Hello everyone. Welcome back to #theorythursday. I feel recharged after my break and I am so excited to keep moving onwards and upwards. I hope you all have a great month.
Today I am talking about the active voice in a text so let’s dive right in.
What is an active voice? What does this mean?
I have spoken before about verbs, nouns, adjectives, and how in a sentence there is usually a subject. When a sentence is written in the active voice, this means that the subject of that sentence will be performing an action.
I will now create an example.
“The dog chased the ball.”
“The waiter brought the drinks.”
Why is this important?
When an author chooses to use the active voice, it is usually so that it is clear to the reader who is taking action in the piece. Using active voice when writing is also a helpful tool because sentences tend to become shorter which makes them easier to follow.
I personally think that using active voice can give a character more agency. For example, if I were to write something like this – “The girl ran from her assailant as fast as she could, determined to escape unharmed.” – In this very short sentence, I have given a female character a lot of agency, she is running from someone, she is determined to get away, this demonstrates that she is very brave and if I were a reader, reading something like this in a text, I would hope that she does in fact get away.
This has been Theory Thursday. If anyone ever has any questions, please do let me know.
Happy Friday Eve.
Kate xo.
Katelovesliterature.com 