You’ll likely catch some of your passive voice mistakes easily. Remove the words ‘was’ or ‘by’ and see the difference in the sentence. This simple distinction helps to shift a passive voice to active. ‘The fish was caught by the bear’ is passive. The easiest way to spot passive voice is to the words ‘by’ or ‘was.’ The fish has no action except being caught, so it is passive. If a bear catches a fish, the bear is performing the action. If you want to change a passive voice sentence to an active voice, ask yourself who or what is performing the action.