Here's something I've been wondering for a while: when writing in third person, how often should you use the character's name in narration? Obviously you should specify who's speaking or doing something, but what about when the character is alone? It feels wrong to go for paragraphs, maybe even entire chapters, only saying "he/she", but it also feels weird to specify that [Character] is the one doing whatever's being described, because of course they are, they're the only ones there, so who else would it be? What do you guys think?
I do deep third mostly so sometimes I don't even need to address the he of the paragraph. One such paragraph starts with the line - It would be almost worth it to walk out now. (meaning his job) And because we're in his shoes I don't need to say he thought. The reader knows where this feeling is coming from or should I say who. So one way to eliminate a he or his name is to angle the sentence differently. example John wanted to smash Harvey's face. He wanted to smash Harvey's face. or That kid's begging for a beat down.
I wish I could give you some kind of ratio of name to pronoun, but I can't. Maybe a good way would be for you to read authors you like and get a feeling of how they do it.
As long as the reader can deduce it from the context, I see no need, unless the situations where saying somebody's name aloud is part of a description (for instance, a character searching for someone, shouting their name, or in other... intimate moments... *cough, cough*) When you've got two characters on a scene with very distinctive voices ( the reader already familiar with them), you can even get away without even the pronouns.
That's actually a difficult one. I'm speaking as somebody who had to go through my MS, after it was finished, and cull lots of the direct addresses and mentions of names. I do believe that I'd rather 'overmention' a name than leave readers in doubt about who is speaking or who is being spoken to or referred to. But there's a balance to be had. It's not easy to find that balance, in my opinion. I think readers will put up with a bit more repetition in a story than they would in 'real life.' You don't keep repeating somebody's name when you're talking to them, do you? But sometimes you have to repeat, while writing a story, to keep events and people straight.
It's a question of narrative distance. As @peachalulu said, deep third doesn't even require a personal pronoun; and, if you write in distant third or in omni, the reader would be accustomed to you dropping the name frequently to avoid confusion at least. So both, deep third and omni, the two sides of the scale of narrative distance, are clear cut. But the narrative distances in between, close third, which is what a whole lot of books are written in, are a different kettle of fish. 'Close third' covers a wide range of narrative distances. If you write more distant, dropping the name frequently won't feel jarring. But if you're writing very close, it becomes a problem. I've found that dropping the name in close third with close narrative distance works best with physical actions or during action tags in speech. Reason, because when the character is in his own head and feeling/experiencing emotions/thinking, he won't think of himself with his name—so for the author to use the name in introspection jars me out of the reading experience. Here I'm thinking this guy's thoughts and suddenly I get reminded that I am not he. So I use the name sparingly. It's a tightrope act I admit.
I came here to say the same thing . . . (narrative distance) The MC is never really alone. The narrator is there too, floating around like the Holy Ghost. He's on the MC's shoulder, or he's peeking through the windows, or he's surveying from the clouds. You can use the MC's name to signal where the narrator has moved. That allows you to speak to the big picture or just to the moment.
This isn't something I've given much thought to, but I will say it is something I often play around with in the revisions stage. I think it is just a feeling. The prose have a rhythm. The narration has a flow. What does writing call for you to use? When Where? This is assuming that you're writing at a level where your instincts are usually right. Regardless, reading more always helps sharpen these instincts.
I once discovered that I had mentioned two characters by name and used pronouns for both AND the sentence was about a third character! I left it in the MS as a milestone of my incompetence (or genius).
In first POV, only to indicate another character specifically. In my new WIP in 3rd, quite a bit to keep from it getting too confusing with the pronoun game, since many of the characters are of the same gender.
It does get more trying the more characters are in a scene and especially if they're all the same gender. My WIP is very male centered. At times there are up to four male characters in a scene and I'm doing close third. So it's always tricky to get the right he hooked to the right him. I usually play it by ear in the first draft and if it starts to annoy me I take them out -- if I can -- and rework the sentence. Clarity is the important. Basically it's one of those things that there is no formula for it's like pace you have to keep working at it to get it right.
