 Horror/Scary: August 24, 2005 Issue [#570] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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The vagrant held the baby like a football in one arm, while he snapped open a plastic grocery bag with the other hand. Then he slipped the baby into the bag. It fit nicely, with its legs scrunched up just like it must have been in the womb.
--Magic Street, by Orson Scott Card
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The Voice of Verbs
Choose active or passive verbs for their special effects.
The golden standard for writing advice is this: "Use active verbs." Those three words have been uttered in countless writing books with such conviction that they must be true. But are they?
Check out that last paragraph. In the first clause, I use a form of the verb 'to be,' in this case 'is.' In the next sentence I use the passive voice, 'have been uttered.' In the final sentence, I resort to 'are,' another form of 'to be.' My tricky point is that you can create acceptable prose, from time to time, without active verbs.
I thought I had learned the distinction between the active and passive voice as early as fifth grade. I did not learn, until much later, why that distinction mattered. But let me first correct a popular misconception. The 'voice' of verbs (active or passive) has nothing to do with the 'tense' of verbs. You may ask: "Is it ever OK to write in the passive tense?" Tense defines action within time, when the verb happens. Voice defines the relationship between subject and verb, who does what.
 If the subject performs the action of the verb, we call the verb "active."
If the subject receives the action of the verb, we call the verb "passive."
A verb that is neither active nor passive is a linking verb, a form of the verb "to be."
All verbs fit into one of those three baskets.
Any of these verb forms can appear in any tense. So an active verb can indicate the past: "Thompson kicked the winning goal." Or the future: "I bet Thompson will kick the winning goal." Or any other tense. So please never confuse voice and tense again--or I’ll have to shoot ya...lol.
Why, then, does voice matter? It matters because of the different effects active, passive, and "to be" have on the reader or listener. Let’s look at a famous writer, John Steinbeck, as he describes this encounter in North Dakota:
Presently I saw a man leaning on a two-strand barbed-wire fence, the wires fixed not to posts but to crooked tree limbs stuck in the ground. The man wore a dark hat, and jeans and long jacket washed palest blue with lighter places at knees and elbows. His pale eyes [were frosted] with sun glare and his lips scaly as snakeskin. A .22 rifle leaned against the fence beside him, and on the ground lay a little heap of fur and feathers -– rabbits and small birds. I pulled up to speak to him, saw his eyes wash over Rocinante, sweep up the details, and then retire into their sockets. And I found I had nothing to say to him ... so we simply brooded at each other.
I count 13 verbs in that passage, 12 active, and one passive. The litany of active verbs heats up the scene, even though not much is happening. The active verbs reveal who is doing what. The author sees the man. The man wears a hat. The author pulls up to talk with him. They brood at each other. Even inanimate objects perform action. The rifle leans against the fence. Dead animals lie on the ground.
Embedded in all that verbal activity is one splendid passive verb. "His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare." Form follows function. The eyes, in real life, received the action of the sun, so the subject receives the action of the verb.
The best writers make the craftiest choices between active and passive. A few paragraphs from the one cited above, Steinbeck wrote: "The night was loaded with omens." Steinbeck could have written "Omens loaded the night," but the active voice would have cheated both the night and the omens, the meaning and the music of the sentence.
So here's your "tool" of thumb:
 Active verbs move the action and reveal the actors.
Passive verbs emphasize the receiver, the victim.
The verb 'to be' links word and ideas.
What’s all this got to do with writing horror? Nothing . . . and everything.
Until next time,
billwilcox
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Fatal Feedback
TigersEye  says:
'Atta boy' Bill, great newsletter as usual. Very interesting topic, but I'm sorry because I have to say, I can't write horror. I can't seem to tap into what scares me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Are you saying that you’ve never been scared about anything? I find that hard to believe. Just take a personal experience and write about it. Anyone can write horror, Tiger--you’re blocking!
InkyShadows agrees:
I agree with you one hundred and fifty percent, Bill! Parents are exposed to horrific situations time and again over the course of their children's lives, and to me, those situations make for great horror stories.
Take the classic "Rosemary's Baby." It is all about the mother-to-be's fear that her child might either be a monster or devil's spawn. In these days of artificial insemination, could it be fact rather than fiction? Only the doctor might know. Muhahahahahahahahahaha!!
Aw, Inkster, you took the words right out of my mouth.
vampyrelady is inspired:
Thank you for the inspiring, muse stimulating article. I will definitely save it to my folder.
You do that, Vamp. I always love to stimulate.
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