You’re not a Jedi. Don’t back into a sentence. Write it clearly and correctly, and viewers will respond positively. I’m sure this has been hammered into you during school or your career, but it can’t be said enough. Be active, not passive. There are a few caveats to this mantra you should learn first.
1) Understand the difference between active and passive voice. The subject is doing something in an active sentence. A passive sentence has something being done to the subject.
Active: The boy grabbed a turtle.
Passive: The turtle was grabbed by the boy.
2) Understand the difference between dynamic and static verbs. Dynamic verbs demonstrate a subject doing something. Static verbs refer to a subject’s state of being.
Dynamic: I hug turtles.
Static: I love turtles.
It boils down to this: Active sentences are those that have the subject doing the action — and they should be as dramatic as possible. Active sentences are powerful. Active sentences are easy to follow.
Passive sentences can be so indirect they’re hard to follow. Here’s a passive sentence you don’t want to use in television news:
“John Doe was arrested at his home by Portland Police Tuesday.”
Here’s an active sentence you want to use:
“Portland Police arrested John Doe at his home Tuesday.”
Go back and reread those sentences. I’ll wait.
Do you hear the difference? The second sentence has a punch to it. There’s a verbal whip-snap that’s missing in the passive sentence. Active writing can boost the urgency of the sentence and is clearer to the viewers’ ears.
Of course, there are always exceptions. In her book Sin & Syntax, writing expert Constance Hale says passive writing “gets a bad rap.” She says, “The passive voice makes sense when you want to emphasize that a subject is not a ‘doer’ but a ‘done-to.'”
Hale is speaking about words written on the page, but it also applies to television news.
Sometimes, you want to be passive to emphasize a secondary subject or verb. For example, pretend Steph Curry is the one who was shot in the examples above. You would write an entirely different lead sentence:
“Basketball icon Steph Curry… **shot** by a man armed with an assault rifle tonight.”
Curry’s star power now trumps the suspect. I replaced the word “was” with an ellipsis because I want my anchor to make a dramatic, if brief, pause. It’s critically important for you to grab and hold your viewers, as they can be easily distracted. Active sentences do that better almost every time. In this case, a passive sentence structure gives you that punch that will make your viewers lift their eyes and drop their phones.
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