Need editing tips on how to avoid repetitive pronouns

I find it very wordy and over-explanatory.

For instance where else do you get water but from a tap?

If I already know she has a migraine don't tell me she's going to pass out.

Is she examining the labels? I don't think so.

She grabbed a plastic cup -who cares where from? Why not cup her hands under the tap?

Taking a swig of water to swallow the pills -oh, come on, you don't need to explain every single detail.

Etc.,

Do I need to have it explained she was unable to find 'what she was looking for in the cabinet'?

Do I need to know her hand shook?

Nothing wrong with pronouns per se.

To cut down on what you consider to be excessive use of pronouns restructure sentences so excessive use of pronouns is avoided.

Get to the point and simply say what happens.

One way is cut the unnecessary details, especially the stage directions (she did this, then she went there and did that...) Also, you can combine the pronouns by using conjunctions, or by changing the sentence structures. If you have a lot of action, there's no getting around it. However, you can alter the writing by focusing on the external events instead of "who is doing what." For example, if she dropped a glass, you could just write "the glass fell and shattered on the ground." We can infer that she dropped it.


For example, I've done a bit of rewrite... see if it's any better?


Sara staggered into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. The door flew open and banged into the wall. Looking through the array of little bottles, she squinted at the labels, her sensitive eyes blurry with pain, the nausea already setting in. It was now between quick relief or passing out on the floor from the migraine.

She knocked several bottles into the sink, examined the labels, then rummaged through the drawers: there, finally! A bottle of ibuprofen. She popped the lid off the bottle, dumped four tablets into her mouth, and took a swig of water. Then sank to the floor, head in her hands. Waiting for the medicine to kick in.

Hopeful. It'd better work, dammit!


-- One proper name, and three pronouns.

(p.s. your last sentence didn't work because the participial clause -- "taking a swig of water" -- is not a simultaneous action with the rest)

Sara, frantic with pain from a migraine, rushed into the bathroom for a bottle of ibuprofen, found it in a bottom shelf, gulped four tablets with a glass of water.

Alijo said:

>>Restructured sentences so that the pronouns were not the first words in the sentences. (Purple) *I’ve noticed that when two or three sentences in a row start with the same pronoun it sounds very repetitive.

Click to expand...

Yes, but it's not the pronoun, it's the repetition of the same sentence structure over and over again. You'd have the same problem if you wrote:

Jane grabbed the ice chest. Sarah took a Coke out of it. Mark brought the bologna sandwiches. Andy opened the door and looked outside. Julia said, "We couldn't have a better day for our picnic." Melrose started the car. Everyone got in.

Also, by restructuring the sentences too often it would read awkward, like every three sentences is a participial clause? Which led you to the last sentence where the participial clause was used incorrectly.

The "subject+verb+object" structure isn't bad. The idea, however, is to change things up, and listen to the rhythm, and focus less on the mechanics: "He opened the door. He bent down. He tied his shoelaces. He stood.... "

That's when sentence fragments can be really useful, too.

I'm not a migraine person, but my understanding from friends that do get the severe ones, the ones where you are nauseous and blinded, ibuprofen won't touch the pain at all. I realize this isn't a grammar thing, but you might want to make a post over in the Story Research: Experts and Interviewees Wanted section.

Hallen said:

I'm not a migraine person, but my understanding from friends that do get the severe ones, the ones where you are nauseous and blinded, ibuprofen won't touch the pain at all. I realize this isn't a grammar thing, but you might want to make a post over in the Story Research: Experts and Interviewees Wanted section.

Click to expand...

This. Plus, if it's a true migraine, she ain't gulping or swigging anything. Once a migraine gets this bad, the nausea can be incapacitating.

Sara, vision blurry and sensitive, staggered to the bathroom’s medicine cabinet, grabbed it, swung the door with one shaking hand to search and squint through an array of little bottles. Nausea set in, soon the migraine would win, and she’d pass out. Pill bottles bounced off the sink, faucet, wrist, and got jammed back after a brief examination until the Ibuprofen rolled forward in a drawer under the sinktop. She popped a lid, four tablets, and a swig of water before slumping to carpet.

*may need an edit*

Bufty said:

I find it very wordy and over-explanatory.

(redacted for brevity)

To cut down on what you consider to be excessive use of pronouns restructure sentences so excessive use of pronouns is avoided.

Get to the point and simply say what happens.

Click to expand...

Yes! Anything wordy is going to add a lot of pronouns. It's also going to add a lot of other words that you don't need. Cut, cut, cut and cut again and you'll find out that fixing one problem tends to fix others.

Alijo said:

.. . So, in that case, does anyone have suggestions on books or articles I might read to learn more about sentence structures? . . ..

Click to expand...

Read well and widely in classics and in contemporary fiction (and nonfiction, for that matter). IMHO, you will absorb more by reading IN good books than in reading ABOUT sentence structures.

Just a thought, FWIW.

--Ken

As was said above, altering sentence structure and length helps make it sound less awkward. If you are concerned with starting sentences the same way over and over, try using actions words rather than she did this or she did that.

For example: Hands trembling, Sara struggled to open the bottle.

As for taking less time editing, I suggest not worrying about editing so often. You'll have a hard time getting into a rhythm if you are constantly going back to check your work. I have two potential solutions for this. Before you start working on a manuscript, sit down and just write everything that comes to you mind for 15-30 minutes. That should get your mind into the flow of writing and remove extranious thoughts that might slow you down.

The other suggestion would be to just write, knowing your going to make mistakes, and ignore it until you get a significant portion done (say a couple chapters or even the entire manuscript). Editing takes a lot of time no matter how experienced you are, but having a large amount to edit does the same as my examples -- it puts your mind into a state of editing whcih makes easier to spot your mistakes and correct them. Constantly shifting between editing and writing is going to drastically slow your progress.

As for suggestions of how to learn about sentence structure, I suggest reading printed literature. That is the best tool a writer can use to improve their writing because you can see and hear what works. In terms of specific books, I have nothing.

I hope this was helpful and apologize if you find it long-winded.

Thanks for bringing this up, Alijo. No wonder it takes me nine months to complete a first draft.

absitinvidia said:

This. Plus, if it's a true migraine, she ain't gulping or swigging anything. Once a migraine gets this bad, the nausea can be incapacitating.

Click to expand...

I can garondamtee the correctness of this statement. You ain't about to imbibe anything, even water, in the midst of a real industrial-strength migraine. You want to be in the dark, and not move, except that being in the dark and not moving doesn't do any good, either.

Severe chronic migraine sufferers (mine were only occasional, and seem to have passed into history some years ago, thank you, Jesus) have been known to commit suicide as relief.

For those blessed with not having migraines, you should know that migraines are not "headaches". They are a completely different, and complex, syndrome, hard to describe for anyone who hasn't had one. In my case, they always started with painless visual symptoms of flashing zones of blindness radiating outward from the focus of vision. Those warned me that in an hour or so I would be incapacitated by nausea and vertigo and any form of light would be horridly painful to endure. The full run of the episode would last from 12 to 24 hours, and for a day or two thereafter I would be beset with fatigue. You can't sleep when you have a real migraine, either. And over-the-counter meds are of no use. I had my run of migraines in my early twenties, and seem to have outgrown them, largely. Every few months I now have an episode of the visual symptoms, but they pass in an hour or so, without the follow-up horrors. I understand there are better prescription meds for them now, but those weren't in existence when I had to deal with the syndrome.

Bad migraines truly are a horror.

Alijo said:

. . . I too easily get wrapped up in the story and forget that I'm trying to educate myself rather than enjoy a recreational read.. . . And thank you also, ResearchGuy. I'll keep reading the classics.

Click to expand...

By all means, get wrapped up. Enjoy. You'll absorb notwithstanding. Learning by osmosis. I'm not suggesting that you dissect the books as you read them. (You can go back later and do that if you wish.)

Not just classics, BTW, but also a variety of current books -- what is selling well and what is reviewed well, especially in the genre you are writing.

All that reading time takes away from time available for writing, so there is a balancing act . . .

--Ken

This is the most helpful thread I've read so far! Thanks everyone for your useful insights. I'm such a sucker for "she did this," sentences, but this is usually because I just like to sit down and write. Like chaos said, it slows me down if I try and edit at the same time. But when I do stop and look back I'm confronted with a sea of "She did..." sentences! It drives me crazy, so I can completely sympathise with you Alijo. I think we have the same problem in that it's not difficult to vary sentences when editing, it's just getting them to fall out from the fingers in the first place. Maybe we should do an exercise, like, write an action paragraph using subject+verb+object only once? If you fancy having a go at this PM me! I'd love to find away out of this bloody mental trap!

x

Just to think about.

English language (any language) isn't just sounds. It's musical with rhythm and beat. When you have this repetitious sentence problem just altering the length of sentences won't fix it.

What helps is to develop a sense of the rhythm of English. Read your own writing aloud. Read aloud a lot of poetry. Not the modern blank verse. Immerse yourself in the 'old' stuff written using poetic forms and rhyme. There's some strongly rhythmical stuff written by Robert Browning and Shakespeare, John Keats, and the children's verse by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear is excellent too. Spike Milligan is another who wrote some great children's verse with strong rhythm.

If you can make your words run in your head like music for a film as you write you will find yourself avoiding the same old structures because you will hear when you need short sharp sentences, longer slower ones, punchy sentences, lyrical ones.

Being aware of the musicality of English will help you develop a stronger writer's voice too.

pdr said:

E
What helps is to develop a sense of the rhythm of English. Read your own writing aloud. Read aloud a lot of poetry.

Click to expand...

Yes, read poetry, Yes, read your prose out loud, even better, record yourself reading it and play it back. You'll catch on to what's lacking in seconds.

pdr said:

Not the modern blank verse. Immerse yourself in the 'old' stuff written using poetic forms and rhyme. There's some strongly rhythmical stuff written by Robert Browning and Shakespeare, John Keats, and the children's verse by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear is excellent too. Spike Milligan is another who wrote some great children's verse with strong rhythm.

Click to expand...

No.

The only time you should read this stuff is to learn what not to do. Prose is prose, it has it's own beat, meter and internal rhyme very much like "modern" free verse ('modern' being used here to describe a poetry form over 150 years old) the other references noted above may lead to sing-song prose, which is replacing one repetitive sentence structure with two, or four, in groups, it's beyond annoying.

The only viable market for this sort of language today is greeting cards. Stay away from it.

The best place to learn how to create new sentence structures and sounds is to read many different accomplished writers of today. Grab a copy of Amy Hempel's Collected Stories (2006) and be blown away with amazing sentences and fantastic lifts and turns in word, read Don Delillo's Mao II, to watch prose dance, or the poetry of Gerald Stern, Richard Brautigan, Sharon Olds. And if you're really serious about making wonderful sentences, turn off all music and listen to your own.

*IMHO*

Kelly

Er...

if a writer doesn't have any sense of the rhythm of the language then reading 'the classics' of poetry gives one a good introduction.

One needs to start with the basics.

And the 'classics' of poetry are not dum-de-dum boring repetitive forms.

Do you seriously include the Brownings, Keats, Shelley, Manley Hopkins, Auden, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Grey et al in your comment:
the other references noted above may lead to sing-song prose,

Never.

A writer, finding hir own voice, needs to know the feel and form of all the rhythms of the language. And if that writer has a tin ear as far as musicality goes then s/he needs to start with definite rhythmic forms.