Often grade school students will find a variety of “creative”
ways to complete writing assignments to fill the required page count; students
will throw in extra words (i.e.: repetitive descriptive words) , use larger
than necessary handwriting, and sometimes will use off-topic thoughts to fill
the page. Many of us, if we were to edit our old school papers, would probably
come out with a paragraph worth keeping.
Today many aspiring writers make the mistake of filling the
page with too much and using “Purple Prose”; purple prose is language which is
overly flowery and distracting to the reader. An example of purple prose might
be: “The wall paper was flocked with multitudes of intricate, winding, curvy
tangled vines forever climbing steadily up towards the ceiling…” YUCK! There is
no need to use unnecessary and overly ornate adjectives and adverbs. Go too far
and you draw the reader’s attention away from the story.
When writing the adage “Less is More” is truly appropriate.
Give only the information that is mandatory when you are describing a room or
other place, leave the rest to your reader’s imagination. By allowing the
reader to “see” the setting through their eyes they will get the feeling that
they are actually there. If your description is too confining the reader may
not feel comfortable being a part of it. Think of the last time you read a book
before going to see it after I was made into a movie – if the characters or
settings were not the way you imagined it, it took away from your absorption in
the action.
Make sure that you power-pack your words with an active
voice. The passive voice tends not to have the same effect, it doesn’t pack a
punch. It’s a simple formula: Subject – Verb – Object. “The ball was thrown by
the boy” (passive); “The boy threw the ball” (active). Using the passive voice
sounds dull and has a tendency to be too wordy whereas the active voice is
direct and clear. “The car was driven by me” (passive); “I drove the car”
(active). The subject is the one who is doing the action to the object. “Paul
loves Terry” – Paul is the one loving Terry; “Terry is loved by Paul” – What is
Terry doing? She is the object and is not doing anything. In the active voice
put the subject before the verb.
You could use a passive voice for dialogue for a character if
you think the speech pattern would show his personality, but be sure not to use
it for everyone. What would passive voice in dialogue show about a character?
Do you think that a forceful drill sergeant would use passive or active voice?
What kind of voice would a timid employee who has eluded his supervisor’s
scrutiny use? Big business may use a passive voice in order to lessen the
impact of a rate increase or a politician might use it to avoid pointing
fingers and laying blame. President Reagan is known for his statement “Mistakes
were made,: but he never said WHO made the mistakes. A police officer may write
a crime report in the passive voice if the perpetrator is unknown, “The store
was robbed.”
The passive voice could be helpful in mysteries for the same
reason it’s used in crime reports, to emphasize the crime and not give away the
answers. Scientific writing also relies heavily on the passive voice as it is
considered bad form for scientists to point attention to themselves, because it
may imply bias, when reporting on discoveries and experiments.
Writing Exercise: Open a book, any book, within your reach.
Open the book to the page equal to your age, count down the number of lines
equal to the number of letters in your name. Copy the first complete sentence
and write a short-short story starting with that sentence.
Writing Prompt: If you could have been born in any other era,
when would that have been? Why?
Challenge:
Write a letter to a potential employer about yourself – write it in
third person and tell as much as you can to sound like the perfect candidate
for the company; use active voice and 100 to 125 words maximum. You can “apply”
for any position, but make sure you sound good.
