That Pernicious Passive

In Dappled Things, Fr. Jim Tucker, a Catholic priest, has an interesting article on the use of targetted assassination as a tool of foreign policy (scroll down to "Secret Assassination Missions" to find the article). In particular, he focuses on a quotation dealing with "when lies must be told."

He focuses primarily on the moral and ethical aspects of such lies. However, he tangentally touches on a matter that is of importance to writers as well.

Note the construction. Who is telling these lies? It's almost as if the telling just sort of happens. Are the lies telling themselves? Do they just sort of pop out of people's mouths of their own volition?

This is why the passive voice is so beloved of bureaucrats and others who would like to avoid
responsibility. By shifting the sentence to the passive, you move the emphasis away from the actor, and onto the action or the result. Done with skill, it can make the actor vanish altogether.

Now imagine what happens when one brings that mentality to a work of fiction. Do you really want your characters to effectively vanish from the scene, to be upstaged by their disembodied actions?