Writing Advice: They/Them and Story Burden

 

What can you do when beta readers complain your use of singular they/them pronouns for a nonbinary character is confusing?

First, find out how familiar your beta reader is with preferred pronouns and singular they/them. Is it a general discomfort with a concept they haven't had much exposure to? Are there specific moments in your work where the beta reader couldn't tell which character or characters were being reffered to?

Quick Fixes

• Include context tags like "shakes their head" where by context "they" must be singular because a group has plural heads.
• To emphasize it is just one person, try "they alone.
• To emphasize multiple people, try "all of them" and "they both." You can use "the (adjective) ones," "the ones (prepositional phrase)," "Jim, Jose, and Sara," or "the couch sitters."

Medium Effort Fixes

• Give the nonbinary character a very short nickname and replace most of the pronouns with it.
• Have the nonbinary character in 1-3 person scenes and limit group scenes.
• Edit the specific line the reader said was confusing. Make notes on what led to the confusion. Apply this to future scenes. 
• Ask beta readers to mark any time they were confused about who was doing what or had to reread because of an unclear pronoun. 
• Remove unnecessary characters from the scene, even temporarily.
• Avoid or reduce using plural they.

Time Consuming Fixes

• Write in first person.
• Search for every use of they/them pronouns. Check for when plural and singular they/them pronouns are near each other. Check for when singular they/them pronouns are used near mention of an organization or group. 
• Choose a different nonbinary pronoun. Instead of looking up a list online, consider finding a book at your local public library like What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron, for a deeper dive into the history, and pros and cons of the nonbinary pronoun options. 
• Nonbinary people don't always use nonbinary pronouns, some use she/her, he/him, (or they/she or they/him or they/he/she or other combinations or "any pronouns").

Further Thoughts

Nonbinary pronouns is something you can help familiarize the reader to. Where there's a nonbinary side character you could have the main character think about or ask about how it'd be conjugated and then practice conjugating the pronouns in their head or out loud (depending on personality). Where there's a nonbinary lead, you may have the space to express why pronouns are meaningful to them. 

Read a story with a nonbinary lead to see how it can be done and watch for moments of confusion. Or read an M/M or F/F romance as these must be cautious of he/he and she/she confusion in the many scenes with romantic lead interactions. 

Advocating for and including a not-yet-normalized concept (be it nonbinary pronouns or asexuality or something else) adds "story burden". Are you willing to accept that some readers will be taken out of the story, either by confusion or by 101 fact drops?  How much effort do you want to put into blending it into the flow? There aren't wrong answers to these questions. It is okay to tell your story in a sell-able flowing way that highlights your message, and sometimes that means including less. 

CharCharChar's Experience

I tend to write in first person. In my mind, my main characters have the same gender experience as me, but may use he/him or she/her or they/them pronouns depending on where they are in their lives, their self-perception, and their comfort levels. There are usually secondary characters using nonbinary pronouns, but I will mix in non-they/them pronouns for some of those characters. 

There are so many aspects of my experiences, identities, and personality I want to express, but to include all of myself in a main character would overburden the story. I once made a diagram of my major stories and which aspects of myself fit the theme and arc of each best. Now when I strip an aspect of myself out of a story or block it from coming up, I know I will have the opportunity to explore that piece of myself in a different story.

Questions

• Do you have advice for using they/them pronouns for nonbinary characters I missed? 
• How do you choose which aspect of yourself to highlight or ignore in your writing, or do you think of it differently? 
• How many personality traits, character-defining past experiences, identities, and passions do the main characters in books you like fit in? How much time is spent on these aspects of the main character compared to how much time is spent on the world building and plot?