YourLocalBookworm57
Hey! Quick question. I'm writing this first-person novel and I was just wondering if there's a limit to how many "I"s you should put in one chapter, and if so, how to work around it when describing actions the protagonist is doing.
SmokeAndOranges
@YourLocalBookworm57 Hello hi! That is an excellent question. The short answer is that there's no limit, same as how there's no limit on the number of "he/she/they"s you can use in third person. The longer answer is that, just like with any pronouns in third person, you want to be careful about starting too many sentences *in a row* with "I" to avoid the feeling of repetition. If you have trouble noticing when you're doing it, reading your writing back to yourself out loud is a good trick. To mix things up, imagine yourself in the protagonist's head, and look around! You can note the setting, other people's reactions, and the results of anything the protagonist does. Another thing to watch for is filter words, which both separate the reader from the book AND add a lot of extra "I"s to your writing. I'll post a link to an article about those below, but the long story short is that if the sky in your book is blue, you don't need to write, "I saw the blue sky." You can just write, "The sky was blue"! All else failing, find another book written in first person and study what the author does. Hope that helps ^_^ https://www.ajcollins.com.au/resources-for-writers/what-are-filter-words/
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