Anonymous asked: I'm writing a story where the main character doesn't have a name. Later in the story the character will get a name but till then, how can I write about him without using "him" and "he all the time?

Tazzy: Oooh, this is a difficult one. As well as not giving him a name, are you also attempting to keep details about him to a minimum? If not, you can say things like “the brown-haired man” or “the tall man” or similar, I suppose.

He browsed the bookshelf for any interesting titles. Sifting his way through the books, he discarded one after the other- none of them caught his interest.

vs

The brown-haired man stood, browsing the bookshelf for any interesting titles. Slender fingers roved across various tomes, though each book name failed to rouse any curiosity in their content- they were discarded, one after the other.

The latter was a bit oddly phrased, if you’re writing as an omniscient third person narrator. However, if you rearrange sentences and reword things, it’s possible to skimp out on pronouns. Also, if you create a variety of epithets to refer to him (such as what I mentioned earlier- “brown-haired man”, “tall man”, things like that) you can use those until you tell the reader what his name is.

I don’t know if that helps :/ This is a hard thing to answer! If you need more help, message us again, I’ll wrack my mind for more advice. :)