Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hello, all! I am reading a book and noticed that every once in a while, the author will skip a pronoun to avoid repetition, so long as doing so won't cause confusion. Here's an example:

I opened my pack, took out the money and set it on the table, slid the black box into place. Touched it in the pattern that would make it disappear, nothing but folded shirts, a few packets of dried food.

This quote (From Anne Leckie's Ancillary Justice) probably doesn't make much sense out of context, but what's important is that the second sentence skips "I" and instead just goes straight to the verb. I like this. I think it's efficient. And I don't think I've seen it anywhere else (except once, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, but that seemed to have a different purpose*). Does anyone have any other examples of this?

(*The quote from Neuromancer was:

He closed his eyes.
Found the ridged face of the power stud.
And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film compiled from random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.

It feels different, though. I feel like skipping the pronoun before "Found" was more out of an interest in staggering a single sentence into three for dramatic pause.)

Yes, I read both of those. I like the immediacy of the wording; the gritty or edgy quality of it. Glowing examples of ‘less is more’.

It's common in Australian writing, thrillers especially.

Sorry, I don't have any examples of writing like this. I can see it adds a sense of urgency and in the right place might be useful but too much and I'd abandon the book.

It's an affectation of the protagonist's—the way that character speaks—and should also show in the way that character speaks to others within the story. It's one of the ways in which any given character is made unique.

So it's not a matter of the author deciding to leave out personal pronouns. It's that character's speech pattern.

I don't know if it has a specific name (if it doesn't, it will soon), but I use it on occasion for emphasis. I write in 3rd person, and it doesn't always appear in a speech pattern.

EG: "She cut the eyes out of the potato to plant in the garden, then sliced what remained. Scooped the marrow out of the bones and let it all fry together."

It avoids the repetition of "she", yet the new sentence lets the reader know it's not related to the potato. There are already 6 references to "she" in the passage, so there shouldn't be any confusion as to who is doing it.

I have seen this style in books I’ve read as well. I may have used it now and then in my own writing.

Jay wrote: "It's an affectation of the protagonist's—the way that character speaks—and should also show in the way that character speaks to others within the story. It's one of the ways in which any given char..."

I like your explanation best. I've noticed the more skilled writers become, the more they use such tools.

S.U. wrote: "I could be totally wrong, but I think it may have something to do with the semi-colon falling out of use. If you replaced the 'period' in these examples with a 'semi-colon' or even a 'comma', then ..."

Aha... I wrote much the same in my post above and then deleted it! So yes, I agree. I think there is a case for using it occasionally to get rid of pronoun repetition.

S.U. wrote: "I could be totally wrong, but I think it may have something to do with the semi-colon falling out of use. If you replaced the 'period' in these examples with a 'semi-colon' or even a 'comma', then ..."

No, I think you could be right (and thanks for the reference). Reading WIKI, I see it's more common in other languages, so expanding our reading horizons internationally may have had some effect as well.

I use semi-colons routinely. One editor eliminated them, calling them "exotic punctuation". But since she couldn't point out one that was used incorrectly, and since I'm a confirmed grammar nerd, I reinstated them.

I've read books with semicolons all my life, never questioned why they were there. I think the current trend of dumbing down the language doesn't work to anyone's benefit.

Anna wrote: "S.U. wrote: "I could be totally wrong, but I think it may have something to do with the semi-colon falling out of use. If you replaced the 'period' in these examples with a 'semi-colon' or even a '..."

Hi, Anna. Haha, I saw the comment before you deleted it and just wanted to assure you that the Neuromancer excerpt is the only example of its kind in the book, and was only there, I think, to emphasize the pauses that come with going from one paragraph to another. In every other part of the book, sentences are written similar to how you edited that excerpt.

Thank you all for your responses! It is definitely an affectation; Ancillary Justice is narrated in the first person by an artificial intelligence. The voice I imagine in my head is similar to the voice of the on-board computer from the various Star Trek TV shows: clear, concise, direct, annunciated.

I'm not opposed to the semi-colon (see above), but try to avoid it in fiction. I work at a courthouse, so I get my fix on those in letters and orders.

I use the almost staccato style sometimes in a character's thoughts but mostly I'm with Gifford for the sake of clarity. An actor friend, also an author, relies on the way it's punctuated to grasp the sense correctly. I remember that as I write but sometimes rebel!

I am against semicolons. I’ve been told by many along the way they are a dead art and at least in fiction agree they are awkward and tend to break the flow. Running sentences together to avoid pronouns is one way of avoiding this that I use when I don’t want to repeat the pronoun. My fav for the jerky, fast paced emotional, however, is the m dash

Thanks. Bets

I bear no grudge with semi-colons. The poor things look like the bastard children of colons and commas. Send them to me. I will find a place for them in my orphanage for unloved punctuation marks.

Here, Dwayne, here’s a few I found hiding away in my latest effort. Originally, I thought they made me look really clever, like ‘hey, check this guy, he knows his stuff’.
Don’t lose them, I may want them back.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Terry wrote: ";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Way back in the dark ages, semi colons and colons were used. Today, they are those bastard children who are unloved and unused. The exclamation point fell out of favor when authors began to use it instead of showing the emotions. Imagine this! Every sentence ending the same! Doesn't it make you so excited!

I was told I was allowed two exclamation points per book, one semi colon and maybe one colon. How disappointing. Now what to do with those pesky commas that show up everywhere?

I heard about the exclamation point thing from Elmore Leonard's writing tips when he said, "You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful." And I... suppose I agree? I never miss them when they aren't there and feel I still get the measure of peoples' tone and volume, but I've also never ever read a book and thought, You know, there are too many exclamation points in here.

I love the colon, though, and it seems to have found new life in recent fiction. When used to call attention to something, it can be really effective. In Malcolm Gladwell's book Talking to Strangers (non-fiction, btw), he had a habit of using a colon to summarize or reiterate. He'd lay out all his points and then start a new paragraph with "So:" and it felt really natural.

I think I have a tendency to misuse commas, typically as a breath in the sentence. I recently read a self-published book from a very traditional (and elderly) writer, and although I was at first put off by the breathless, 60-word sentences he'd sometimes written, his deliberate non-use of commas unless absolutely necessary lent the whole book a strange sense of confidence.

I have often come across writing where people used to many exclamation marks. It almost comes across as shouting to me, you know, like in all caps.
Having said that, my editor also pulled me up on the same matter when I thought I'd be ever so frugal in my own use of them... It hurt.

In my opinion, the whole point of an exclamation mark is to make a point, in which case used too often dilutes the effect. On the othe4r hand, a simple exclamation, as in "Yes!" saves a whole lot of tags and probably an adverb.

I personally find colons and semicolons useful, and if they are there, why not use them? But again, not too many.