how often does stephen king use the passive tense in his writing?

Question

i was reading stephen king's On Writing and noticed that he said to avoid the passive tense. he says that he's been good at avoiding the passive tense. in his novels how often does he use the active voice(percent)? and how much of the passive tense is acceptable ?

Answer 1

You gotta love a guy who tells you not to write in the passive tense.

There are times when it is unavoidable. But if you adjust the advanced settings on Word, you can set it up so that when it finishes doing the spell and grammar checks, it gives you a report - including the percentage of passive sentences used. I always aim to get under 4% - usually around 2%. That is pretty good. Generally when I spell/grammar check, I look at each one as it comes up and see if I can't rewrite the sentence to remove it. And 96 - 98% of the time, I can and do.

It isn't a matter of being acceptable or not. If it was, JK Rowling would be chastised roundly. She uses it sometimes 2 or 3 times in a single sentence. And her use of the word "that" is deplorable. I want to strangle her when she uses passive tense. And because she does it, thousands of young writers have bad cases of JKRowlingitis and they do it, too.

The point is trying to strengthen what you write. Why say "I had eaten dinner" when you can say "I ate dinner"??

Ask the kids here who I mentor how much I emphasize not using passives. It is almost as bad as using vague terms like "kind of" and "rather". They are also passive writing.

On Writing is a great tool. I often tell kids I work with to make themselves a sign and hang it on their monitors that says ...

"The road to Hell is paved with adverbs" ...

Nothing makes me cringe like someone using adverbs badly. I read one earlier today that made my hair stand on end.

" ... staring unseeingly out the window ... "

Woah. Can you actually stare unseeingly? I can't. When I stare, I have to see. Is unseeing even a word? Not one this redheaded word jockey would use.

Pax -C

Answer 2

I don't recall a single Stephen King book I've read that was in a passive tense at all. I certainly can't give you any percentages on active voice in a book of his as compared to passive... that would take a lot of research, or a computer program I can insert a King novel into to get a percentage, and I'm unable to do the research and have never heard of such a computer program. Sorry!

Answer 3

King isn't the first to push this concept; all books on writing condemn the passive voice. All writers attempt to avoid using the passive voice whenever possible, but I don't think you can put a number on it without doing an absurd study.

Answer 4

I read The Stand after reading his book on writing and I found it to be littered with adverbs and the passive voice was used constantly.

But I haven't read any of his other books and I know The Stand was published in '78, so maybe his other works adhere to his rules more so than The Stand.

Answer 5

every writer has a different style. Stephen King has condemned the passive voice, but he's a pop literature writer. That's why he's a bestseller - because anyone can read his work. If you want to be a deeply respected, meaningful writer, you have to be willing to vary your style.

Answer 6

the place the hell you heard that?? Stephen King may well be between the final authors of horror novels obtainable yet, he did no longer write the bible, it rather is for specific. The Bible is an extremely historic e book, written and rewritten over thousands of years.