Ah verbs, and actions. Don't their rules just seem fun? No..ok well anyway, here we're just gonna go straight into verb use.

I think we all know the subject verb rule, you place the subject and the action together to form a sentence.

"He threw"
"She sings"

You get the gist, but for writing is how you use those verbs is what matters. Verbs are there to show action and that's what they should be used for action. Hence the active verbs. This does not by any means define the verb tense, verb tense is related to the time of the verb (past, present, etc) Active and passive relates to the voice of the verb, how the subject perceives the verb in relation to the sentence.

Active: Subject performs the action of the verb

Passive: Subject receives the action

Let me give a little explanation on passive verbs, they don't give a sentence a big voice.

Read the difference between these two:

"She ran into her room as her anger reached its peak."

"She was running to her room as her anger reached her peak."

Probably a bad example but you see the difference right? The first one which is the active verb is a lot more straightforward and literally tells you what is happening. It's best to avoid using too many linking verbs (form of the word to be) as well because then that would lead you into a passive voice. I'll have another chapter about linking verbs if people really need it.

Using active voice would make your writing a lot more crisp and the actions your characters are doing a lot more clear.

Now does that mean you need to eliminate the passive voice completely? No. You just need to balance between the voices and use it when appropriate like here I'll highlight the verbs:

"The girl stepped into the crisp air of the first day of winter. There wasn't any snow but she felt the air get colder. The grass was frosted with snow to a point where it looked like powered sugar. Her boots stomped down on the dry leaves and they were crushed under her weight.

"Was frosted" Is a use of the passive voice. In his case it's ok because the grass is taking the action if the air/snow. In this case it's used as an adjective.

Usually descriptive writing takes the passive voice for many of their subjects like I just did. And that's alright, usually you have to experiment with the voices to see what makes sense and ask yourself "Can I make this active?"

It's hard to get a first, but writing takes practice. Practice with the active and passive verbs and see if it improves your writing.

That's it for this chapter. Comment any tips you want me to mention in this book, and I'll get to it when I have time.