3 Ways to Avoid Using Too Many Pronouns

Your characters do things and stuff happens to them so you need to use pronouns, but too many of them is repetitive and unimaginative and boring. Have you ever read through your work and found that he said this, she did that, and then he walked over there and saw her do something else?

Why is the First Sentence so Important?

The first sentence can be the difference between a reader moving on to the second sentence and closing the book.

You want to hook them as soon as possible
Here are my top 5 ways to nail the first sentence of your novel

Combine sentences

If there are fewer sentences, fewer sentences start with pronouns

Better yet, use fewer adjectives and fewer subjunctive clauses to create brevity
Don’t be afraid to look over your shoulder, it will make you faster and easier to catch up

Have more agents

Once you’ve established whose point of view the audience is reading, it’s not necessary to keep saying he could smell, he could see, etc.

Try to focus on what’s happening in the scene, not who’s doing it or who it’s happening to.

You need to just start

Commit to writing every day

The hardest part is sitting at your laptop and writing the first few sentences
Once you start, you don’t want to stop writing
Starting is the hardest part, but by the time you hit your word goal, you won’t stop

Writers’ block doesn’t just go away

If you want to keep up with your daily goal, you need to just push through it

Give the reader the 411

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

The first draft doesn’t have to be good

It should be about finding the story, not writing the best prose you’re capable of.

Narrators are people too!

Readers are more likely to respond to unique voices unique to the writer

Vary your sentence structure

Each sentence follows the same formula, which is probably the main cause of pronoun overuse.

If we use different sentence structures, we can make the scene more exciting
Example: Once I’ve established who the subject is, I’ve experimented with using the action or setting to start the sentence. The result sounds a lot less like a list

Reading teaches you how to write a good novel

Writers who don’t read often don’t know the first thing about pace and plot development.

The ability to come up with an idea for a story comes naturally to a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean you automatically have the ability to turn it into a novel.
Novels contain a plot, and you learn through reading.

How do you know if you’re using too many pronouns?

Sometimes you can tell by just looking at the page or highlighting all the pronouns.

The best way to tell you’re using I/he/she too often is to read your work aloud.

Planning is important

Having a backup plan in case you don’t follow through on your plan is a good place to start

You have your own writing process

Experiment and find out if you like marathons or sprints, writing in the morning or the evening, and what environment allows you the most focus

It was a dark and purple night

Unless the description is relevant, the reader is probably going to view your purple prose as showing off, and not want to read further

Did you get that?

Longer sentences are harder to understand at the best of times

When you’re new to the subject matter, it’s even harder to make sense of long sentences
Bruno came home from school one day to find Maria, the family’s maid, standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he’d hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else’s business.

Reading teaches you how to write a terrible novel

Terrible novels teach bad habits when not offset with good novels

The more you read, the more you are able to tell what does and does not make a good book
To differentiate between good writing and bad writing, good storytelling and bad storytelling, clichés and originality

Things to remember

A month is not a realistic timeframe in which to write a novel.

Don’t consider yourself a writer just because you can write 50k words in 30 days
If you want to write good novels, you need to read them
Word count says nothing about quality
Writing a novel is about more than just writing. There’s a lot of thinking, planning, and revising that goes into it.

But it was all a dream

If your first sentence indicates that your first scene is a dream, you are not ready to read the book

Don’t let the reader know the book is set in a dream to prevent them from turning the book around later in the novel

Hi, I’m the protagonist

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days

It can seem to promote a few bad writing habits and some misinformation about what it takes to be an author, but if you know enough about writing to look past this, then it’s easy to see the benefits that NaNoWwiMo has to offer.

Knowing your characters is vital if you want to let them lead

It’s a lot easier to follow your characters when you know what they want and what they fear

Reel ’em in with a cool concept

Tell the reader something interesting as a promise that you’ll explore it

You could always try converting your concept into a first sentence
On the night that I was born, my paternal grandfather, Josef Tock, made ten predictions that shaped my life