Today is set aside for taking a little breather and processing. Play with the exercises and/or share some of your work on your sample pages. Ask any questions, and we can continue to discuss as we go.
Today I stared “class” by reread Day 2’s post. Digging through it, I understand the following words as passive stuff that should be avoided, if not removed entirely:
[ul][li]Was[/li]
[li]Is[/li]
[li]Am[/li]
[li]Are[/li]
[li]Were[/li]
[li]Had[/li]
[li]Made[/li]
[li]Did[/li][/ul]
The final three may remain, but it is possible to make them stronger.
With that in mind, I tackled my five pages. And, holy cow, it is tough to try to focus on just nine words, as contractions or otherwise.
I took the same document from day 3 and looked harder. I edited a few things in general and made a few new changes. Also, using the list, I found a few more and highlighted the ones I don’t plan to remove.
Every instance of a kept word in the “passive voice” just sounds odd without word in question. Unless someone is able to make a suggestion for better ways. I’m open to ideas.
You’ve got it, but with the addition of be, being, been. It’s a lot to process, and in all honestly you’re probably not going to kill them all or even find them all. Mostly this is about being aware of them, understanding that too much dulls your action, and also was-ing is a huge red flag for “telling” writing.
As Husky pointed out, there are times when the tense of an action actually requires the “was doing” form of your verb.
But when it’s not mandatory, a lot of the time you can quickly rework the sentence and get a more powerful one for the effort.