Hello. I have started a lovely romance book and every thing is plotted out terrifically. My book is in perspective from the main character (who is a girl) and when I go back and read what I have written, I noticed I use the word “I” a lot and it makes the story sound boring. I try my hardest not to start many sentences with “I” but it’s quite difficult. I need your help. Do you happen to have any advice on this topic? Thank you so much. –Alina
Alina,
When you are writing a first draft, don’t worry about the repetition. The important thing is to get the draft written. When you go back to rewrite, that’s when you want to look at sentence structure. It’s really good that you noticed the repetitiveness of using “I” again and again. It can be difficult to look at your own writing critically sometimes, and the fact that you caught this shows that you are being honest about your writing. That’s a good thing.
Sometimes you can flip flop a sentence or two and everything reads okay. But a lot of the time that just doesn’t work. You need to write differently. Here is a paragraph with the problems you mentioned. It is followed by a paragraph that I rewrote.
I walked into the store looking for food. I was starving. I couldn’t believe that Coach Martin had made me run all those extra lines. I got in trouble because Rick threw the ball at Coach when he wasn’t looking, then said I did it. I can’t believe Coach fell for it. And now I had to suffer with sore legs.
My stomach growled. The orange neon sign that blinked “Pizza” pulled me like a magnet. I couldn’t believe Coach Martin made me run all those extra lines. You’d think he’d know who the troublemakers in his class were by now and that any words that came out of Rick’s mouth were lies. Sadly, no. Rick threw the basketball at Coach Martin’s back, and Coach Martin believed Rick when he pointed his finger at me. And now my legs had to suffer.
It’s not the best writing in the world, but you can see how I tried to vary the sentences and say the same thing. When writing, put yourself in your character’s shoes and talk it out loud. Act it out. What might they say? Sometimes this helps me to let the character talk in a quick daydream, then write down what they said.
Another thing you can so is to pick up some books that are written in first person and study the different sentence structures that the author uses. Most Melody Carlson books are first person. So are the Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, Pendragon, and Twilight books.
But the best way to learn is by doing. The more you write, the better you will get.
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