Whatever!
No! Wrong answer. It’s one or the other. Active? Passive? ACTIVE? PASSIVE? Choose. Come on. Which one are you?
No! I don’t mean ‘actively passive’ as in whether you are a couch potato surrounded by chips, while sat in your Big Boy watching a game on your Cinemascope TV and how actively you are drinking that beer.
Or how ‘passively active’ as in softly, slowly, gently, delicately – yikes, so many ugly describing words; these ‘ly’ words aren’t good for your constitution – you are throwing that football to your son in the back garden.
Yeah, now you got it. Your writing. Has it got oomph, or is treacle? Get rid of the drudge. Here’s a quagmire of a sentence.
The man walked across the road.
Hmmm? Painful isn’t it? How can we give this very dead skeletal sentence some life, so readers can have some hint of what to imagine? Try again.
The young man walked across the road.
Yesss. Better, but it still lacks a bit of pizzazz. LIFE!!!! TRY AGAIN.
The young man strolled across the road.
Yes. YES. By the nose of Apollo, this writer is beginning to get it. Life streaming through the veins is reaching the pen’s nib. How else, gentle, delicate sensitive reader can you improve on the still dire sentence?
The young man strolled across the busy road.
Aha! Better. Yes, more descriptive. It’s beginning to appeal to my imagination. More. More. Ha! Ha!
The hooded male strolled across the busy road.
This is too much for me to bear. It is taking shape, form, structure. More, I tell you. More.
The hooded teen strolled across the busy road.
I am feeling quite faint. More still.
The drunk hooded teen weaved across the busy road.
Now I am feeling euphoric. You are learning well, little grasshopper. This is the way you should go. That dull sentence is now alive. Can you string your magic one more time?
The drunk hooded teen weaved across the noisy busy highway.
Then what happened?
Well … he died. Didn’t he? Didn’t quite make it. Shouldn’t go walking in busy traffic drunk or not.
Right.
Active = alive. Bring your writing to life. Be active. Passive is just what it says on the tin. It sounds it too. Pa … ssive. In the next segment, section, instalment, whatever you want to call it, I shall be writing about simple words you can leave out of your writing that brings it to life – makes it active.
On A SERIOUS NOTE
If you would like any aspect of English, writing, screenwriting explained, then drop me a line or go to my Twitter, Facebook pages or my website and contact me on there.
This blog will now be a weekly event. Hurrah!
Until the next time keep well and keep happy.
A Writing Mind 