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.
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