Prose checks › Passive voice Free
Prose check: passive voicePassive voice: who did it?
“The door was opened.” By whom? Sometimes that’s exactly the question you want your reader asking. Most of the time it isn’t. Falcontext finds passive voice in the narration of your fiction, so you can decide.
What is passive voice?
The thing being acted on comes first. The one doing it comes later, or never shows up at all.
A form of “to be”, plus a past participle: was opened, had been taken.
When it’s right
- The doer is unknown, or the whole point: “The body was found at dawn.”
- The one acted on matters more: “She was chosen.”
- A character dodging blame: “Mistakes were made.” (A classic.)
How much do novels use?
Not much. Across the 38 published books I measured, the middle one had 5.5 per 1,000 words. Three in four had 6.6 or fewer. The most had 8.4.
That’s why a cluster of them stands out.
Where these numbers come from.
How Falcontext checks passive voice
Guidelines, not rules. It shows you where the passives are. Whether they stay is your call.
- Finds
- Passive constructions in the narration (“was opened”, “had been taken”). How someone is (“she was tired”) isn’t counted, nor is dialogue.
- Traffic light
- Up to 7 per 1,000 words
- Up to 10
- More than 10
Passive voice is about who does the action. Sentences that pad or delay it (“there was a knock”, “began to run”) are a different check, in Pro: weak constructions.
Passive voice is a line-edit job: it’s in the sentences pass, the third of five, where reading each flagged stretch aloud helps you decide.
Do you hunt passives down, or leave them be?
Questions about passive voice.
Is passive voice wrong in fiction?
No, but it’s rare in published novels: the middle book Falcontext measured had about 5.5 per 1,000 words. Use it when the doer is unknown or beside the point; elsewhere the active voice usually reads better.
Does “she was tired” count as passive voice?
No. That describes how someone is, not an action done to them, and Falcontext doesn’t count it.
Is the passive voice checker free?
Yes. Passive voice is in the free plan, with its traffic light and every finding marked in your text.
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