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🏳️‍🌈 - Tricks For Writing They/Them Pronouns in Third Person

Note #1: Enbies = NBs = non-binary people, in case you're not familiar with the terminology ✨

Note #2: I generalize a little in this chapter, but neopronouns also exist, and fall under the enby umbrella. They are, however, exempt from the unique challenges of they/them

In the months leading up to ONC 2021, I got into a conversation with a few queer friends about how hard it is to write a character with they/them pronouns in third person. How do you handle group settings? Reflexive verbs? Name exhaustion, if you try not to overuse the word "they"? Some of us had done it with side characters, some of us had put enbies front and center in first-person narratives that evaded the challenge altogether, but the challenge remained.

Now, anyone who knows me knows how I respond to writing-related challenges. I love to push myself, and that extends beyond just wordcounts; anything that expands my horizons as a writer and teaches me new skills is fair game. When faced with a new genre, style, writing technique, or other book-scale thing that must be practiced over large wordcounts, I also have a tendency to figure it out by experience... which is to say, I write a book with it. Usually (though not always) a novella. Most of my novellas are experimental works of some kind.

Anyway, the ONC was, conveniently, coming up, so I jotted down an idea-fragment in my book queue: Write a novella with a non-binary protagonist in third person. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to see what I could learn. I wanted to see if I could get to a point where it came as naturally as any other pronoun, so I wouldn't be limited by my own lack of experience on the matter anymore. Two months later, that idea-fragment joined with a conversation about bug-sized humans trying to ride a whirligig across a pond, and Green Grass Weald was born.

It was a romp, it was a challenge, and I learned as much from that book as I'd hoped to going in. Here, then, are my tips and tricks for turning your they/them-identifying enbies loose on the page without tripping over your own subordinate clauses.

1. Get used to it

I mean this in the most positive way possible! Many writers shy away from writing enby MCs not because of the challenge, but because they/them is new to them, and new things feel weird by default. Maybe they don't know much about nonbinary genders. Maybe they're worried about how readers will react. Maybe they're not entirely comfortable with they/them pronouns themselves—hell, I'm queer myself, and I know I still had issues when I first got started.

Like me, I know many writers want to be better at these things, but just haven't had the chance to use they/them pronouns enough to get used to them.

The good news? Writing a book is perfect for that.

The best way to get used to something through exposure, and us authors have the advantage of being able to spend time with and "get to know" enby characters without having to subject real-life enbies to our trip-ups as we practice. Make an enby character. Learn who they are as a human being, not as an identity. Use their pronouns in your head. Write snippets with them. Write a first chapter with them. Write thirty more chapters. And then edit the hell out of those, fixing mishaps, clunky phrasing, and all the workarounds you used at first but then found you didn't need anymore by the end because surprise! They/them now comes to you as easily as any other pronoun.

Now, this is a simplification (among other things, please research enby representation before you get started, and use sensitivity readers as required) and there's a reason this is only the first item on this list. They/them is still trickier to write than pronouns with clear singular and plural forms. But that's what the rest of this chapter is for.

2. Make use of the singular reflexive, "themself"

"Themself" or "themselves" is one of the biggest questions that came up in the conversation that started Green Grass Weald. Does your character pat themselves on the back? Or pat themself? We're used to the former because formal grammar dictates it, but the latter is not actually incorrect. Not only that, it flows intuitively from its equivalent in other pronouns (himself, herself, emself, etc.) and, best of all, it gives you a singular form for a word you'll also use in plural contexts.