Voice….You Have One….Use it

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On a general note, the voice (the way that you write) can either be active or passive. Active voice is used when the person or the subject of the sentence is the doer of the action.


While the active and passive voices are just reformations of the sentence in different forms, the person who delivers the message or the person to whom the message is delivered play a huge role in how that sentence is formed. This is particularly true when one is writing a book or a short story.

A good rule of thumb for identifying a passive or an active voice, is to see if any of the following words have been used in describing the action taking place: is, an, are, was, were, has, had, have, be, been, being, looks, says, feels, seems. These are commonly referred to as ‘helping verbs’. You will find they weaken the sentence structure and tend to multiply in passively worded sentences.





If one is writing a book in which a narrator is presenting, then it should be written in the first person as he/she is describing what they see or saw. For example, if the writer witnessed a horrible train accident, the sentence formation would be something like: “I saw people who were injured and dead”. If the writer is directly communicating with the reader, taking for example in a self-help book, the reader must believe what the writer is conveying. The writer should thus make use of the sentence in the second person and write: “If you ever witness an accident, this is what you should do…” This helps in having a clear focus on the reader as the reader understands that he too is an active part of what he/she is reading.