Long ago, when I first attended writing workshops across the U.S., I found them hostile to any variant of the verb was. I almost destroyed myself trying to eliminate passive verbs as a new writer, because I heard the advice “use active verbs” so much.
But who the heck decided to call the passive voice “bad,” and why do so many writing workshops across America work so hard to eliminate it? In science papers and business reports, writers almost go out of their way to increase the passive. Why do we, as a writing community, come down so hard on the passive verb?
Did passive voice push some author’s grandmother into traffic?
I suspect one clue can be found in the fact that The Little, Brown Handbook and Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style influenced a lot of writing in the United States. Both writing guides prefer active verbs and put down the passive. Both books are used as writing bibles by many teachers, and both books influenced many other writing books.
Another clue to our possible groupthink views on the passive voice might come from a New York Times 2015 review of a book called Workshops of Empire that went viral online among writers. This book researched the many ways the CIA heavily influenced U.S. writing workshop culture during the Cold War. They helped set up graduate workshops all around the world, but as a price to pay for the sweet funding, they pushed the technique of dramatizing (showing) over exposition (telling) as a part of the agency’s anti-Soviet propaganda.
Understanding that a militant preference for showing us stories.
