How does everyone on here avoid overuse of 'he/she'? Alternating between 'he/she' and the character's name doesn't seem to help much. I can never get rid of this repetition, and can't see any other way of avoiding it.
Using he and she a lot is not much of a problem. It's like using 'and', 'a' and 'the'. You could get into the character's perspective more often if you do feel like there really is a whole lot. e.g. instead of "He thought about what he should do next", using "What should he do next?" or even "What to do next?" It's often more concise, as in this case, as well.
As @DK3654 exemplified good, reformulate. I sometime use possessives, that is reformulate using her, his. She kissed him -> Her lips met his. Not a great example but...
The main way I try to is by avoiding these words: thought, realize, see, hear, felt... “He saw a door open” becomes “a door opened.” “Frank is an asshole, he thought” becomes “Frank was an asshole.” He felt a cool breeze on his skin” becomes “A cool breeze did this.”
I also struggle with this. Often many his/hers in one bl**dy sentance. I hate it almost as much as he said, she said. Not easy to get around his/hers :-( Rgds
This is my advice as well. Overuse of he/she/I and the characters’ names are a clear sign that your writing has a lot of filtering. When you have a strong POV, you don’t need to filter external stimuli through the lens of your character—the fact that your character is experiencing the stimuli is implied. Another general remedy for this issue is to vary your sentence structure, but that’s more of an add-on once the core issue of filtering is addressed. Tom stepped into the room. He felt the air grow thick with the humidity, and he could hear the slow drip of water from somewhere in the corner. He walked toward the room’s center. Something about the atmosphere here didn’t feel right, he thought. Vs. Tom stepped into the room. The air grew thick with the humidity, and the slow drip of water from somewhere in the corner cut through the silence. He walked toward the room’s center. Something about the atmosphere here just didn’t feel right. I’m not the best at examples, but you can see how I’m saying exactly the same thing in both paragraphs, but the second one cuts out the need to tell the reader that Tom is, in fact, experiencing these things and instead just show him experiencing them. The stronger the POV, the less that filtering is needed.
I think this becomes less of a problem the closer you get to the character's POV. It's easier to state things as plain fact without tags when you're right in close POV. One of John's example's exemplifies this: If you're in distant third person POV, you can't get away with this because it would appear as though you are stating objectively that Frank actually is an asshole (or that the narrator believes this to be so). But in close 3rd person POV, the reader will understand that when you say "Frank was an asshole", you are providing the character's opinion. So you don't need to clarify with the "he thought" tag.
This is a good question to ask, and it seems people are giving really good advice. I'd give advice, myself, but I also struggle with this at times, especially since my current story has a predominately female cast, meaning I'm having to come up with ways to differentiate between all the "she"s and "her"s.
If you don't want to do a close POV, you could alternatively try to use more objective descriptions e.g. "He wasn't concerned by it" vs "It wasn’t something to be concerned about"
Good advice re: restructuring. I think pronouns are typically only a visible problem when they're starting out too many sentences in quick succession -- usually it's "[pronoun] [verb]ed" as in @xanadu's example, which to take to a more extreme example: He stepped into the room. He felt the air grow thick with the humidity. He could hear the slow drip of water from somewhere in the corner. He walked toward the room’s center. He thought that something about the atmosphere here didn’t feel right. Sure, that's an issue. I'd think of the problem as not so much with the pronoun (or name, as case may be), though, and just of repetitive construction. Some of those sentences can be combined, like in the original version, and some can be scrambled away from the he+verbed format. I think the important thing to note is that there's nothing inherently wrong with starting sentences this way, or with using pronouns a fair bit -- they're kind of necessary! You just want to introduce enough variety that no one word or phrase or construction becomes tiresome to read.
He stepped into the room and walked towards the centre, humid air instantly slicking his skin with sweat. Water dripped in the corner. Something here didn't seem right
I don't really see the problem. Sure, you can reconstruct a sentence and you don't want every sentence to start, he thought... he saw... he came... he conquered... But trying to get too creative and looking for ways to avoid such common words can cause more problems than benefits often when it comes to the clarity of your prose. Everyone uses pronouns and character names a lot. It's part of the basics when it comes to telling a story.
