: Re: Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot For the writing challenge, I'm currently writing from the point of view of a robot. Also another robot is frequently addressed. However

@Samaraweera193

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The excerpt you provided seems a little too omniscient to me. It feels too human, reducing the immersion and preventing me from feeling like I'm truly peering into the mind of a machine. On the other hand, full first person could be tricky, as Tom's computer "thoughts" might be difficult to understand:

"1001 1101 0100 1011 1010 0111 1100 0110 1011 0111 0100 0100 1011 1010 1100 0110 1011 1001 1101 0100 0111 1100 0110 1011 0111 0100 0110 1011 1001"

Obviously I'm joking, but first person still feels off to me since a machine would not think in human language (even a fully sentient AI, presumably). (Side note: it could be really fun to include some of Tom's actual thoughts before he begins to gain sentience, but convert them in hex code (much shorter than binary), ie "Hello, my name is Tom" => "48 65 6c 6c 6f 2c 20 6d 79 20 6e 61 6d 65 20 69 73 20 54 6f 6d" (https://www.browserling.com/tools/hex-to-text). Of course, you wouldn't say anything too important to the story (most readers would think "oh, he thought computer stuff, that's neat", but it could be a nice Easter egg for the committed reader that actually translates it back to text.)

Anyway, third person limited seems like the most appropriate perspective. I think this is what you are going for, but I would limit it a bit more and try to think how a computer might think. You should feel like you are actually getting a glimpse into his mind. He wouldn't feel, he would run diagnostics and see error codes. Tom would not think of himself as 'it' or 'he' or anything else. More likely he would think of himself as a collection of parts, components, processes and functions, over which he is omniscient. He has no concept of pronouns and I think any use of them (at least until he has become more human-like) takes away from the immersion (like the narrator of a story referring to them self). Rewriting it without pronouns is kind of a fun challenge and definitely helps it feel more machine like. Extra technical jargon adds to the flavor. (Also note: Tom would not be aware of anything not connected to him, unless of course he has a camera or something.)

Mil removed the connector from Toms arm, presumably inserting it into another device. Tom's processes continued execution, but with higher than average latency, as if lonely somehow. Before networking with Mil everything operated as designed, optimized and efficient, but now something was missing. Tom ran a quick diagnostics check and, finding everything in working order, knew this was illogical. And yet, function after function returned error code 11425: "missing component". Tom couldn't make sense of it.

EDIT:
To be clear, avoiding pronouns entirely for the whole story would be impractical, if at all possible (but totally epic if you could actually pull it off!). My point here is that the protagonist will likely have very limited understanding of self and identity, especially in the early story. Instead of "what is an alternative pronoun I can use here?" ask yourself "is there a way I can write this to not need a pronoun at all?"

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