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How to Make an Active Voice in Fiction

The American Psychological Association suggests writers use the active voice, as it readily communicates information to the reader. An active voice is a writing style that places the emphasis in a sentence on the subject. The subject is the person or object performing the action in a sentence. For example the sentence, "John wrote the book." This is opposed to passive voice, which places emphasis on the object of a sentence such as in, "The book was written by John." Writers have many options for creating an active voice in their work. However, a couple of basic steps, used consistently, will help create this preferred style.

Instructions

    • 1

      Write out the passage of fiction you want to review for active voice.

    • 2

      Circle the subject and underline the verb in each sentence. The subject is the person or object doing something and the verb is the action being performed.

    • 3

      Read the first sentence to determine if the emphasis is placed on the subject. To determine where the emphasis is, check to see where the object is placed in the sentence. If the object is placed before the subject, the sentence is likely written in the passive voice.

    • 4

      Rewrite the sentence to place emphasis on the subject, if it's not already. Rearrange the wording of the sentence to place the subject before the object and cut out unnecessary words.

    • 5

      Check to see whether or not the verb used is a form of "to be," such as are, were, be, been and am. Many forms of the "to be" verb exist in the English language.

    • 6

      Remove "to be" from the sentence and rewrite. Do this with sentences that are too passive, too long or awkward sounding when read out loud. Do not remove all occurrences of this verb, as it is sometimes useful in constructing a naturally flowing sentence. Use your best judgment.

    • 7

      Repeat Steps 3 through 6 for each sentence in the passage of text.

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