Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Making Sense with Pronouns

When you're writing a novel, you want it to make sense. You want the readers to know what you mean. And one thing is pronoun usage and making sense with them.

"John and Clyde saw what was in Leo's house. He screamed."

Who screamed? Did John or Clyde scream at what was in Leo's house? Or was Leo there and did he scream?

Always make sure that when you're naming someone with a pronoun that the reader knows what's going on. "When Katy saw that everything was okay, she sighed with relief." This makes sense, because we're only talking about one person in the sentence. We can say "she" because we named Katy and no one else before we used "she." Also, don't write "When she saw that everything was okay, Katy sighed with relief." Now someone else saw that everything was okay, and Katy sighed with relief.

Now, if someone already knows that Katy is doing something, if she was mentioned just a few words ago, saying "When she saw that everything was okay, she sighed with relief" should easily make sense to the reader.

But with the John and Clyde sentence, we're talking about multiple people but only one person screams. And the exact single person who screamed isn't defined. If you mean that just John or Clyde (or possibly Leo) screamed, name the person. "John and Clyde saw what was in Leo's house. Clyde screamed." Or "John screamed."

If you're going to use a pronoun when talking about multiple people, only use it if more than one person is doing something. "John and Clyde saw what was in Leo's house. They screamed." This makes a lot more sense.

Hope this helps.

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