What is passive voice? (A working definition, not a grammar lecture)
In an active sentence, the subject does the action: She locked the door. In a passive sentence, the subject receives the action — or the agent doing it is removed entirely: The door was locked.
The technical structure is simple: a form of "to be" combined with a past participle. That's the whole pattern. Once you see it, you'll start noticing it everywhere in your own drafts — usually in tense scenes, transitions, and exposition, where writers default to passive without realising it.
Why passive voice weakens fiction
The problems with passive voice in fiction aren't abstract — they're mechanical. Here are the three things it reliably does to a scene:
It removes the agent. "The window was smashed" tells us the window's state. "He smashed the window" tells us who did it and puts that person in the sentence where the reader expects to find them. Fiction runs on character agency. Passive constructions erode it by making things happen without anyone doing them.
It buries the subject. English readers expect the sentence to start with the actor. When the actor appears in a "by" phrase at the end — or not at all — the sentence has to be decoded rather than simply read. Over the length of a novel, that decoding cost adds up into a vague sense that the prose is effortful, even when readers can't say why.
It slows narrative pace. Action scenes, chase sequences, confrontations — anywhere pace matters — passive constructions drag. Active sentences have a forward momentum: someone does something. Passive sentences stall: something was done. The difference is subtle in a single sentence and significant across a chapter.
Rewrite 1 of 3 — Action scene
The door was kicked open and the room was flooded with officers. Her hands were grabbed and forced behind her back before she could react.
No agent for the kicking or flooding. The officers appear, then disappear into passive grammar.
Officers kicked the door open and flooded the room. Someone grabbed her hands and forced them behind her back before she could react.
The agents are present. The verbs drive forward. The sentence earns its pace.
Rewrite 2 of 3 — Emotional revelation
"The money was taken," he said. "All of it. Your name was found on the account."
She felt sick. Everything she'd built was gone.
The theft happens with no thief. "Was found" avoids naming who found it. The reader is held at arm's length.
"Someone took the money," he said. "All of it. The auditors found your name on the account."
She felt sick. She had built everything in that account.
The thief exists. The auditors have a role. Her ownership of what's lost is now explicit.
Rewrite 3 of 3 — Exposition
The town had been founded in 1887. A mill was built on the river, and for thirty years it was used to process the lumber that was taken from the surrounding hills.
Four passive constructions in two sentences. The history happens to no one. There's nothing to hold onto.
In 1887, settlers founded the town and built a mill on the river. For thirty years, they ran it on the lumber they stripped from the surrounding hills.
"Settlers" and "they" do the work. The town has a founding generation, not just a founding date.
"Passive voice doesn't just slow sentences — it removes the people from them. Fiction without agents is history without actors."
— On why passive voice matters more in narrative than in any other form
When passive voice is actually fine
The rule isn't "never use passive" — it's "use it only when the passive construction does something the active one can't." Here are the four cases where that's genuinely true.
When the actor is unknown
If your character doesn't know who did something — and the reader isn't supposed to know either — passive voice accurately reflects that ignorance. Forcing an active construction here would require inventing an agent who doesn't exist in the scene.
This is passive doing real work. Changing it to "Someone had broken the window" introduces a vague agent that weakens the mystery rather than holding it.
When the victim matters more than the actor
English sentences put emphasis at the end. If you want the reader to focus on what was done rather than who did it — if the victim or the result is the point — passive voice gives you that emphasis naturally.
Rewriting as "The war killed her brother" shifts focus onto the war. But the death is what matters here — her brother, his loss. Passive keeps the camera on him.
When the character genuinely doesn't know who did it
In mysteries and thrillers especially, there are moments when your POV character is in the dark. Passive voice can carry that uncertainty honestly — and switching to active can accidentally reveal information your character shouldn't have.
The second sentence ("someone had been in here") is the character's active deduction. The first is pure observation. The passive construction earns its place by keeping the scene in the character's actual knowledge.
Deliberate stylistic distance
Some characters — and some narrators — speak or think in formal registers that include passive voice. A bureaucrat, a scientist, a character in denial about their own agency: passive voice can characterise them without being a flaw in the prose.
In a character who habitually erases themselves from their own decisions, this is voice — not error. The passives show us something true about who this person is.
The 5 passive constructions that appear most in fiction manuscripts
Not all passive voice looks the same on the page. These five patterns cover the vast majority of what Inkcheck flags — and what editors circle in the margins.
Simple past passive
Past perfect passive
Modal passive
Present passive (in flashbacks and backstory)
Agentless passive (the most invisible kind)
How to find passive voice in your own manuscript
Passive voice is notoriously hard to catch in your own writing because your brain knows what you meant to say and reads past the construction. Here are four methods that actually work.
Search for "was" and "were"
Use your word processor's Find function (Ctrl+F / ⌘+F) to search for "was" and "were." Not every hit is passive — but working through them forces you to look at each construction individually rather than reading past it.
Search for "been"
The past perfect passive (had been taken, had been left) is the construction writers most often miss. Searching for "been" catches the whole family — had been, have been, would have been.
Read the scene aloud
Passive constructions introduce a subtle stutter in spoken rhythm. Reading aloud catches what the eye skips — you'll hear where the sentence loses momentum before you can explain why.
Use Inkcheck
Paste your manuscript into Inkcheck and every passive construction is highlighted inline — across your full manuscript, not just a sample. Free, no account, nothing sent to any server.
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