Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelSullivan
Yes I do use their names, but how do a refer to possession such as a body part of one of them as in:
Ban shook his head.
I don't like any of the alternatives:
Ban's head shook. (Which implies the movement was not under Ban's control)
Ban shook its head. (Makes him seem like a thing)
Ban shook their head. (Which is the wrong tense as their is plural)
Ban shook his/her head. (Seems awkward).
Ban shook hiser head. (Seems confusing - especially since I don't want to explain to the reader hiser is a combination of his and her.
It's easy to say:
Ban nodded.
But I'm having problems for how to denote Ban's disagreement without using a gender centric word.
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Ban shook Ban's head.
Of course that might be perceived as 2 different people named Ban, with one shaking the others head.
I think you will just need to make up a pronoun and use it consistently through out the book. Assuming this is written for adults, they will figure it out pretty fast.
I wish I could think of the scifi book I read a while back that did this. So I could quote it as an example.