Verbs give sentences and books vibrancy. When too many of them in a story are passive or weak, the writing sounds drab. For example, consider this paragraph:
I dreamed that my children would all get superb grades (because I did), be good little athletes (because my husband was), sing in choir, love going to church, graduate with honors, go on missions, get married, and have beautiful families of their own.
Now compare that to a revised version of the paragraph:
I dreamed that my children earned superb grades (because I did), excelled as athletes (because my husband was), sang choir, loved going to church, graduated with honors, volunteered for missions, married, and founded beautiful families of their own.
Notice how the second one pops with more energy, if only because it uses a couple of more active voice verbs. Those new verbs carry connotations and create images in readers’ minds, engaging them far more than passive voice verbs that simply say that something exists (“I am a carpenter” is the same as saying “I exist as a carpenter”).
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.