Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Oh passive voice, what a trifling vagary at times...

I'd be keen to see analysis of a sentence like:

We wandered the neighborhood looking for a streetlight that wasn't surrounded by houses.

I rescind my appropriation of passive voice, because it was, as pointed out, mis appropriated. I've always included telling (rather than showing) as a mode of passivity in self-evaluation and I'm so far removed from the lit courses that taught the strict definition that I posted the way I would asse...

Passive voice is an issue here (particularly with the first line). Reena mentioned the first line being reminiscent of a 'Three men walked into a bar...' joke, and that provides an excellent means to demonstrate passive voice vs. active voice: Which sounds better? Three men were walking into a bar.....

"You can't get there from here." Punchline of a traditional Mike and Pat joke Grandpa told when I was a toddler that carries on in family traditions. The joke pops into my head whenever I think about the complicated journeys writers go through, from inciting creative inspirations to publi...

Polymath , If you're basically saying Frodo's development was static in that it was not the driving force, but rather being driven by the story, then I suppose that makes sense. I've always found it most profound that that which drove all of Frodo's actions throughout the story was the hope of retu...

... Lord of the Rings too. Is Frodo appreciably changed, or is Middle Earth what's really changed?... Polymath, While your post was meticulously detailed as usual, I have to differ on LotR being an example of a static character changing the setting. Yes, Frodo certainly changed the setting, but he ...

You asked for it... Random facts about me: I am currently making my 35th trip around the sun. Although I don't watch much television, my favorite show is iCarly (Squidbillies is a close second though). My cats are canaries in the coalmine of my imagination: As a child, any fear that followed waking...

Keep an eye on the tense of the narration - it was definitely the hardest aspect of first person storytelling for me to pin down. Beyond that, the opening passage is really solid. The exception: ' this private party ' might work better as ' the private party ',especially with ' this particular job '...

Title: Cole Barrow's Driver on the Green Genre: Literary Non-fiction(?) (creative non-fiction? literary fiction? YA? memoirs? Who knows?...not me.) Word Count: ~240 of ~78,000 (* Note: Technically, this is the third page of the manuscript, but it's the first page of actual 'story' told in it. ) The...

I'm astonished so many people are under the impression that 'thing' is correct. Is it just a situation where they've gone their entire lives without hearing the whole phrase ( 'If you think that, you got another think comin' )? I hope that's the case, cuz if you plug 'thing' in there, it makes very ...