Anyone who knows me as a writer, knows how vigilantly I try to purge the passive voice from manuscripts I write and edit. After all, if we're going to put in that much time and effort into writing, we want it to maintain a good pace throughout and keep the action moving.
Even if we fully saturate our psyche with this philosophy, we often read through the passive verbs as we revise and polish our work. Recently I found a better way using the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word. Let me share these simple directions with you. While these are specifically for Microsoft Word, other word processing programs, such as Word Perfect, operate in much the same way.
In the same menu, click on Match case and Find whole words only. In the Find what field, type in the word am. In the Replace with field, type in the word am.
This little operation will highlight in yellow the word am every time it appears in your manuscript, thus making it stand out and virtually impossible for you to read through. Repeat the operation for the following words: is, was, were, be, become, are, and been. Also add would to that list. Would often indicates the conditional tense, a very weak tense to write in. Then go back to your manuscript and look at each highlighted word. Seriously rethink that sentence and ask yourself how you can rewrite it to make it more vibrant, more colorful, and more meaningful.
Example: The wonderful story was written by you.
Revision: You wrote the story that touched my heart.
Now that you have this wonderful tool in your toolbox, I hope you'll use it to write words that will indeed touch hearts.
Copyright 2003 Joan Neubauer
Joan Neubauer has written and published numerous books and along with her husband Steve, runs the publishing firm WordWright.biz., Inc. You can visit Joan's website at: http://www.wordwright.biz to learn more about Joan and her company.