Beware of Ambiguous Antecedents in Your Writing

While they appear to be a term a lot of folks are railing against these days, any writer can tell you that pronouns are one of the best pieces of language ever invented. After all, even if it would be an accurate recounting of a scene, nothing that feels more stilted or unnatural than saying a character's name over and over again. However, pronouns come with their own set of risks, one of which always seems to catch writers off-guard...

The ambiguous antecedent.

He squeezed blood from the stone! Wait... which he again?

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Nouns, Pronouns, and Antecedents

As Writers points out, there are some basic grammatical rules we're all aware of, even if we may not know the official terms for them. Generally speaking, when you're writing a story, you will have a noun, and then once that noun has been stated, you'll use a pronoun for it later. The original noun is the antecedent, meaning that the pronoun is connected to it.

Jeff stared at the read out on the monitor, sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

The "his" in this case clearly refers to Jeff, making Jeff the antecedent. Pretty basic stuff, right?

The problem you'll run into when you're a writer is that you'll often have multiple characters with the same pronouns in a given scene. This means that, rather than having direct lines between the pronoun and its antecedent, you might have readers scratching their heads wondering which he, she, or they you're referring to, and that can quickly cause them to lose track of the narrative. Whether it's a rapid back-and-forth between a cop and a criminal in an interrogation room, or an action scene with a squad of black ops soldiers, too much confusion between the noun and the pronoun referring to it can end up with chaos on the page.

The Cimmerian slew them all.

A tip I would recommend is something that a lot of us do without even thinking about it, but I usually refer to it as the Conan solution to this issue of ambiguity. In short, whenever you run into a situation where there might be confusion as to who a pronoun is referring to, replace it with some defining description of the character in question so that the audience can follow a clear through line of what is happening in a scene. Whether it's referring to a specific aspect of a character like a notable physical feature, or even referring to them by their job, the idea is that whenever there could be confusion, you clear that up as quickly and efficiently as you can.

"Hey, come look at this," Jeff said to Crawford. The federal agent grunted, and walked over to the terminal. The computer tech pointed at the image on the screen, and grinned.

Here we have two characters interacting as part of the narrative. Rather than simply relying on readers to figure out a pronoun, though, we ensure that we use something descriptive to refer to each of the two men separately, making sure that the reader has a clear image of who is doing what in the situation.

It's a fairly simple thing, but it's an area I've seen my share of writers develop a confusion with. So I thought I'd do my part this week to offer a bit of my own technique, and hope that it helps!

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