There are cases where eliminating passive voice can improve things. In a lot of the example cases I've seen in such guides, however, the examples are somewhat s

There are cases where eliminating passive voice can improve things. In a lot of the example cases I've seen in such guides, however, the examples are somewhat straw-man sentences that don't have so much to do with passive vs active. I also agree with the grand-parent that as writing advice for literature it's bad advice. I'd also like to state that passives are a tool, and like any tool they can be and are misused. I've read sentences in active voice that were clearly contortions around such advice and would have been much better as passive voice. They were usually, but by no means always, of the form without the by-clause. Also, in English, a lot of people have got the idea into their heads that this applies to the imperfect tense, often from the likes of grammar checkers that warn about eliminating passives and don't seem to understand imperfect past. Consider: "He was punched" vs "{subject} punched him" The two have quite different meanings, but a lot of grammar checkers warn about passive voice here. But even if we take the past continuous passive, "He was being punched" has a subtly different meaning to "{} was punching him." As an author of literature, who was doing the punching might be stylistically omitted. A good editor arguably should pick these contortions up, drastically improving writing; just as a good editor should pick up misused passive voice where active voice would be better. Sadly, editing time given to literature these days even by the better publishers is fairly cursory compared to some of the efforts of the past. The rise of easy-access self-publishing may have had an impact here, but the bar had already been significantly lowered by the pathological profit-obsession of big publishers.