New Year Writing Workout #8: My, His, Her, Their

Ha! I lied. I have one more writing exercise for you. I was doing edits yesterday and this HUGE flaw leaped out at me. I couldn’t make myself wait a whole year before sharing it with you guys. So put on your warm-ups, it’s action time!

Whether you’re writing first person, third person or whatever, sometimes it’s easy to slip a few extra possessives in there. In my first person stories, I noticed that I use ‘my’ a lot. As in: I went into my kitchen and got out my pots and pans to make my Killer Brownies. Yeah, Stop the bus on that one. With a little rearranging, we can make it stronger. Sometimes, you need the odd ‘my’ in there. For example, say this was the beginning of a new scene. We might want one ‘my’ in there to demonstrate that this is her house. You know set the scene for the reader and all that good stuff. However, those three mys in one sentence are killer.

After edits: I wandered into the kitchen and slowly brought out my pots and pans. It was Killer Brownie time. There are many different ways to rearrange to eliminate the ‘mys’ as you can see above. Play around and see what works for your story and your voice and what you want to achieve in your scene.

What about ‘his’, ‘her’ or ‘their’? Same thing. She went into her kitchen and got out her pots and pans… Blah. Fix it up! She stormed into the kitchen and began slinging pots and pans…etc.

Now that you know what to watch for, see if you fall victim. Some places, you can’t get around those possessives, but in some places you can eliminate the excess. Go forth and eliminate, it’s always reduction time.

Enjoy!