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3rd person limited POV: excessive use of "she/her" and "he/his" in prose

mhdragon

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One of the problems I struggle with is the excessive use of she/her, and he/his. I write in a limited 3rd person POV. I picked out the most egregious use of this in my WIP just in the prologue, alone. I would post a few example sentences to show you all but the sticky says not to post excerpts for crit.
 

Woollybear

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1. One thing that you can do in dialog that is not true to life but 'sounds real' is to include the name of the person being addressed within dialog.

Instead of She said, "Why won't you cooperate?" It can be, "Nathan, why won't you cooperate?" And the attribution is clear in a two-person conversation.

2. Label the people instead of using pronouns. The little girl said / the police officer took the mug shot / the foul-smelling geriatric laughed hard into the group.

3. Try deleting. Might work.

I think a case-by-case basis can be helpful. Just line 'em up and knock 'em down. I'm sure others will have input for you as well.
 

lizmonster

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It's hard to evaluate how big of a problem you have without reading a sample, but when I find myself egregiously repeating certain words or types of phrases, there's only one solution: rewrite the sentence. Repetition of words is usually a symptom of repetitive sentence structure.

Suggestion: try rewriting a few sentences so you're not using pronouns, and see how that goes.
 

Sage

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Most likely, a few sentences wouldn’t really show the problem (unless you really have multiple in each sentence).

How do you know your use of pronouns is excessive? Has someone told you so after reading? Is this coming from trying to find clarity in which he/she/they you’re talking about? Knowing this will help us figure out if you have a problem & how to address it.
 

Maryn

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Like everyone else is saying, without seeing a decent sized sample of your writing it's hard to address specifically. (But you're nearing the 50 posts required, so keep at it and you'll be there soon enough.)

One thing some writers do that adds pronouns needlessly is filtering, where the author tells the reader which of the senses the character used to gain information, or that s/he used the brain to reach conclusions, find correlations, etc. In good writing, the author trusts the reader to figure out a character knows there was a sound because she heard it, rather than telling the reader she heard it.

Instead of the author sharing the means by which the character experienced whatever she did, the author can cut directly to the experience, making it the subject of the sentence rather than the character (or a representative pronoun) being the subject. He heard the truck backfire becomes The truck backfired.

If the author filters everything through the point of view character, it creates psychic distance between what the character experiences and the reader. The sense of immediacy, of the reader feeling as if he's right there, is diminished, so getting rid of it benefits you more than simply losing a bunch of pronouns.

Filtering can usually be spotted by the words that do it, although not all uses of these words are filtering. Search for knew, thought, considered, regarded, wondered, noticed, was aware, sensed, felt, saw, hoped, realized, smelled, heard and it seemed, looked like, appeared, was obvious/apparent. Decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's there to filter the point-of-view character's experience, and if it is, rewrite it.

Maryn, who used to filter ridiculously much
 
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Roxxsmom

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It's something I've struggled with when writing in limited third. The answer is to write sentences that are not "filtered," but simply state the observation. If you've established the viewpoint character, and are writing in voice, the reader should be able to tell that the statement or observation in question isn't coming from an external narrator's perspective.

Instead of: He froze. He heard someone coming and that he knew that meant trouble. You could write; He froze. Someone was coming, and that meant trouble.

But sometimes you do have to use more personal pronouns, such as when the character is performing a series of actions.

Instead of: He was terrified of being caught because that would be the end of everything he'd worked for, so he ran down the path. When he got to the bottom of the path, he jumped the creek. Then he pelted up the bank. You could write: Being caught would end everything, so he ran. Down the path, jumped the creek at the bottom, then pelted up the bank.

Yes, the second sentence is a fragment, but those can work in fiction, especially in action scenes or in a deeper viewpoint. I also used asyndeton for the list of actions, because omitting the final coordinating conjunction makes it feel more hurried.

Sometimes people advise that when writing in a deeper third person, one should try difficult sentences in first person, to get the voice and deeper perspective right, then switch the pronouns back. However, this can lead to the problem with two personal pronouns of the same gender in the same sentence not only sounding awkward, but being confusing. "I always knew he was a jerk" becomes "He always knew he was a jerk." And replacing that first "he" with a proper name of the viewpoint character makes the viewpoint feel more distant.

Now having said this, I was first starting to study fiction writing at a time when everyone was blogging about (and teaching in workshops) how bad filters and overuse of personal pronouns were, along with much conventional wisdom about intrusive external narrators popping the reader out of a story. Since then, there has been a sort of backlash, and I've seen a resurgence of published fiction with lots of filters and repeated use of proper names and pronouns, along with more use of omniscient narrators, or limited third narrators that flirt with omniscience at times. Maybe it's because multiple first-person narratives are more common now, so writers who feel that a deeper perspective is best for their story simply default to first person now, whether or not the story has one or more than one viewpoint character.

There are no set rules. The purpose is to keep the reader engaged and clear on what is happening.
 

Lakey

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I agree that it’s likely that filtering is your culprit — follow the good advice here, and really examine your work to see how frequently you are telling your readers what he/she sees, hears, feels, perceives, thinks, instead of just telling your readers what happens.

However, I’m going to disagree with Woollybear’s advice #2 — more often than not this sort of descriptive labeling comes across as a writer trying too hard to avoid repeating a pronoun or a name; it’s too often a POV break as well. (Your POV character is not like likely to suddenly think of her sister as “the blonde woman”.) If you find yourself resorting to this, think VERY carefully about the descriptors you choose and why they would be salient to your POV character in that moment.

As for posting excerpts — a few sample sentences wouldn’t be enough to diagnose, anyway; one would really need to see a longer excerpt to know if it’s a problem and how you might address it — so keep posting, asking questions, contributing critiques of the work of others, and very soon you’ll be able to post an excerpt of your own.

In the meantime, open up a favorite book that is in third-person limited. Read a passage, and see if you can discern how the author avoids the problem that you are struggling with.

:e2coffee:
 

Woollybear

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Hi!

Possibly it depends on the story, and my advice re: #2 may be influenced by my recent reading of Vandermeer's Annihilation, in which the open treats us to 'the biologist, the anthropologist, the psychologist, the surveyor, the linguist'... etc ... We never learn their names and only rarely hear their pronouns at all. The 1st person narrator goes out of her way, if you can believe it, to even say "I would tell you the names of the other three if it mattered, but only the surveyor would last more than the next day or two."

She doesn't bother to tell us the name of the surveyor, either.

This is an extreme example, in Annihilation, but I regularly note use of this trick in all manner of fiction. Perhaps it's to do with the books I read, but I can easily imagine implementing this tool to reduce some instances of she/he/her/his. I believe I have, on occasion.

It can also help with rhythm, and with establishing a hierarchy among characters. I'm currently working on a scene at a state dinner. Characters include the director of the combustion industry, his boyfriend, a councilor, and the prime chancellor. My characters do think of 'the director' or 'the councilor' or 'the chancellor,' much as we might think of 'the president.' And that implies a certain position.

The janitor. That implies someone a character might not bother to learn by name. She's just the janitor, not worth learning much about, all you need to know is she's a grunt.

The teacher. The cabbie. The waiter. Et cetera.

IMO it works well.
 
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talktidy

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There is always an argument for scrabbling to get the story onto the page, even if the quality of the prose makes you want to weep, and worrying about filtering/over use of pronouns during later revisions. I realise it depends how you like to work, but it may be something to consider.

Filtering is something I am way too guilty of. I think my work has improved and then I reread something I wrote a month ago and despair.

Get your posts past 50 and post an extract.
 

Lakey

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Woollybear, you’ve given examples that are in POV (except the example where the characters do not have names, which is really not an example of what we are talking about). That’s exactly what I said — if you use descriptors instead of pronouns or names, make sure they are in POV. It’s not uncommon to see the device used poorly.

:e2coffee:
 
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Kalyke

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In places where there may be some confusion, like when there are a lot of people involved in the action, reminding everyone of who is there (the Butcher, the Baker, The candle-stick-maker) is a good idea. At the top of the chapter, you might like to line up who is going to be performing the main action: Bob and Shawna drove the pink Aston Martin to Casino Royale... they, they, they, them, he, he, she ...Shawna gave Bob a sly smile, as she slipped the thousand dollar chip in her bra, they, they, them, them, he, she, he, he.

It is a roundabout way of reminding people where they are. As an author you are also guiding people with metanarrative-- which is "when the author tells you where you are."