50 Tips for Writing.

A passive voice is extremely difficult to avoid, the only difference between an active and passive voice is how direct they are in relevance to the present situation in your story. For example, 'the girl was completely terrified because she was claustrophobic' is a passive approach. An active approach would be 'the terrified girl had claustrophobia'. Passive and active voices are very difficult to master, even I still struggle with it but basically, in most sentences written in a passive voice, the focus character receives the action expressed in the verb; the subject is acted upon. Sentences in active voice are more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive. You can recognize passive voice expressions because the verb phrase will always include a form of 'be', such as 'am', 'is', 'was', 'were', 'are', or 'been'. The passive active voice isn't the most important thing in writing and you don't have to master it to write a good story but if you really want to improve your writing and dream of becoming an author or successful writer for a magazine/newspaper whatever, then I'm pointing this out to you now so you can practise improving your writing already and prepare yourself for what's ahead of you.