So going back on editing my story I see multiple corrections made by my fellow editor saying I use passive voice way to much. At that time I really didn't get the difference, and surprisingly didn't ask why. After getting him to proofread more of my stuff I see more corrections on it. I then asked him what it is, and how do I avoid it. He gave me good reasons, and examples. I am not copy/paste his whole lecture here, that would be plagiarism.

After reading through several more stories, my eye catches a passive voice everywhere. Most authors sometimes get confused on passive vs active, and I will help you avoid it.

What is a active voice?
A active voice consists of the subject doing the action it is given. A example would be this.

Pinkie Pie loves Rainbow Dash.

Pinkie Pie is the subject, and she is doing the action: she loves Rainbow Dash, the object of this sentence.

What is a passive voice?
In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, Pinkie Pie loves Rainbow Dash, the sentence would say, Rainbow Dash is loved by Pinkie Pie. The subject of the sentence becomes Rainbow Dash, but she isn't doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Pinkie Pie's love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy.

A different example would be this.

For dessert, six cupcakes were eaten by Pinkie Pie.

Six cupcakes becomes the subject, they didn't do anything except get eaten by Pinkie Pie.The cupcakes were an example of what was eaten by Pinkie Pie. The focus was changed to the cupcakes.

A active voice for that would be this.

Pinkie Pie ate six cupcakes.

Once again Pinkie Pie is now the subject of the sentence. Her action was that she ate six cupcakes. The six cupcakes is now the object of the sentence.

Is Passive voice always bad?
Another important point is that passive sentences aren't incorrect; it’s just that they often aren't the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence.

Tips to avoid Passive Voice?
A quick tip someone showed me to see if you have a passive voice.

Lets take a sentence, a passive sentence.

She was killed.

A way to avoid it is to insert the words by zombies after the verb, you got a passive voice.

Derpy was killed (by zombies)

<---------- Passive voice.

Zombies killed (By zombies) her.

<--------- Active voice because the words by zombies don't make sense after the verb.

Examples of passive and active voice?
Five examples of both would be this.

Beautiful giraffes roam the savannah. (active)

The savannah is roamed by beautiful giraffes. (passive)

Sue changed the flat tire. (active)

The flat tire was changed by Sue. (passive)

We are going to watch a movie tonight. (active)

A movie is going to be watched by us tonight. (passive)

I ran the obstacle course in record time. (active)

The obstacle course was run by me in record time. (passive)

The crew paved the entire stretch of highway. (active)

The entire stretch of highway was paved by the crew. (passive)

Note: If there is any mistakes grammar wise just tell me. I might have missed it.

1304169
Wow, they never taught that at my school. I never knew there was a term such as "passive voice" or "active voice". I was just taught an English lesson!

(Side Note:

Pinkie Pie is the subject, and he is doing the action: she loves Rainbow Dash, the object of this sentence.

I believe the he in there is suppose to be a she.)

1304289
They never taught it in mine either.

hehe, fixed it. I'm sorry Pinkie.

1304300
*sigh* Schools aren't the most exceptional at what they are functioned to do.

Pinkie is happy now. (TOO HAPPY!) (Better)

1304304
My English teacher was the best, he went in depth on everything, except that. It's like they forget on aspiring authors so they just touch passive and active voice.

1304311
I wish I went to your school, then. My teacher was the living and breathing embodiment of a stereotypical male. I made high marks in his class only because we were taught basics, like subject-verb agreement and contractions and stuff like that.

Don't get me wrong, he was a nice teacher, but he never went to the advanced things, like passive and active. We studied nouns and verbs for Celestia's sake! And all because some people in my class didn't understand it!

1304328
*sigh* Verbs, nouns, that sounds like third grade. They need to push the other kids to hurry up and learn, not just be bored and slack off.

1304339
That's exactly what they did. While I was over here, trying my best not to fail over my over confidence, my friends and lots of other people were just gossiping and doing things that they wanted to do, and my teacher actually tried as hard as he could to get them to listen, but they're just so.....so.....bull-headed!

*repeated headdesk*
No wonder the grammar correct always goes crazy with my research papers. Not to mention I talk like this too.

1304169

One other thing to point out here is the often misunderstood use of the past progressive tense. Some writing instructors have at times stated that any use of the word 'was' indicates passive voice. That would be incorrect; they may look similar but the difference is important.

Past progressive tense is used to denote when an action is taking place at the same time as another action or that an action was ongoing.

For example:

Pinkie was baking a cake all night.

Rewording it to drop the 'was' in there would change the meaning, even if only subtly. For instance, saying:

Pinkie baked a cake all night.

indicates that the baking action completed while the previous example shows that baking was occurring at some point but does not show that it was complete.

Another example would be:

Rainbow Dash was looking over her shoulder when she flew into the tree.

Here we see two actions that occurred at the same time.

Similar to our earlier example, removing the 'was' gives us:

Rainbow Dash looked over her shoulder when she flew into the tree.

Now it reads more like a list in that she flew into the tree and subsequently looked over her shoulder.

Now, like any sort of sentence structure, it's not something you want to overuse but understanding how it can be worked into your writing in order to indicate the relations between actions and timing will give you a new tool to work with.

1304360
I am taking that this helped you?

1304436

This greatly helped me, at any rate.

1304946
Thanks, it helped me to while writing it.

1304427 1304169

I was just about to write almost the exact same thing you posted when I thought, "Maybe someone else already did," and glanced through the comments. Thank you for writing that, so I didn't have to.

Just to add a small caveat to what you said...
Past progressive is most effectively used when an action is interrupted. Such as:

Applejack was swimming across the river.

Past progressive is icky by itself, but if it is used in conjunction with the action being interrupted...

Applejack was swimming across the river when she suddenly drowned.

Otherwise, the most appropriate way to write it would be in a simple past tense:

Applejack swam across the river.

1304436
at least clarified a few things

... what?

1304169 1304427 1305826

Thank you all! I've been looking for something on this subject recently. Looks like I found what I needed.

i never even knew passive voice was deemed taboo in literary works. I thought we used them to give vagueness in a sentence

1306828
Are you confused?

1308688 most definetly

1309461
What do you want me to clear up?

1309463 ... Um, could you somehow kinda sum up the important stuff, please

It's a good thing there are over 9,000 different lectures about the active and passive voices. Such an intense, difficult-to-grasp writing lesson needs to be hammered in multiple times after all! We're not all Einstein!

(Sarcasm directed at morons, not you OP. Good lecture )

1304360 Research papers are supposed to be written in passive voice. Consider:

I gave the mice 25mg of the medicine each day.

The mice were given 25mg of medicine each day.

The second is correct in this case; the experimenter should not matter.It's not about you, it's about the mice and the effects of the medicine. Microsoft Word doesn't (and can't) get that.

It's only in fiction writing that passive voice is almost always bad. In non-fiction, there are plenty of time to use both, and in technical writing you almost always use passive.