The passage I was working on follows:

quote:

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He was placing the last one near the wretched mortar pit when he heard a sound behind him. It was the cocking of a gun.
"Turn around." The voice was low, Chen wasn't sure if he recognized it. He slowly turned with his hands in the air, and stared through the darkness at this new enemy. The figure before him was in the night guard's uniform -- black slacks and button-up shirt with a black cap. Chen had worn that same uniform only weeks before.
"Who are you?" demanded the guard. When Chen didn't reply, the man stepped toward him, gun held ready. His mind was racing, screaming for a solution. He was never a truly violent person, and hand-to-hand wasn't exactly his sport. But everything was on the line now. Everything Chen had fought for over the last few weeks.

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Now, reading over this I immediately see that there are far too many 'man' and 'the man's. Also, sometimes I get choppy in confrontations like this when trying to identify who's doing what. I feel like I repeat names too often. Every chance I get, I pin a nickname on a character.

If I mention that the MC thinks someone else looks fat, I'll use something like 'the fat man' off and on. Or if someone is huge and muscular, I've used something like 'the giant' to identify the character.

I'm sure others have this problem as well, but what is the solution?
-Jay

[This message has been edited by jaycloomis (edited December 04, 2007).]

The His of the next sentence isn't clear - Chen or the man. A new paragraph will probably make it clear, or you could try another Chen, but then you're in the world of "did I say the char's name too often?" which is just as bad as the his/him/the man stuff.

Good luck. Oh, one random nitpick unrelated to the pronoun thing. The actions Chen take are shown in a sequential, by virtue of them being separate sentences. sweeping step. one palm on top. other flew up from the bottom. gripped like vice. tried to fire. trigger finger locked. leaned to right. heaved. guard went sailing.

I have a feeling that much of that action happened almost all at once. You might want to try a little immediacy by doing something like "At the same time, he placed one palm down on the top and the other on the bottom." (while flew indicates speed, you want these two actions to happen at the same time and for one hand to have flown means some time, even if just miliseconds, elapsed.)

I seem to recall that in his boot camp (or maybe in his books, but I can't remember which...Characters and Viewpoint?), OSC explains that a name is an identifier. If someone is walking through a door, you call it a door. If you call it, "the hanging piece of wood" it would get kind of weird. It's a door. Call it that.

Likewise, I'm Christine. Call me that. That's how I think of myself and it should be how others think of me. You can call me that a million times and it's all right -- because it's still my name. I'm not "the woman" or "the brunette" or (at the moment) "the pregnant lady" although all of those things are also true.

quote:

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(at the moment) "the pregnant lady" although all of those things are also true.

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You seem to me to be violating your PoV. How would Chen (I'm assuming he's supposed to be the PoV character) know that the guard is stepping forward because he's confident of the gun? That looks like a head-hop to me. So does the "when he didn't answer" although that's a subtler one. It would be stronger in my opinion if you stuck closer to Chen's PoV.

In action scenes I generally advise using fairly short sentences and keeping it simple. I'd stick to how the fighter experiences it. What difference does it make whether Chen stepped to the left of the right? I have a hard time visualizing a "sweepeing step." I'm not sure what that is and wondering pauses the action. He steps to the side and grabs the guard's gun hand with both of hands. Why would it matter if he put his hand palm down.

Do you do martial arts perhaps? Remember this is a story and not an instruction manual. The same with the last sentence. Something like: "He heaved back and forth. The guard went sailing." seems more staccato and more how someone would experience it. Is Chen really going to be thinking about ok I'll lean right now?

Sorry, I know you didn't ask any of that. But it was my thoughts on reading this. If any of it helps use it. Any of it you don't agree with, disregard.

Edit: This same advise is good for writing both sex AND fighting now that I think of it. Exact graphic descriptions (he put XXXX on XXXX in XXXXX position) are rarely what works.

Going in for an ultra-close 3rd person is better, I think.