1. AspiringNovelist

    AspiringNovelist Senior Member

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    She said he said

    Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by AspiringNovelist, Aug 19, 2015.

    How do I get away from all the pronouns in 3POV? Or is it not possible?

    In the excerpt below, there are some 26 pronouns for Isla. I've re-read it a number of times, and am not sure if it's okay or if I've entered into some fresh pronoun hell...

    She sat on the edge of the chair, wrapped the cilice around her right thigh, and pulled the two strings tight until she felt the barbs grip her skin. She leaned back in the chair. With her eyes closed, she outstretched her leg and gave the strings a final tug. The barbs ruptured the calloused scar of her past repentance and atonements. For several seconds, the pain robbed her of breath – she was only able to draw spurts of air into her lungs for fear that she would scream and alarm the neighbors. Then the pain changed. It became a chained-explosion that flowered through every budding nerve in her body, like blooming blossoms on a cherry tree in spring. Every inch of her was suddenly alive, accepting and she glowed as the tranquility of the ritual set in.

    Several minutes later, her shallow breaths slowed and returned to normal. She opened her eyes, knotted the cilice in place, and found the box with the new laptop on the left side of the chair. It was a cheapest laptop she could buy, as she would be using it only once. She created an administrators account under the user Prophet7. She installed an IP encryption program and launched another program that began creating fake twitter accounts. Then she entered a hacker’s peer-to-peer network and found trojan malware IP addresses that had been compromised. She would use these machines to upload the document to the internet, not hers.

    She pulled her old laptop from her backpack and opened the document she had been working on. She didn’t digitally transfer the document to the new laptop because it contained digital prints of its origination. Instead, she typed the document into the new laptop while referencing the original one.​
     
  2. Aaron DC

    Aaron DC Contributor Contributor

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    Suggestion: join sentences with commas / thens.

    eg:

    She sat on the edge of the chair, wrapped the cilice around her right thigh, and pulled the two strings tight until she felt the barbs grip her skin. She leaned back in the chair. With her eyes closed, she outstretched her leg and gave the strings a final tug.

    Isla sat on the edge of the chair, wrapped the cilice around her right thigh, and pulled the two strings tight until she felt the barbs grip the (?) skin. She leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, then outstretched her leg and gave the strings a final tug.

    Part of the "problem" may be you are describing a process to the nth degree / detail?
     
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  3. AspiringNovelist

    AspiringNovelist Senior Member

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    Ah, perfect. Thanks.
     
  4. Aaron DC

    Aaron DC Contributor Contributor

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    To be honest it doesn't flow as well as the original (I have not read it out loud either).
     
  5. AspiringNovelist

    AspiringNovelist Senior Member

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    No, I think it reads aloud much better, too. I got trapped in pronoun hell for some reason.
     
  6. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Don't be afraid to use her name, now and again. At least once in each paragraph should do the trick.
     
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  7. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    Interesting exercise. I've just taken the first paragraph, reduced from 14 to 6.

     
  8. AspiringNovelist

    AspiringNovelist Senior Member

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    I do like that.. Thanks Shadow...I like breathless <--would've never come up with that.
     

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