You may have heard the conventional wisdom that passive voice misuse means it should be stricken from your writing entirely. While it is true that the passive voice can weaken your story when used incorrectly, this is not a hard and fast rule.
In this article, I’ll look at how the passive voice can be used effectively with intention, and examine how it is commonly misused in writing with some examples. Lastly, I’ll give you a Story Weapon to help identify it and restore the active voice when needed.
Where storytelling relies on the choices and intentions of human beings, passive voice misuse strips away character accountability and disrupts cause-and-effect. Unless you are intentionally creating mystery or shock, hiding the “actor” in your sentences weakens your narrative’s emotional core. Read on to learn how to audit your draft and pull readers back into the immediate action.
What passive voice does
Before we begin, let’s clarify the active vs. passive voice.
- Active Voice: the subject performs the action of the verb, for example: She broke the window.
- Passive Voice: the subject receives the action, for example: The window was broken.
Passive voice takes the focus away from whoever performed the action and shifts it onto the recipient.
This shift can be useful in certain instances:
- When the “actor” is unknown
- When the result matters more than the cause
- When you want to create distance, ambiguity, or reflection
The key here is being intentional. If it is clear why the passive voice is being used in a given sentence, it’s likely justified. If not, it’s likely being misused.
Remember, storytelling isn’t about the events of your story alone. It’s about the people navigating those events. Character suggests plot.
Misuse #1: Hiding the actor
You may have heard someone say a phrase like “Mistakes were made” to excuse some errant behavior.
This type of passive phrasing is often used to avoid accountability. It removes agency and dulls the tension.
Stories are driven by the choices of your protagonist, antagonists, and other characters. If your sentences gloss over who did what, your narrative will start to feel like it’s happening in a vacuum.
Compare these two sentences:
- The decision was made to leave the village.
- She decided to leave the village for good.
The first sentence reports an outcome. The second details a human moment. It’s information vs. a story beat.
Misuse #2: Removing intent
The passive voice tends to soften or neutralize emotional intensity.
It makes the actor in the sentence vague. By doing this, the intention becomes disconnected from the action. Remember: emotional meaning is tied to intention.
This issue becomes most obvious in moments of conflict. When your character struggles to overcome obstacles, you need to answer:
- Who or what is the cause behind those struggles?
- How is your character reacting to that struggle?
The passive voice erases, or shifts focus away from these answers. As a result, your story is weakened.
Misuse #3: Overgeneralizing an experience
We tend to use the passive voice when we write abstract ideas or general statements. For example: “It was believed that success would bring happiness.”
When we use this type of phrasing, however, we detach the reader from the character’s experience. Stories are built on the meaning we derive from specific human experiences. Being too vague removes that meaning.
The passive voice makes it sound more like a collective assumption than something personal. Instead, focus on your protagonist’s belief, such as “She believed success would bring her happiness,” and show how that drives their choices and behavior.
The dilemma now is much clearer to your reader.
Misuse #4: Unintentional distance
The passive voice can put distance between the reader and the action. This is sometimes done intentionally, but many times, it is not.
Even in something simple such as: “The letter was read” vs. “He read the letter.”
The passive version gives off a subtle sense of detachment. The result is that the reader feels like they are simply watching events unfold. Using the active voice pulls the reader back into the moment. They get to experience the events of the story beside the character.
Giving some distance isn’t necessarily bad, as long as the choice is made to support the moment. Distance can help portray a character’s denial, shock, or their own detachment from a situation. But, if you’re not careful, distance can make your narrative tone sound flat and disengaged.
Misuse #5: Weakening cause and effect
The flow of cause and effect is what makes up the events of a story.
- The protagonist makes a decision
- That decision affects the world around them
- The aftermath reveals new decisions to be made
Using the passive voice can stop that flow.
For example: The door was left open.
If this is supposed to be a mysterious moment, the passive voice is fine here. If it’s supposed to convey meaning in a choice or action taken by your protagonist, however, it interrupts the narrative flow.
Misuse #6: A passive writing style
Some writers find a sense of safety in the “formal” sound of the passive voice. But overusing it can make your story sound more like a bland report.
The meeting was held. Concerns were raised. Decisions were made.
Technically, nothing in those sentences is incorrect. But it doesn’t feel alive either. This kind of writing lacks urgency, specificity, and human presence.
Where your story is supposed to be an exploration of your protagonist’s experience, conflicts, and transformation, it loses color and becomes a summary of events.
This weakens your story. It isn’t about what happens, but what it means.
Your story weapon: Restore the actor in your sentences
Audit your sentences for any missing actors. If your readers aren’t able to identify who is responsible for an action, you may be weakening the emotional core of the scene.
When a scene feels flat or the conflict is not landing right, read back over it and look for passive lines. Put the actor back in your sentences and watch the scene wake up.
Don’t just think in terms of what your characters want in any given scene. Think in terms of what they are doing to get what they want.
At the end of the day, readers aren’t invested in the events of your story. What keeps them reading is your characters pushing the story forward. Don’t neuter them by misusing the passive voice.
The more consciously you shape your sentences, the more immediate and emotionally resonant your storytelling becomes. To strengthen your prose and deepen your understanding of craft, join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
