Local Revision: Passive and Active Voice

While writing anything, it is important to use verbs that help to describe the situation or the characters doing the verb. For example, you would want to use the word raced instead of ran if you were talking about a character who was pressed for time or in a hurry. This word gives a better picture of how the character acts. 

Here, I will analyze all the verbs used in my project 1 rough draft. I will decide whether they are specific active verbs, general active verbs, or passive verbs and they will be split into their respective columns in order to further analyze my writing.

Active (Specific)

• pondered
• dictated
• decided
• ensure
• relocate
• sparked
• partake
• withholding
• withdrawing
• hasten
• preach
• consider
• oppose
• expand
• released
• disagrees
• appeal

Active (General)

• sits
• being
• has
• will
• be
• wanted
• will die
• drop
• went
• became
• has
• making
• choose
• seem
• understand
• hear
• think
• means
• gives
• end
• working
• improve
• spoke
• wrote
• got
• takes
• believe
• continues
• found
• bring
• chose
• allow
• agree
• formed
• watch
• wanted
• have
• die
• was

Mattbr. "Clackerboard" 09/28/2008 via flickr. Attribution license.

Passive

• None :)

Conclusion

1. I would say that in its current state, my draft does have a lot of non-specific verbs. It doesn't have quite enough specific verbs, however the difference between the amount of the two is not abysmal. Some of the verbs cannot be made more specific, but some of them can, and that is definitely something I'm going to work on. There are, however, several instances where I feel like I chose a verb that was vivid and gave good imagery to the story.
2. I'm definitely going to go through my draft and try to add more specific verbs, especially while talking about the characters and stakeholders in my QRG. I feel like this would allow me to describe my characters in fewer words, as well as to make my QRG much more vivid for the reader.