When Writing in Passive Voice Is Ill-Advised

The Now Novel blog reports:

"Few tips for writers cause as much confusion as the admonishment to avoid passive voice. Understanding what passive voice is and why it should be avoided can clear up this confusion.
One of the biggest problems with this tip is that so few people understand what passive voice is. For example, some people think that passive voice means using forms of the verb 'be' too often. While this is a writer’s tic that should be avoided, it is not the same thing as passive voice. Passive voice is not that complicated. It is simply a sentence in which the thing or person that is acted upon becomes the subject of the sentence rather than taking its usual position as the object...The pace of a narrative can seem to[o] slow for a series of passive voice sentences. In some cases...passive voice also does not provide enough information...[I]n some cases, the passive voice might be desirable or even necessary. The writer may wish to withhold information from the reader. Other times, it is not clear who or what has done an action...These are exceptions to the rule however. The majority of the time, you should avoid the passive voice because it tends to be a clumsy grammatical construction that slows down the pace of a sentence."