Writing.Com General Discussion

Well, that advice is bad.

An active verb is an action that happens when the subject does something.

Is and are and all the other be verbs are stative, not passive. A lot of the advice about "passive" on this site is wrong. They're usually talking about stative verbs used in a descriptive passage. While such sentences should be looked at and reworked to be eliminated if possible, they are not passive.

Passive is a sentence structure that puts the recipient (the direct object) of the action (which is never a be verb) in the subject position, and if the source of the verb action (the original subject) appears in the sentence, it's in a prepositional phrase. The be verbs in passive sentences are always helper verbs, never the main verb. For example:

Active: The ball smacks John.          main verb = smacks
Passive: John is smacked by the ball.          main verb = is smacked
Passive: John is smacked.          main verb = is smacked

Stative: The ball is hard.          Descriptive = Nothing is happening.
Getting rid of a stative sentence: The hard ball smacks John.

Active voice == use active verbs with the subject as the subject
First person === use I or we pronouns
Present tense == use the verb form of the infinitive without the "to," and add the singular s as necessary.

I eat lunch.
I walk home from work.
I talk to my brother on the phone.
I throw the ball, which smacks John to end the dodgeball game.
Sitting at the table, I read the sports page. -- sitting isn't the main verb -- it's a present participle adjective modifying I, and its -ing-ness does not matter. The -ing rule ONLY applies to the main verb of the clause.

What you do have to be careful of with -ing participle adjectives is that their action must be concurrent with the action of the rest of the clause == they happen together during the time period of the sentence.

I [am eating] at Roxi's. -- This uses a present participle verb (-ing verb with a be helper verb), so it's not simple present tense. It is active, and it is first person, it's just not the right verb tense.

I always eat at Roxi's. -- This isn't present action. It's backstory/infodump = a fact. It doesn't happen in the specific -- it's a general statement.


In first person present tense narration, some of the sentences are going to look like this:

The ball smacks John, and the dodgeball game is over.

Instead of like this:

I see the ball smack John, and I know the dodgeball game is over.

The wording like "I see", "I know", "I hear" is not included because the reader assumes what the narration says is what the narrator experiences firsthand, and so those "I" clauses are understood and therefore redundant.


One other word of warning: Stick to the 5+senses narration as much as possible, because the main pitfall of first person narration is too much monologuing. Save the commentary for when you need it.





Hope that helps.

Northernwrites___

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