Orwell’s Writing Tips 4: Active over Passive The active voice and passive voice are sometimes tricky to identify and understand in writing. Active is the voice where the doer of the action is stated as the doer, where the passive is when the actions are stated from the point of the object being acted on. It’s a bit difficult to understand without examples but there are some in the video. The active voice is the most common and subconsciously shows your reader that the character has control over