Envylope
Queen of the Enpire
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2025
- Messages
- 586
- Points
- 93
Keep it Simple, Stupid
Active Voice
Simple sentences are the way to go when learning to write. In general, you should strive to write in active voice. This means you put the subject before the action they are doing, and you discard words like 'was' as much as you can.Active Voice
Envy ran. Envy walked down the block. Envy sat on a stump.
The actor, Envy, is doing the action. Therefore, she is the one at the beginning of the sentence. This works with opening phrases as well.
In the afternoon, Envy ran. In the night, Envy walked down the block. In the early morning rain, Envy sat on a stump.
But you can still see the fundamental principle. Envy is before the action she is taking. Now that you are following this premise, I want you to keep in mind simple sentences.
Envy ran.
How do you make this sentence more compelling? Do you put something she is running away from? Whatever you do, there will still be the simple part of the sentence there for you to register in your mind.
Envy ran away from zombies.
Keep in mind, I am not trying to insult your intelligence with this. I want you to understand fundamentals. Much like everything else, writing does have fundamentals. They exist for a reason. Understand the rules before you can break them at your leisure.
So that begs the question. Why do we use active voice? There are a couple of reasons. One is for concision sake. Anytime you use passive voice, you are making sentences longer where they don't need to be. The other reason is for flow and reading comprehension. It is easier on readers to read active voice. To demonstrate:
Passive Voice: Envy was attacked by zombies.
The subject in this sentence is actually the zombies since they are the ones attacking, so you could simplify it and make it less wordy with active voice.
Active Voice: Zombies attacked Envy.
No matter how complex your sentences get, you should strive to maintain this principle.
Simple descriptions
Next, I will give a lesson on simple descriptions. This is when you describe a character by a distinguishing feature. No reader wants to stop to read a boring paragraph in the middle of the story about a character's looks. I mean, I am sure there are some, but most don't. This is why I want to get you away from describing details of characters. Bring them up only when they are relevant.
Does a character have gorgeous red eyes? Okay, let's use that for now. Well, when would you describe their gorgeous red eyes? On meeting them? Yeah, that could happen, but it's more interesting if they are using their eyes to do something.
Envy looked towards the sky with her gorgeous red eyes.
There, you have now established a fact of a character, given her an action, and you did it all in active voice. Now any time it becomes relevant in the story, you can make the reader remember her eye color. There is no need to force it.
Let's say that Envy had another scene where she was reflecting on her journey, you can pay homage to the eyes, but how have they changed in that time? Maybe there is something new about those gorgeous red eyes.
Her gorgeous red eyes reflected on the water's surface. She stared into them, searching for meaning, but Envy found lifelessness. No meaning. No purpose. Only death dealt by her cruel fate.
Notice this last sentence uses passive voice. There is a time and place for it.
Anyways, that's about it. Thanks for listening to my ramblings...Or not. I am not proofreading this for typos, so I will wait for that one person that finds it and corrects it.
