Stupid English-- what if I don't want to use he or she?

[starlite_gone]

English sucks for keeping characters of indeterminate gender. It's pretty much impossible to write a story without a his or her, he or she, thrown in at some point to avoid a completely awkward sentence structure and a distracting amount of repeated names. Sometimes I envy Japanese and the other languages in the world that make it a lot easier to

Comments

[kageotogi]

How are you handling that? I had a gender indeterminate character in last year's NaNo project and wound up having my main character/narrator refer to said person as "him/her/it" the whole time. It was appropriate and worked for his character, but it was really awkward to write.

[starlite_gone]

So far I've tried to word things where I don't need to have it specified, and have just used Cora's name. I put one line in there about how no one was really sure what Cora is, but due to Cora's voice the general assumption is that Cora's male, but then the next day that assumption could seem false

[kageotogi]

I really like the idea of using he or she depending on who is narrating and what they believe at the time! I think that's great. Could be confusing to read, but maybe if you use "Cora" as often as possible (and the person/moment-appropriate pronoun just to break up the constant "Cora"-ness) it would be a smoother brain-change?

[starlite_gone]

Your reply just made me decide -- I'll have to try that! Yeah I think I'd have to use "Cora" a lot so readers don't get confused.

[jamafanta]

A very interesting article... I didn't realize that so many languages DON'T intrinsically identify gender the way we do, nor did I realize how long people have been trying to fix the problem!

There are lots of invented pronouns to choose from, but in my opinion they'd all seem awkward and disrupt the flow of the narrative (just because none of them are really used all that often). I like your idea of switching pronouns based on whose POV you're using. That's fun!

[starlite_gone]

Whoa I had no idea there were all those crazy amounts of invented pronouns... I have to agree, they all seem kind of awkward and a bit disruptive, really. I would be very distracted if I read that in narrative anywhere.

Thanks for your feedback on the idea of switching pronouns based on POV! I think that's what I'm going to do after all. It seems more interesting that way, and it solves the awkward writing dilemma. I also think it could be interesting to see what each character decides, you know? Like it may say something about the character whose pov it is...

[jamafanta]

You're probably going to have to spell it out, though - or at least make the first switch really obvious! Otherwise you'll get a whole pile of "helpful" reviews, pointing out the inconsistency...!

[starlite_gone]

haha yeah that's true XD Although this is something I would theoretically want to get published so I'll probably get that back from the agent, lol

[starlite_gone]

That's interesting... You know what I've noticed? With dogs, there are some people I know who always call a dog 'he' even when they know it's a she, and others who always call a dog 'she

[starlite_gone]

lol now that I think about it, all dogs are Sweetie to me too until I know XD