: Re: Avoiding repetition when there are two unidentified individuals The tall figure was overwhelmingly tall. It stood in the corner of the room. The skinny figure right beside him sat on a

@Turnbaugh521

Vote Up Vote Down

You can look for other ways to identify the characters. For example:

The tall figure stood in the corner, towering over the unmoving skinny figure in the chair beside it. It moved away from the seated figure to the opposite side of the room and began palpating the wall as if looking for something. The other figure crawled from the chair and began palpating the floor. (etc)

In this example, "towering over" avoids repeating that the tall figure was very tall, "unmoving" avoids saying that the skinny figure wasn't moving, and once you know the identity of one you can refer to the "other". The riskiest thing in my version, clarity-wise, is who moved away, because the "it" could be ambiguous. That's why I said it moved away from the seated figure; that tells you who's acting by process of elimination.

I've stuck with your sparse description here, but if you had described the figures more, you could make use of that too -- referring to someone's lanky legs, blond locks, frayed cloak, or whatever.

You can identify characters in ways other than the noun phrases you used to introduce them.

(0)

Login to post a comment!