Passive Voice in Fiction: When to Keep It, When to Cut

Passive voice in fiction is fine when the doer of an action is unknown, unimportant, or deliberately hidden, and when you want the reader's eye on the person or thing the action happens to. It weakens a scene when it hides a character who should be acting, or when it slows a moment that should move.

A sentence is passive when its subject receives the action: a form of "be" (or "get") plus a past participle, as in "The window was broken." Many sentences that look like that are not passive at all, and grammar checkers flag them anyway. Learn the difference first, then decide case by case.

StoryWith AI is our own product, so weigh what we say about it accordingly.

Key takeaways

• The test: add "by zombies" after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, it is probably passive.
• The form: be or get, plus a past participle ("was taken", "got fired"). "Was walking" is not passive. "Was tired" is usually an adjective, not a passive.
• Passive is a choice, not an error. Keep it when the actor is unknown or beside the point, when the victim is the focus, when a character is dodging blame, or when the rhythm needs it.
• Rewrite it when a named character is doing the thing and the sentence hides them, or when the action is the climax of a beat.
• Checkers over-flag and under-flag. Pattern-based tools, ours included, count adjectives as passives and miss passives built on verbs they do not know.

What is passive voice in fiction, exactly?

In an active sentence the subject does the action: "Mara broke the window." In a passive sentence the subject receives it: "The window was broken," or "The window was broken by Mara." The doer either moves into a "by" phrase or disappears.

The UNC Writing Center reduces it to a formula: "form of 'to be' + past participle = passive voice." It adds a warning worth taping above your desk: "Not every sentence that contains a form of 'have' or 'be' is passive!" (UNC Writing Center, "Passive Voice", no date shown; read on 2 November 2026).

The formula is a good start but not the whole story. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum points out that "passives do not always contain be and do not always contain a past participle," and that "get" has developed a grammatical use that marks a passive (Geoffrey K. Pullum, "Fear and Loathing of the English Passive", dated June 2010). "He got fired" is passive.

How do you spot passive voice in a manuscript?

Two quick checks catch most cases.

1. Look for be or get plus a past participle. Was taken, were sent, is known, had been told, got arrested. The participle often ends in "-ed", but plenty do not: written, hit, sent, told, shot.
2. Run the zombie test. Brett Reynolds, writing in Mental Floss, describes the trick popularized by Marine Corps University provost Rebecca Johnson: "Try adding by zombies after the verb in your sentence." "The body was dragged (by zombies) into the woods" works, so it is passive. He also says the test is "not foolproof" (Brett Reynolds, Mental Floss, dated 14 October 2024).

Which sentences look passive but are not?

This is where most confusion, and most bad checker advice, comes from. Pullum's paper sets out to "exhibit numerous published examples of incompetent criticism in which critics reveal that they cannot tell passives from actives." Here are the common lookalikes, set beside real passives.

Pullum explains the door case directly: as a passive, "The door was locked" says someone performed the locking at a particular time, and as an adjectival passive it says the door was in its locked state. In fiction the context nearly always tells you which one you mean.

Why do grammar checkers flag so much passive voice?

Most passive voice checkers do not parse grammar. They match a pattern: a be-verb followed by a word that looks like a past participle. That is fast and needs no understanding of the sentence, but it cannot tell an action from a state.

So "was tired", "was excited", "were married" and "was locked" all get flagged, because they have the right shape. Meanwhile some real passives slip through, either because the participle is irregular and not on the tool's list, or because the sentence uses "get" instead of "be".

Some craft advice makes the problem worse by treating every flag as a fault. Jerry Jenkins tells writers to "Scour your work-in-progress for passive voice, root it out, replace it with active" (Jerry B. Jenkins, "How to Fix Passive Voice", dated 8 December 2025). If you do that with a checker's list, you will "fix" adjectives that were never passive and leave some real passives untouched.

A more useful framing comes from Lisa Taylor at Fictionary: "Using passive voice in writing is a stylistic choice, not a grammatical error" (Lisa Taylor, Fictionary, dated 16 March 2023). Treat a flag as a question, not a verdict. The same applies to what Grammarly flags in a novel, where fiction's deliberate choices often read as errors to a general-purpose tool.

When should you keep the passive voice?

Pullum is blunt about short passives: "They are not the slightest bit sneaky or evasive when the identity of the agent is either thoroughly irrelevant or entirely unknowable." Fiction adds a few reasons of its own.

Taylor makes the focus argument too: "When you want to draw your reader's attention to the action or the recipient, passive voice gives you a tool."

How do you rewrite passive voice in fiction?

Find the actor, make them the subject, and choose a stronger verb while you are there.

• "The letter was opened by Clara." becomes "Clara tore the letter open."
• "A decision was made to leave at dawn." becomes "They decided to leave at dawn," or better, "They would leave at dawn."
• "He was told by his mother that he could not go." becomes "His mother told him he could not go."

If you cannot name the actor without inventing one ("someone", "somebody"), that is usually a sign the passive was the right choice.

Do not convert progressives and adjectives in a passive hunt. "She was standing in the rain" might become "She stood in the rain" for pace, but that is a choice about tense and rhythm, not about voice. The same goes for "was tired": cutting it may be a show-don't-tell question, which belongs with your self-editing checklist, not with passive voice.

What does a passive count look like in a real paragraph?

A hypothetical example, invented for this guide.

Before:

The letter was found on Tuesday morning. It had been slipped under the door in the night, and her name was written across the envelope in red ink. Nora was tired, too tired to think. She was standing in the hallway with it for a long time. The door was locked. She was sure of that. By noon the police were called, and she was told to stay home.

Real passives: 5. "Was found", "had been slipped", "was written", "were called", "was told".

Not passive, though they look it: "was tired" (adjective), "was standing" (progressive), "was locked" (here a state: she checked and it was locked), "was sure" (adjective).

What a pattern-based checker would likely count: 6. "Was found", "been slipped", "was written", "was tired", "was locked", "were called". It counts two adjectives as passives and misses "was told", because "told" is an irregular participle many pattern lists leave out.

Now the decisions:

• "was found": Nora found it, and she is the point of view. Rewrite.
• "had been slipped": the actor is unknown, and that is the threat. Keep.
• "was written": unknown actor, but a passive in every clause drags. Rewrite with a different subject.
• "was standing ... for a long time": not passive, but "stood" reads better with a duration. Rewrite for pace.
• "were called": Nora called them. Rewrite.
• "was told": a specific person told her. Rewrite and give that person a role.

After:

Nora found the letter on Tuesday morning. It had been slipped under the door in the night, and her name ran across the envelope in red ink. Nora was tired, too tired to think. She stood in the hallway with it for a long time. The door was locked. She was sure of that. By noon she had called the police, and a desk sergeant told her to stay home.

Real passives: 1. "Had been slipped", kept on purpose. The same checker would still show 3 ("been slipped", "was tired", "was locked"), and that is fine. Two of those are not passives, and the third is a choice you made.

The goal was never a number. Nora now acts in her own story, and the one passive left is deliberate.

Where StoryWith AI fits

On the Write page, StoryWith AI measures the open scene in your browser with no AI model, so these checks use no AI actions and are not limited to a paid plan. It lists flagged passages grouped by kind, and clicking one jumps to it in the text. One kind is "Possible passive voice", with a suggestion to consider an active rewrite, and the scene shows a count.

It is a pattern, not a grammar parser: a form of "be" (was, were, is, are, am, been, being, be), optionally followed by one "-ly" word, followed by a word ending in "-ed" or one of a short list of irregular participles such as written, seen, known, done, made, given, taken, found and spoken. That means:

• It flags "was tired" and "was excited", which are adjectives, as possible passive.
• It misses passives built on irregular participles outside its list, such as "was hit", "were sent" and "was told".
• It does not count get-passives like "got fired" as passive. "Got" or "get" plus a word is flagged separately, as a weak verb.
• "Was walking" is not counted as passive. Be-verb plus an "-ing" word is flagged as a weak verb instead, which is the right category.

The same panel flags hedges and weak verbs, adverb-heavy passages, sentences over 35 words, three sentences in a row starting with the same word, and monotonous sentence length. It also shows the scene's word and sentence counts, average and longest sentence, Flesch reading ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade, dialogue percentage and adverb percentage. The passive, weak-verb, adverb and repeated-opening checks run only for English text; for other languages they are switched off and say so.

When it is the wrong tool: if you need a grammatically exact passive count, for a style sheet or a teaching exercise, a pattern check will over-count and under-count as described above. Use the zombie test by hand, or a parser-based grammar tool. It is also the wrong tool if your book is not in English. Manuscripts are not used to train AI models, and StoryWith AI runs on the web and Android, not iOS. Plan details are on the pricing page.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is passive voice bad in fiction?

No. Passive voice is a grammatical construction, not an error. It is the right choice when the actor is unknown or unimportant, when you want the focus on the person acted on, or when a character is avoiding responsibility. It weakens prose when it hides a character who should be acting, especially in action scenes and close point of view.

What is the "by zombies" test for passive voice?

Add "by zombies" after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, it is probably passive: "The car was stolen (by zombies)" works. "She was walking (by zombies)" does not, so it is active. Mental Floss credits the test's popularity to Marine Corps University provost Rebecca Johnson and notes it is not foolproof.

Is "was walking" passive voice?

No. "Was walking" is the past progressive, a be-verb plus an "-ing" word, and the subject is doing the walking. Passive voice needs a past participle, such as "was taken" or "was seen". You may still want to change "was walking" to "walked" for pace, but that is a tense and rhythm choice, not a voice fix.

Is "she was tired" passive voice?

Usually not. In "she was tired", "tired" is an adjective describing her state, like "she was sleepy". You can say "very tired", which you cannot do with a true passive. Many grammar checkers flag it anyway because it has the be-plus-"-ed" shape.

How many passive sentences are too many in a novel?

There is no fixed number, and a checker's count includes adjectives and misses some real passives. Read any paragraph with three or more real passives and ask whether a character should be the subject of some of them. If the answer is yes, rewrite those and keep the ones that are deliberate.

Does "got fired" count as passive voice?

Yes. "Got fired" is a get-passive: someone fired him, and the zombie test works ("got fired by zombies"). Linguist Geoffrey Pullum describes "get" as having a grammaticized use that marks a type of passive. Some passive checkers do not count get-passives at all, so check them by hand.