Day 284: Invent actors as needed to make active sentences.

We often have to ask ourselves who is performing the action described by the sentence. In many cases, the answer is not found in the sentence. The writer hasn’t told us. We want to name the actors of the main action and make them the subject of the sentence, so we need to invent. Consider this sentence.

“The committee session was frequently interrupted by ‘boos’ until the chairman cleared the room.”

In this sentence, we could make the chairman the subject, which would focus the sentence on the action of clearing the room. This would give us the following revision.

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“The chairman cleared the room because booing frequently interrupted the committee session.”

The sentence is now clearer and more direct than the original. However, we think the sentence is not about clearing the room but about the frequent booing. Who is the actor of that action? The sentence doesn’t tell us. We need to invent.

We think carefully about the situation described and decide that booing must come from audience members. Audience members, therefore, are our actors performing the main action of booing. Now we have the following clear, active sentence.

“Audience members frequently interrupted the committee session by booing until the chairman finally cleared the room.”