Zombie Writing and How to Kill It
March 20, 2023 | Shannon Winton
Hello, my intrepid authors. Today, I’m going to talk to you about zombie writing. By that, I don’t mean writing books about zombies—those are great. We love those here at Tomeworks. We could chew on them all night and day.
I also don’t mean zombie writing rules, rules that were never real conventions or that were conventional but have generally died in current usage. These are like how you should never use a preposition to end a sentence or how you shouldn’t use “like” in place of “such as” since likeness indicates the thing is similar to and not an example of the thing you’re talking about. We’ll save that concept for a blog another day.
No, today we’re going to discuss something much more horrible, much more frightening, something that will rise up from a dirty plot in the ground, grab your pacing by the legs, and drag it down, down, down until it too is a shambling mess, ambling mindlessly from one concept in your story to the next.
Have you guessed what I’m talking about yet? The suspense can’t get dragged out for much longer.
It’s passive voice. So, let’s get down the grim business of fleshing out zombie writing.
What is passive voice?
Before we define passive voice, let’s define active voice.
The basic sentence structure in the English langue is [Subject] + [Verb] = Sentence. That’s pretty much just a noun doing a thing. We call the noun doing the action the agent.
For example:
[Subject] + [verb] sentences are the simplest active sentences you can make in English besides “yes” and “no” which are indeed full sentences in their own right. In these sentences, the subject and the agent, the noun performing the action, are one and the same.
Then you can pop in an object. That’s the item/person/concept being acted upon. We call this object the patient.
What was ridden? The train. Who got slapped? The werewolf conductor. Whatever is on the receiving end of the verb action, that’s your patient.
Zombie writing occurs when an author puts the patient in the subject’s position in the sentence and the agent at the end of the clause. Essentially, the thing being acted upon (the patient) is at the front of the sentence, and the thing doing the action (the agent) is at the end.
Did the monster train do anything in that first sentence? Not really. Lolis is the one riding it. Did the werewolf conductor do anything in the second sentence? Not really. Agar is the one who slapped him. In the third sentence, yes, the werewolf conductor ate Lolis, but she’s the one sitting at the beginning of the sentence, passively waiting for the reader to get to the end and realize she got guzzled up.
What you might notice is that if you read all of these sentences in sequence, they feel weird, almost like they’re twisted on themselves even though they’re all short. It’s because your brain is trying to recode the content to figure out who is doing what since the focal point is not on what we’re used to as readers.
Did you notice anything else about the sentences? In order to make them passive, I had to add the word “was” to each sentence. “Was” is a linking verb; it connects two concepts together but it doesn’t indicate an action itself. Other linking verbs include: am, are, is, and were. Here are some passive sentences with those as well:
I am being assaulted by an anthropomorphic couch cushion.
My parents are being backed against the wall by the drapery.
My brother is being repeatedly slapped in the face by the complimentary cinnamon-and-mint-orange soaps.
Our souls were all slowly consumed by El Dritch Hotel’s demonic travel guides, leaving us just as empty and thirsty for innocent blood as them.
Having linking verbs in a sentence doesn’t mean the sentence is in passive voice, but it’s a pretty good clue that it is.
Why is zombie writing such a big deal?
Much of the time, when a bookworm is reading through a scene with a lot of passive voice, their brain is using more resources to decode the content, and that makes the experience much less immersive. It creates a barrier to comprehension and to being able to create mental imagery for the scene. Because of this, the reader is more likely to find the book boring and dull even if the content is incredibly action-packed.
If the agent is in the sentence at all, passive voice draws attention to the actor and not the act. “I was spurted in the face by Ray’s blammoscope,” focuses on the blammoscope and not what happened to my face. If the actor is not in the sentence, the reader is often left hanging as to what the action means or how to interpret it. “I was spurted in the face,” can have a pretty big range of interpretations.
Passive voice often gives the impression of stillness, even when used in action scenes. Choreography becomes stilted instead of seamless, and characters come across as inactive. Generally when there’s a significant amount of passive voice in a scene, it’s because the author had a difficult time imagining the events or has not mastered their craft. Rarely does an author intentionally convey that nothing is happening.
Where do you see this most in books?
Many new authors have a difficult time writing action scenes without slipping into a “birds-eye” or “reporter” style of writing because they’re attempting to show the reader all of the action instead of what just one character experiences. That looks something like, “This was done by what’s-his-name, and then that was done by who’s-her-face.” Unfortunately, instead of giving the reader a more immersive experience because they can see everything, it divorces the reader from the characters. Essentially, it pulls them away from the action at the exact point the author is trying to draw them in.
Draculda was slapped down by the flat of Crugratht’s mighty ax. “You have no power over me any longer.” There was a pause, and then the ax was raised straight up in the air. From behind the slick black rocks of Volcansa, words were softly being formed into twisted arrows by Charmain. They were loosed by the witch with a flick of her wrist. Searing pain in his chest was all Crugratht felt. The ax was dropped, and the pain became a distant memory.
What you might notice is for the most part, the reader isn’t getting any sense of personal experience from any of these characters. Does Draculda feel fear, loathing, or relief at the idea of being chopped to death? Is Crugratht conflicted in any way? Does Charmain delight or agonize at her own actions? Can we even tell, as readers, who the focal character is? Probably not, because successive passive voice sentences divorce from the characters in order to show the fight, and it causes the writer to trade feelings, thoughts, and experiences for the mechanics of the action and the actor performing them.
You will also find large sections of passive voice in exposition and exposition disguised at dialogue.
Nonette ran a finger around the rim of her cappuccino and gazed out the window forlornly as she relayed her experience to her glowering mother. “We were taken to what we thought was an abandoned fairground. Then we were blindfolded and forced to sit through a Venusian timeshare seminar. When Malaki tried to get up, he was torn limb-from-limb by these tiny little robots. After they put him back together, he gave them the access codes to all of our bank accounts.”
Why is it called zombie writing?
I’m so glad you asked. One of the surefire ways to evaluate whether or not your sentences are passive is to do the zombie test. This test comes from way back in 2012 with this tweet.
Basically, if you can put “by zombies” at the end of your sentence or at the end of the action of your sentence, you’ve got yourself passive voice. You have found zombie writing in the wild, and you might need to chop off its head (as opposed to having its head chopped off).
Here are some examples:
My mother’s teeth were shot out of the cannon (by zombies).
Gallons and gallons of off-brand tangerine soda were flooded into the troll’s gaping maw (by zombies).
The precious biomatter had been contaminated (by zombies).
Flerogi’s third tentacle was lasered off (by zombies) before he could reach the self-destruct button.
I’m glad I was ready to break up with Deryl because last night at the drive-in movie theater, he was trying to get to third base, and all of sudden, these gross green hands broke through the driver’s side window and dragged him into the field where his head was broken open on some rocks and his brains were slurped up by zombies. (You don’t have to add by zombies if you already have by zombies in there.)
Using the zombies test is a great way to quickly identify your passive voice sentences and determine if a more active sentence with stronger verbs would be better in their places.
Do I need to remove all passive voice from my book?
Actually no. Like everything, there’s a time and place to use passive voice for precise effect.
For instance, passive voice often helps isolate exposition and worldbuilding if done properly and helps to highlight that the author wants the reader to remember names and places.
The city of Demonton was situated along Crimson Sea’s western bank. It was flanked to the north by Mt. Volcansa. Gray smoke wheezed from the mount nightly. By dawn, the city would be covered by a deep and choking fog that would roll away by midday, allowing the people who crept along the roadways to be burned and blistered by the unrelenting sun. To the south were the Wailing Fields, where a man could be taken from among the blue and black flowers from the unknown below. That the flowers grew so tall and magnificent was attributed to the blood and meat consumed by the hungry fields; it was believed that the earth itself was what hungered for the taste of human flesh and not some tunnel-dwelling monsters lying in wait.
In small doses, this draws the reader in. It shows the still life of this rather depressing and dangerous place in a way that encapsulates it from any rising action in the scene, and it sets tone. But it isn’t something that should go on for more than a paragraph because it will get old quickly.
It also can, in small doses, help to highlight a specific person.
Which one of these sentences has more emotional resonance?
The blood-thirsty crowd was egged on by Marissa, that grinning bitch who had bullied me all throughout high school.
Marissa, my high school bully, egged the blood-thirsty crowd on.
Presuming you weren’t one of Marissa’s other middle-school victims (cuz hey, that bitch had many), you probably aren’t going to get as much from the second sentence. However, the first sentence, which is passive, allows for visual symmetry and the flow of the current emotional stakes to mirror the historical ones, creating a cumulative effect. Marissa’s bullying and lasting impact on the narrative character is highlighted, and this new situation is the most recent in a long line of cruelties.
Passive voice also conveys powerlessness, and done judiciously, this can be effective without making it seem like your main character lacks agency.
Cragabeth was pinned down while the magma branding iron was pressed into the igneous rock of her backside.
It also can be used if the actor is unknown..
Bowie was pulled into the pit as he screamed and grabbed for purchase on the soft soil walls.
The reader doesn’t know who is pulling Bowie into the pit, but not having the information allows for them to create their own worst-case scenario in their head.
Let’s test it out!
Identify which of these sentences are passive voice and which are active voice using the zombie test.
Still confused or worried about passive voice killing your pacing and leaving your book in shambles? A skilled line editor can tighten your prose and cut the meandering passive sentences off at the head so that your great story can prevail. You can learn more about our Line Edit service here.
However, here are the answers. Pat yourself on the back if you got them all!
