Since that wasn’t bad enough, Sherlock pulling back enough to nervously ask “Am I- I don’t know- Is this okay?” and John just getting so. soft. and saying “Of course it is, you’re amazing”
today is @bbcthree‘s last day at the office. we’re all going to miss them so very, very much.
i made this video specifically for them. it was supposed to be really cheesy, hence the music.
it turned out to be pain. my bad.
anyway, we love you, three, and this video is for you, from the bottom of my vid-making heart. i love you. thank you for everything that you’ve done for the fandom. we’ll never forget you.
First it was funny-sad and then it was sad-sad…
;____:
I’m crying (T_T) Love you so much @bbcthree!!! You will be missed, but never forgotten ❤️
I thought I’d cried myself out to this song back in high school.
Apparently not.
You will always be in our hearts @bbcthree! Love you forever and best wishes! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
no like i just thought about the kiss and blacked out for a second like full sirens going and blood pressure rising and all of it um so THATS happening
lol that’s going to be me when the kiss happens on-screen.
I mean, hell, I hyperventilated and literally *blacked out* for a few minutes the first time I found out John’s blog actually existed on the web as we saw it in the show. Aaaand…I was at work when that happened. OTL Everyone thought I’d forgotten to eat for the week again and my blood sugar was too low.
latin: words like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ aren’t important. memorize these 3000 different ways to talk about killing people though because you will use them
greek: hello naughty students it’s participle time
egyptian: ancient pictionary
french: pronouncing every letter is for chumps
german: let’s combine every other word together to create the U L T I M A T E F R A N K E N W O R D
mandarin: lol whats a verb tense
spanish: LOL WHAT ISN’T A VERB TENSE
So you want to write same sex romance, but cringe at the overuse of pronouns or names littering your manuscript or perhaps in the last book you read. What’s an author to do?
Well first…unless you are an editor and can’t shut that function of your brain off, don’t worry too much while working on a first draft. You don’t want to slow the creative process and hopefully will be going over the book a few more times before passing it off to a critique group or beta reader and then an editor.
But once the story is told, I recommend highlighting pronouns as well as names. If the manuscript lights up with a glow to rival the Milky Way, it may be time to see where the offenders can be thinned out or at the very least moved around to avoid repetitive sentence structure.
I do this with my own work. Along with other things I want to avoid. Excess use of that, to be verbs…all the usual suspects. Self-editing can be colorful. And I’d rather see my own highlights and clear the way for my editor can help me fine tune plot points and characters.
One way to help with excessive pronoun use is to vary structure of sentences to avoid repetition. If every sentence begins with a pronoun, you can usually flip one. Gerunds are helpful in moderation. So is combining two short, choppy sentences into one longer one.
He gazed into his lover’s eyes. He bent to press a kiss to his lips.
Gazing into his lover’s eyes, he bent to press a kiss to Sam’s lips.
People IRL (in real life) rarely address one another by name in a conversation, unless they are attempting to get someone’s attention or are in a group, so in that intimate bedroom scene, avoid having Suzie and Jenny or Bob and Sam use one another’s names in dialogue. Save the names to use in narration occasionally…where they can replace a pronoun.
The same principle applies to indicating who is addressed. In most cases, the reader knows who that is.
Bob told him vs. Bob said.
Try to avoid calling two different people in the same sentence “he” to avoid confusion.
There is a school of thought that states the pronoun should most often be reserved for the point-of-view character, especially in same-sex stories. While that does work some of the time, generally a pronoun relates back to the last proper name used, so exercise care.
One rule that applies to all writing has extra benefit in a same-sex romance. Avoiding filter words such as heard, touched, realized, thought, watched, noticed, feel/felt, decided…you know the ones. They require a pronoun or use of name and by eliminating them, a stronger, more direct sentence is created that has the added benefit of avoiding overuse of pronouns.
He saw a bird vs. An eagle landed in the tree overshadowing the porch.
He noticed the sun rising vs. The sun rose.
Not only have you drawn the reader deeper into the story without filtering and avoided a pronoun…you have also shown rather than told. An added benefit.
A popular technique is to use pet names, like honey, baby, or sweetie. To refer to the other party by job, hair color, height, can help in some cases. One good reason not to have two blond, blue-eyed, tall biology teachers as heroes. Unless you really enjoy a challenge.
Strong characterizations can help when pronouns are used. If the reader recognizes the character’s behavior, knows what the character is doing at that moment, where they are located in the room or the scene, they will generally know who the pronoun refers to. This applies in bedroom scenes as well as when our heroes are sitting down to dinner or our heroines are driving to Tennessee. Of course we will know when “she” steps on the brake it is the driver. No issue with clarity there!
Pronouns are perfectly fine as long as they are not used so repetitively as to annoy the reader and as long as the reader is able to determine, without slowing down to puzzle it out, which “he” or “she” we mean. I believe the only real difference between M/F stories and those where both main characters are of the same gender is making sure that when we use a pronoun, the reader knows to whom we refer.
Kate Richards is the executive editor at Decadent Publishing, a co-owner of Wizards in Publishing, and a multi-published author. She loves writing and reading all sorts of love stories.
“On social media, you see the extraordinary paintings that people do, and the fanfiction around, it’s just extraordinary. I love the symbiotic nature of the audience to the program. I love the way that it actually excites the creativity within the audience. I think that’s a really wonderful thing.” – Rupert Graves on the Sherlock fandom
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