: Re: Alternatives for the over use of her and she in action scenes I am really struggling to try and cut out repetitive use of the word 'her' and 'she' in action scenes while still trying to
One stylistic device is to use sentence fragments using the present participle. Although sentence fragments are not normally accepted in formal writing, they are frequently used in fiction. You just want to be sure that you use them deliberately, knowing what you're doing, rather than using them by mistake.
For instance, I'll paraphrase one of the paragraphs used in the question, highlighting the changes:
Eyes falling on a pale shape obscured among the shadows. A swollen face, lips thick, opened. Brown eyes stared from sunken sockets. Lifeless. Half of the neck was missing. The swollen corpse was a girl. Limbs twisted unnaturally, horribly. A sound tore up from deep in Abby’s guts, between a scream and a sob. Backing away. Tripping as her foot snared on something cold. Falling face down, dazed, not needing to look up to know what she had tripped on. A portion of the corps that had been separated from the rest of the body? Another corps?
Since the surrounding style is already short and choppy, and sentence fragments already used, this style is a good fit. I didn't eliminate every pronoun, but most of them.
Whether it's appropriate, or where it becomes too much artifice at the expense of simply trying to eliminate pronouns (which many people do continue to use), is subjective. I wouldn't personally recommend using it throughout the entire narrative, but in those parts where a series (or almost blur) of visual impressions is being conveyed.
One author I know of who did something like this—using sentence fragments—was Roger Zelazny. It was used as a kind of stream of consciousness in long descriptions of observations that had a kind of dream-like quality to them.
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