W R I T E W O R L D

Hi! I have an issue with sentence length and passive vs. active writing. For sentence length, most of my sentences are short. It's almost as if I'm too afraid to use long sentences, because I've been told all my life that run on sentences are extremely distasteful. How can I overcome this hesitance I have? And for passive versus active voice, I understand the concept, I just don't quite understand when it's appropriate to use either. I've also been told "was" and "be" are words to avoid. Help?

The simplest way to start working with longer sentences is to see how you can combine the short sentences you already have into compound or complex sentences. I find compound sentences easier:

In this example, I would choose to combine the second and third sentences, because they’re both talking about the same subject. So it would look like this:

Varying your sentence structure may take practice, but it’s almost always better than having all long sentences or all short sentences, like Gary Provost says. 

Active and passive voice are not exactly the same as whether or not you should use ‘was’ or ‘be.’ In a sentence that uses active voice, the subject completes the action:

A sentence written in passive voice is ‘backwards,’ meaning that the subject is not the one actually DOING the action:

An sentence in active voice feels more immediate; it gives the subject agency as well as focus. That doesn’t always make it the best choice. Sometimes you want to emphasize the lack of action from your subject, emphasizing what’s being done TO her. Just be careful with that, because it can easily paint that subject as a victim.

You can also use forms of ‘to be’ as linking verbs in descriptive sentences. While these sentences aren’t active, they’re not exactly passive either, because they don’t have someone else performing an action on the subject:

In each case, it’s about choices. There’s nothing inherently wrong with short sentences or long sentences or active voice or passive voice or even run-ons! But it’s helpful to know how to use different techniques, so that you can choose what works best for each situation as you write.

Hi! I have an issue with sentence length and passive vs. active writing. For sentence length, most of my sentences are short. It's almost as if I'm too afraid to use long sentences, because I've been told all my life that run on sentences are extremely distasteful. How can I overcome this hesitance I have? And for passive versus active voice, I understand the concept, I just don't quite understand when it's appropriate to use either. I've also been told "was" and "be" are words to avoid. Help?

The simplest way to start working with longer sentences is to see how you can combine the short sentences you already have into compound or complex sentences. I find compound sentences easier:

In this example, I would choose to combine the second and third sentences, because they’re both talking about the same subject. So it would look like this:

Varying your sentence structure may take practice, but it’s almost always better than having all long sentences or all short sentences, like Gary Provost says. 

Active and passive voice are not exactly the same as whether or not you should use ‘was’ or ‘be.’ In a sentence that uses active voice, the subject completes the action:

A sentence written in passive voice is ‘backwards,’ meaning that the subject is not the one actually DOING the action:

An sentence in active voice feels more immediate; it gives the subject agency as well as focus. That doesn’t always make it the best choice. Sometimes you want to emphasize the lack of action from your subject, emphasizing what’s being done TO her. Just be careful with that, because it can easily paint that subject as a victim.

You can also use forms of ‘to be’ as linking verbs in descriptive sentences. While these sentences aren’t active, they’re not exactly passive either, because they don’t have someone else performing an action on the subject:

In each case, it’s about choices. There’s nothing inherently wrong with short sentences or long sentences or active voice or passive voice or even run-ons! But it’s helpful to know how to use different techniques, so that you can choose what works best for each situation as you write.