That may lead to a different framing of the sentence, and maybe the surrounding sentences as well, but I think these fixes would help more than hurt, no matter what.
*I meant the non-technical sense of 'passive' when I said 'feels passive,' in contrast to 'assertive' or 'dynamic'.
I take a small amount of issue with this. The passive voice has nuances that are lost when you convert over to the active voice.
While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death.When I read this, what I get out of it is that Tamonash was trying to give himself an edge, and was flirting with breaking the rules, and to his shock, he accidentally ended up killing his opponent. It paints a somewhat sympathetic bad-boy picture.
While sparring, Tamonash used taboo techniques and killed his opponent.When I read this, what I get is that Tamonash deliberately set out to murder his opponent. I find myself asking "why'd he do that? did he have a grudge against him?" Ironically, the opponent becomes even more important, and I want to know more about him and his relationship to Tamonash - which is not where we want the focus to be right now. And overall, it paints a more starkly "I'm evil because I'm evil" sort of picture.
Now, can you retool the sentence so that it's in active voice while still keeping the appropriate emphasis? Probably, but it would end up costing you a lot more words. The original sentence had the emphasis where it needed to be in the right wordcount.
I wanted to take another look at this; I ran short of time yesterday and didn't give the point its due - this raises a very good point.
Starting with Tamonash -
The difference between "Tamonash's use" and "Tamonash used" is similar to the difference between an active and a passive.
With the noun 'use' Tamonash need not be specified. The phrase 'The use of taboo techniques' doesn't specify who used them, just as "Taboo techniques were used" doesn't specify who used them. "Tamonash's use" and "used by Tamonash" both specify the user, but do so in a way that is indirect.
As Erik (correctly) points out, this has different implications for Tamonash's responsibility (much as in the passive 'mistakes were made' that was mentioned above), it nevertheless makes the sentence feel passive (even though technically the passive voice wasn't used).
A related issue is that the noun 'use' is not a strong agent - it's an abstract concept. So putting that concept as the subject of the main verb leaves that verb without an agent. In this particular case that's ok - the verb "resulted in" can't have an agent. It's syntactically active, but semantically more like a passive verb in that respect. (As an interesting aside 'resulted in' can't be passivized - 'was resulted in' is ungrammatical.) This also makes the sentence feel like a passive sentence (again, even though passive voice wasn't used).
Similarly, (again, as Erik points out) saying "the opponent's death" deflects some focus from the opponent, and puts it on the death.
Maybe there is some disagreement as to whether that sentenece, or even the paragraph, needs to be fixed. The sentence I suggested above was intended to illustrate a particular point, and I've been struggling quite a bit to think how I would actually rework the paragraph to make it more active (particularly if it is critical for Tamonash to be seen in a sympathetic light), and I don't think there is an easy fix. (and I just now noticed that I missed another passive verb - born on Jalmeray).
I'm curious to hear what an editor (and/or better writer than me) would do with this - would it be left as is? Would it be changed slightly? Reworked entirely? Sent back to the author?
(I really don't intend to pick on the author of this paragraph, and apologize sincerely if it comes across that way or if the author is offended. I chose it simply because the perceived passivity didn't seem to stem completely from use of the passive voice).
Tamonash is a proud, regal Vudrani. Born on Jalmeray, the superiority of Vudra over the barbarians of Avistan or Garund was instilled in him from an early age. He was admitted to the Monastery of Untwisting Iron where he showed great talent, but also great disregard for aesthetics from the Inner Sea. While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family.
I don't see a problem with passive in the second sentence, because the idea is that Tamonash was done to, so to speak, or soaked stuff up. As an impressionable child, he was programmed with certain ideas or absorbed them by osmosis. He wasn't actively acquiring cultural knowledge. The sentence should be rewritten, though, to fix the participle problem (as written, though we understand the sense, it literally says that the superiority was born on Jalmeray). If you really want active you could add an agent, something like, His parents and teachers instilled in him.... A more conservative revision in which the modifying participle and subject agree could be something like,"Born on Jalmeray, he learned....
Could revise, "He was admitted to..." to "He entered/joined the..." which is both active and more economical. Economy of style is one of the reasons active is often better than passive-English passives are simply wordy.
I would revise While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family.
to
During a sparring match, Tamonash once employed illicit combat techniques....
And you have to decide if you are trying to say that he meant to kill or if it was incidental.
I don't have a big problem with passive in the last sentence, because, once again, he is being done to. He is the topic, and he is also being done to. Of course you can flip it (the monastery expelled him and his family disowned him), but then you end up with a few subjects, which I think makes the paragraph more diffuse. We want it centered on Tamonash.
Tamonash is a proud, regal Vudrani. Born on Jalmeray, the superiority of Vudra over the barbarians of Avistan or Garund was instilled in him from an early age. He was admitted to the Monastery of Untwisting Iron where he showed great talent, but also great disregard for aesthetics from the Inner Sea. While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family.
I don't see a problem with passive in the second sentence, because the idea is that Tamonash was done to, so to speak, or soaked stuff up. As an impressionable child, he was programmed with certain ideas or absorbed them by osmosis. He wasn't actively acquiring cultural knowledge. The sentence should be rewritten, though, to fix the participle problem (as written, though we understand the sense, it literally says that the superiority was born on Jalmeray). If you really want active you could add an agent, something like, His parents and teachers instilled in him.... A more conservative revision in which the modifying participle and subject agree could be something like,"Born on Jalmeray, he learned....
Could revise, "He was admitted to..." to "He entered/joined the..." which is both active and more economical. Economy of style is one of the reasons active is often better than passive-English passives are simply wordy.
I would revise While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family.
to
During a sparring match, Tamonash once employed illicit combat techniques....
And you have to decide if you are trying to say that he meant to kill or if it was incidental.
I don't have a big problem with passive in the last sentence, because, once again, he is being done to. He is the topic, and he is also being done to. Of course you can flip it (the monastery expelled him and his family disowned him), but then you end up with a few subjects, which I think makes the paragraph more diffuse. We want it centered on Tamonash.
I think you hit the nail on the head here - his background reads as events that happened to him, rather than that he did (or when he did them, he took no responsibility for them). In that way, the passive is perhaps a very revealing reflection of his character (and in that sense possibly more appropriate than active versions of the same sentences).
I'm not sure that rearranging the words of the original would really fix the problems, and I wrestled with some of the same issues you mention - for example, I agree that making the last sentence active would yield too many characters as subjects.
So I took a different tack, and tried to think about the crucial elements of his personality and the events that shaped his background.
One of the things I really liked about this background was the palpable sense of arrogance the first sentences provide. I could feel the sneer on his face.
What I came up with (and apologies to the original author if I botched your intention) was that he is arrogant, he sees himself as a victim, and he won't take responsibility for his actions. He was born to a royal family. He entered a monastery, used illegal techniques in a fight in which his opponent died. He was then expelled and his parents disowned him.
So that's what I tried to capture, using the same number of words as the original (79).
Tamonash is a proud Vudrani from Jalmeray. A regal scion, he was taught the superiority of Vudra over the neighboring barbarians early and often. He showed great talent at the Monastery of Untwisting Iron, but little regard for the rules. In an exhibition match against an inferior opponent, Tamonash used a forbidden technique that ultimately proved fatal. For his refusal to accept responsibility for this crime, Tamonash was expelled from the monastary and his parents disowned him in shame.
I spent several hours off and on thinking about what was essential to his background and who he was (finally arriving at the list above), then rewrote the sentences from scratch, but keeping the order of events of the original and the basic narrative structure intact (both were perfectly good).
It has two passive verbs and one 'to be'. I chose 'taught' over 'instilled' because it's more verby (even when passive, the action doesn't feel as diffused to me), and for the last sentence kept one verb passive to emphasize that it was happening to Tamonash, but made it more verby again ('expelled' to me has a smidge more action behind it than 'cast out'), but then made the last clause active to emphasize that it was his parent who affected him with the last verb. And I took Erik's suggestion, that perhaps his victim should be de-emphasized as the object of who was killed - and I think this (along with the word 'inferior') introduces an ambiguity (or maintains it, if that was the intent of the original) as to whether this is accurate or just history written by the victor.
Even if my new paragraph is terrible or does not improve upon the original in any way, for me it was an interesting exercise in how to revise a text while (hopefully) preserving its content. (and what better way to spend some spare time?!)