Julie Broad explains why passive voice weakens nonfiction writing and shows how to switch to active voice for more engaging prose. She walks through specific examples of how rewriting sentences makes them punch harder and keeps readers hooked.
Want to lose your reader? Bore them to tears, or make them question everything you write? Of course not. That's why you need to stop using passive voice in your writing today if you want to make your nonfiction book the best it can be. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team, helping you write, publish, and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will also help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part? You keep all rights and royalties. Say it with me. Passive voice is the enemy of good writing. Passive voice is the enemy of good writing. You want your book to have an impact on your reader, right? That's why you have to stop using passive voice. The reason passive voice is so deadly is that it's grammatically correct. Even if you hire an editor, you may still find your book riddled with it. That's why it's up to you to eradicate it from your writing. Passive voice is general, and in many ways it feels safer to write in passive voice because it leaves out information that could get you in trouble. But this is why it matters so much. It leaves out the information that people care about and that makes your writing interesting. Because passive voice is grammatically correct, you may still think it's okay to use sometimes. But let me tell you, even if it's right, it's boring. I find many authors use it when they're afraid afraid to name names, or they're worried about taking a stance. For example, they were cutting back for unknown reasons. That is grammatically correct. And maybe you're thinking you need to say that because you don't know the reasons or exactly who they are, but let's try and rewrite it in a more active way. The decision to cut staff, remove benefits, and stop all travel came from the top management of the company. Or you could say someone at the top decided 20% of expenses had to get cut starting immediately. Or someone with power in the company made the decision that each example explains who who did it, even if you don't know who specifically. And really, it just gives more details. And that's my secret for fixing passive voice. I add details now before we hit on how to fix it in other ways, let's quickly cover how you can spot it in your writing. Basically, you have to look at what happened and look at who was responsible for doing it. If there isn't a person identified or they are mentioned after the thing that happened, you likely are looking at a passive voice sentence. For example, the door was slammed versus saying the angry teenager slammed the door. Side note, when I was an angry teenager and I slammed my door a few too many times, my mom actually came into my room and took my door off. You can also try and read the sentence out loud to see if it's passive voice. We rarely speak in passive voice, so if it doesn't sound like something you would ever say, reword it because it could be passive voice. The simplest advice I can give you is to just look for places where you've been general and then to fix passive voice, change it to be specific and speak directly to your reader, taking ownership of your opinions, your experiences, and your advice. When you do that, you'll find you naturally get rid of most of your passive voice and as a result your readers will be so much more engaged. So let's go through just a couple of examples so we can be sure that you've got the hang of this. Here's one I see all the time, and if you're writing a book with research in it, you might be guilty of this one. So just pay attention to this. You've done research and let's say you've discovered that sugar Something about sugar. Sugar was discovered to speed up the tumor growth in 40% of the patients. The sentence seems harmless, but again, harmless is not interesting or engaging. And in fact, you may be writing that to avoid actually taking a stand. We don't want to be harmless, we want to be impactful. That's a made up sentence, by the way. But now let's make up some alternatives. Stop. What are you eating or drinking while you read this? Does it have sugar in it? If you have a tumor, that very thing you're about to consume could make that tumor grow faster. Maybe you should put that pub pumpkin spice latte down and rethink your sugar intake. Because 40% of tumors were found in a study by Harvard researchers to grow faster when fed sugar. Or you could say that sugar in your coffee every day may seem harmless, but if you have a tumor, you could be causing it to grow faster. That's what researchers at Harvard University discovered to be true in 40% of their cases. Just speak directly to the reader. Tell them what you know they need to hear. And if you're talking about yourself and the disaster your life became or some mistake you made, for goodness sakes, take responsibility. Here's a real estate example. Tenants started to complain. Rent was paid late, property managers were not filing the paperwork, right? Let's be real. It's not the tenant's fault or the property manager's fault. It's your real estate business. It's your responsibility. So you need to own what you did and share it so people can learn from it. Remember, when you're writing a book that you want to sell, you have one goal, and that is to impact the reader and deliver on that hook of your book. When you're doing that now, when you're writing your book in your first draft, if you catch yourself using passive voice, great. You know it's a good idea to quickly try and add a few details to fix it. But please don't try to endlessly edit yourself as you go. Passive voice can be hard to spot sometimes, and my mission here is not for you to struggle to write your book. It's to help you know the difference between passive and active voice. So when you're editing your draft, you can turn it into active voice to make it more interesting for your readers. Do you have passive voice tips? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And on your way to comment, smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. It feels so good. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooksssswag. Like this noboringbooks mug. And this. Oh, upside down. Oh, so soft journal for writing down all your fabulous book ideas. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch every one by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. You know what? You're really fun. Do you wanna keep hanging out? 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