Active Verbs Enliven Lackluster Writing

Here's the Scoop: Active verbs add spark and immediacy to your writing. When the subject performs the action in a sentence, it is clearer and more directly absorbed by the reader.

Active verb example: The Golden Retriever snapped up the Frisbee.
Passive verb example: The Frisbee was snapped up by the Golden Retriever.

In the second Passive verb example of the sentence, the subject of the sentence, Frisbee, is acted upon by the dog. If you take a moment to examine the order of visual action in each example of the sentence, you will discover the real-juicy reasons most readers prefer to read active verb sentences instead of passive verb sentences.

In the first example, the Active, the first image in the reader's mind is the Golden Retriever. The second image is the verb, snapped up. The verb is close on the heels of the subject of the sentence. The action happens quickly in the sentence, with the same intensity of real life. The third image we see is the Frisbee, the object in the sentence. The consecutive order of visual images flows like a movie. This is good, easy reading for the brain to absorb.

Even though the second example, the Passive verb sentence, is perfectly correct in grammar and syntax, it lacks the same energy and directness of the first sentence. The first thing you visualize, as a reader, is the Frisbee. You don't know where it is or what its function is. The second visual image is something that happened in a slightly distant and more removed past, "was snapped up." But you are still hanging without specifics. Only during the last phrase of the sentence is the action of the sentence completed, "by the Golden Retriever." The entire purposefulness and vitality of the sentence is diluted, reduced, and delayed in power.

Now, if you were seeking, in your writing, to discount the Golden Retriever's brusque performance, if you wanted to make it seem not so peppy or worthy of attention,
You would present the information with a passive verb. Your reader (or listener) would not perceive dog's spirit, nor would readers or listeners perceive the importance of the event.

Oh, yeah . . . There is a place for Passive verb sentences, right? If the Commander in Chief does not wish to emphasize the tragedy of soldiers killed in battle, but instead wishes to build support for war within the listening public, his speechwriters will make use of passive verbs in describing (discounting, diluting, diverging) what actually happens in battles.

It goes like this: "Fifteen troops were fatally wounded in an explosion by militant factions, but the majority of soldiers proclaim that this war is necessary."

Another version, presented by CNN or the BBC might go like this:

The necessity of this war is proclaimed by the majority of soldiers, but insurgent
Rebels killed fifteen troops this week.

When you want crisp, immediate communication with high clarity, use active verbs. Make the subject do the action in the sentence. When you want to throw up a syntactical smokescreen to delay and dilute the power of what happened, use passive verbs and send the action "to the back of the bus."