I hear a lot from supposed experts that the passive voice is disfavored. Why? What’s wrong with it?
It’s easier to come up with a few ‘easy’ rules than to actually learn how to write effectively.
There’s nothing wrong with the passive voice and more often than not, the people railing against it do abysmally at identifying it.
That is my impression also. I was taught to write in the passive voice, at least for scientific purposes.
I think the criticism is aimed at the use of passive voice to obfuscate. “It was decided that…” makes it difficult to determine who made the decision, should the decision be a controversial or unpopular one.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King, speaking specifically of fiction, says that passive voice sounds weak and timid, is tortuous, and makes the object rather than the subject the focus of the sentence. As it happens, I agree with him. Passive voice in fiction is nails on a chalkboard to me.
Here we have it. Remember kids, the passive voice should not be used. Also, don’t use no double negatives. When dangling, watch your participles. If a mixed metaphor sprouts up, it should be derailed. Avoid cliches like the plague. No sentence fragments. One should never generalize. It is important to never split an infinitive. A preposition is not an appropriate thing to end a sentence with. Don’t write run on sentences they are hard to read. Who needs rhetorical questions?
It is an example of how scientific writing differs from fiction writing. In scientific writing you keep yourself out of it for the most part, and use “we” instead of “I” even for single author papers.
In fiction your character is more interesting if he acts instead of is acted upon. You can put the subject earlier in the sentence (I threw the ball versus The ball was thrown by me) and that makes the sentence flow better.
Passives sneak into my first draft due to my technical writing - it always sounds better when I expunge them.
Passive voice, especially in fiction, is harder to read and obfuscates meaning by shrouding the subject.
Either you’re meandering.
Or you’re trying to be clever.
Or you have a misguided perception that wordiness and long sentences mean you’re a better writer.
Whatever it is, stop it. Simplify, simplify, simplify. It’s very hard to write a short sentence in passive voice.
That sounds awful. I can’t imagine you read much fiction then. I mean, a person can’t even get past the first sentence of Left Hand of Darkness without tripping over a passive. LeGuin, such a hack.
I don’t mean in fiction. I haven’t taken a creative writing class since 1998 or so. I mean everywhere. My college professors docked me for using the passive form in term papers - and while I may not have sourced all my assertions I definitely didn’t make them up. 
He got shot.
This shirt needs tailoring.
He sat with his arms folded.
That’s the only passive voice example of yours, much better expressed as:
The bullet struck him.
I don’t think this is passive voice. ‘Sat’ may be a relatively passive voice, but still whoever’s doing the sitting is the subject of the sentence.
Re: LibrarySpy’s similar objection, I think the second can be passive voice. The active version is ‘I need to tailor my shirt’ 
The first is a get passive, the second is a concealed passive* which use gerund participles rather than past participles, and the last, arms folded, is a bare passive.
Like I said, the people who complain rarely know what they look like.
*If your dialect allows for past-participial bare passive complements, then you can say “This shirt needs tailored.”
My bad. Those weren’t covered in Really Not All That Bright’s link.
Regardless of whether Inner Stickler’s examples are “better” or “worse”, I’m not seeing anything that justifies the blanket rule writers are supposed to observe.
The passive voice has been discussed here many times before, most recently just last month.
Guess I should have searched first. Or perhaps, “a search should have been performed”. One of those threads has a nearly identical title, too.
I make no claims as to the subjective quality of my examples. They are merely a response to the idea that it is difficult to write a short passive clause. I leave it to the reader to judge their literary worth.
I’m not arguing that passive voice is better than active or that people are wrong to prefer or not prefer various constructions. I simply happen to think that people are unaware, for whatever reason, of just how expansive passive voice is and how useful it can be.
“You know what happened to the last guy who thought he could clean up this town? He got shot.”