thread: 2011-02-07 : Grammatical Voices
On 2011-02-08, PeterBB wrote:
I'm actually taking a class on "expert writing" right now, and they gave me a way of thinking about it that I think is far more useful than worrying about active and passive.
The key is to make the noun in the subject position a meaningful character. Make it be something that the audience cares about, and that it is easy to imagine acting or being acted upon.
"after creating the character, some (use common sense) Qualities and Drawbacks may be acquired or lost in the course of the game." is terrible, but not because it's in passive.
It's terrible because "Qualities and Drawbacks" is a terrible character. No one cares what "Qualities and Drawbacks" are up to. Your revision is much better, because it puts the player in the subject position.
It's true that passive tends to be a little worse about this than active, but it's entirely possible to improve a sentence by moving from active to passive. For instance:
"Qualities and Drawbacks modify a character."
vs.
"A character is modified by his Qualities and Drawbacks."
I would argue the second is better, because "character" is a better subject than "Qualities and Drawbacks". This is despite the fact that the first is in active, and the second is in passive.
