What’s wrong with this fragment?
She finally got up the nerve to tell Karen about their mother.
She listened, rapt, unable to take it all in.
“I never suspected. It’s too horrible,” she said. “It’s the sort of thing I would never believe.”
“I would never believe it in a million years, but something about it rings true.”
She walked to the window and looked out.
“You know what they say…’she’s just like her’ is what they say.”
Quick! Can you tell me who walked to the window?
If you can’t, it’s not your fault. It’s the writer’s.
Don’t make the mistake of letting your reader get lost in a forest of pronouns. Often, this happens in scenes where two characters are talking about a third–and all three are of the same sex. It’s a trivial confusion, but potentially fatal to your work.
In this example, there are so many ambiguous “shes,” that by the time “she walks to the window,” the reader has no idea which woman is performing the action.
This keeps the reader from forming a mental image of the action. Inadvertently, you’ve shut your reader out.
As I said, this is serious. But fortunately it’s an easy fix:
She finally got the up the nerve to tell truth about their mother.
Karen listened, rapt, unable to take it all in. “I never suspected. It’s too horrible,” she said. “It’s the sort of thing I would never believe.”
Joan continued, as gently as possible. “I would never believe it in a million years,” she said. “But something about it rings true.”
Karen walked to the window and looked out. “You know what they say…’she’s just like her’ is what they say.”
What did I do?
• I changed “she” to “Karen” or “Joan” in a couple of key spots.
• I added two descriptive tags (“Joan continued…etc.” and “Karen walked to the window….etc.”) to set up the dialogues that follow.
• I did not re-paragraph between description and dialogue in this case because the description is only a single sentence, designed to support the dialogue.
Done. And easily done, as long as you grasp the all-important principle: never put your reader into a state of confusion, because the next step is disengagement. Once disengagement sets in, you’ve lost your reader, and it’s Game Over.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You are doing a great job; keep it up.
I have some sentences that are confusing because of the placement of pronouns, can you help me rewrite them so as to bring out the intented meanings? Thank you
1) Young Michael told his granddad he was too old to play with Lego.
2) Mary’s mother was remarried when she was eighteen.
3) If your baby has trouble digesting cow’s milk, boil it.
4) My father told his brother that he’d had too much to drink.
Okay, Jide, here goes:
1) “I’m too old to play with Leggos,” young Michael told his granddad.
2) When Mary was eighteen, her mother remarried.
3) If your baby has trouble digesting cow’s milk, serve it boiled. (Technically, it could still be the baby that’s boiled, but this wording makes that possibility too remote to worry about.)
4) “You’ve had too much to drink,” my father told his brother.
Also: when you’re having this kind of pronoun trouble, it’s often a sign that, rather than struggle to reword the sentence, you need to pull back and rewrite the passage with new wording altogether.