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 early months of 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, I respond to writing-related challenges. When faced with a new genre, style, writing technique, or other book-scale thing that must be practiced over large wordcounts, I have a tendency to figure it out by experience… which is to say, to write a book with it. Or two. Or five.
I’m pleased to report that as of this blog’s drafting date, they/them now comes as naturally to me in third person as any other pronoun. Here, then, are my tips and tricks for turning your they/them enbies loose on the page without tripping over your own subordinate clauses.
1. Get Used To It
I mean this in a positive way! Many writers shy away from writing enby MCs not because of the challenge, but because they/them is new to them. 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 still had issues when I first got started.
But like me, I know many writers want to be better at these things. They 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.
Authors are 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. So make an enby character. Learn who they are as a person. Use their pronouns in your head. Write snippets with them. Write a first chapter with them. Write thirty more chapters. Then edit the hell out of those chapters. Fix your mishaps, misgendering, clunky phrasing, and all the workarounds you employed as you got used to using the pronoun.
Now, this is a simplification. Please also research enby representation before you get started, and use sensitivity readers as required. And even with practice, they/them is still trickier to write than pronouns with clear singular and plural forms. But that’s what the rest of this post is for.
2. Use The Singular Reflexive, “Themself”
One of the top questions I get on this topic is whether to use “themself” or “themselves” when referring to an enby character. Does that 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, but 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.
This is key for keeping your group scenes in order. Whenever you have more than one character on the page, you’ll want every tool at your disposal to make sure everyone knows who you’re talking about when Youssef and Mia whisper amongst themselves while Jesal removes themself from the conversation.
Like the first time you use(d) they/them pronouns at all, singular “themself” will probably take some getting used to. I can attest, though, that it quickly becomes your best friend, and will soon roll off the tongue so easily, you’ll forget you ever switched.
3. Index The Word “They” While Writing
Even when you’re writing a character with a binary gender, you have to name them directly at least once before you can switch to using pronouns, so everyone knows who those pronouns refer to. For example:
Wrong: She snagged the brightest bookmark from the pile available. She loved yellow.
Right: Aiukli snagged the brightest bookmark from the pile available. She loved yellow.
The same goes for they/them, with one critical difference: we use those words as more than just pronouns. So what’s a writer to do?
Say you open with your character, Jesal. They walk into a room, and now the word “they” refers to them. You write like this for a couple of paragraphs, until Jesal’s friends arrive. Something just changed. The moment you write that the five of them head for the snacks table together, you’ve reassigned your they/them. It belongs to the group now.
I call that “indexing.”
Pay attention to these switches. Picture they/them like a ball that gets tossed back and forth: one moment, it belongs to the enby character; the next, it belongs to a plural group of people or objects. The key is that a ball can’t teleport. It has to be passed, and to do that, the new target has to be identified. As you’re writing, avoid switching between singular and plural “they” without a line—even a couple words—that make it clear you’ve changed what the word refers to.
Example with broken and/or nonexistent indexing:
Mia teamed up with Airi in the hallway. Jesal filled their glass with ice cubes from the bowl on the table as their footsteps bolted for the front door. Mia would get what was coming to her. No prank went unreciprocated in this friend group, and the ice cubes on the table were just begging for mischief. Jesal would make good use of them: they made the best attacks. The key, though, was stealth. Mia and Airi were determined, but they were the quietest of all. Quiet ones always raised the least suspicion.
Context cues make it possible to puzzle out who “they” refers to throughout the excerpt above, but most readers will find it much harder to follow than a scene with proper indexing:
Jesal broke into a grin the moment they walked into the room. The snacks table had fruit punch, their favorite party drink by far. They were about to grab a glass when Mia ran in, laughing hysterically. Youssef and Emma pursued her, both armed with the ice cubes she’d slipped down their backs. They pursued Mia once around the room before she escaped. Jesal rolled their eyes and went back to their drink.
Here’s the same paragraph with its indexes bolded:
Jesal broke into a grin the moment they [Jesal] walked into the room. The snacks table had fruit punch, their favorite party drink by far. They were about to grab a glass when Mia ran in, laughing hysterically. Youssef and Emma pursued her, both armed with the ice cubes she’d slipped down their [Youssef and Emma] backs. They pursued Mia once around the room before she escaped. Jesal rolled their [Jesal’s] eyes and went back to their drink.
This is actually a common grammatical trick. Our minds are wired to associate any adjective or action with the most recent candidate we’ve read or heard, which is why, “The bees droned in the meadow as the man walked, flitting from flower to flower,” elicits mental images of a flower-picking man even if the author meant to refer to the bees. The same thing goes for they/them.
4. Pick One And Commit To It
As evidenced by the bad indexing example above, the biggest challenge with using they/them comes from assigning and reassigning it. So what if you just… don’t?
I don’t mean this on a book scale—obviously, you’re going to need to jump back and forth countless times. On a paragraph scale, though, you can work with the strengths of indexing by using name substitution, quantification alternatives, and sentence-structure changes to eliminate either singular or plural “they” from any overloaded paragraph.
Note how this sentence changes when this trick is applied:
Ula smiled. Linden’s happiness had been hard to miss the last time they met.
Ula smiled. Linden’s happiness had been hard to miss the last time she and they met.
While the second version doesn’t flow quite as well, it comes with one major advantage: it doesn’t leave “they” in index limbo OR reassign it. “They” continues to refer to Linden, who can carry it into the following sentences until you absolutely have to switch.
When it comes to elimination, name substitution often works best for removing singular “they,” while simple substitutes work better for the plural form: the two, the group, those, or including the additional characters like I did in the example above. This trick works best in paragraphs where either plural or singular “they” dominates, as this makes the remaining instances easier to remove. It comes with one caveat, but I’ll discuss that in the last point in this list.
5. Quantify Your Plural “They”
Group scenes get tougher when they/them pronouns are involved. If you ever get stuck on a line that feels ambiguous even when indexed, make your life easier by quantifying your “they.” This works far better in its plural form. All of them, they both, etc. are obviously plural uses, and can be sprinkled throughout your indexed paragraphs to reinforce plural “they.”
This can also work in the singular direction, but not as well as plural. Why? Because English is weird, and we refer to a group as singular even if we refer to its members in the plural. Hence why “everyone is scratching their heads” is correct, but “everyone are asking what is up with this language,” is not. “They alone,” can still refer to a group. One of the few places you can get around this is with a singular reflexive:
The three of them together got the project finished a minute before the deadline, though Huan suspected they themself hadn’t helped much after 11 PM rolled around.
Note that an obviously plural or singular “they” will change your index, not circumvent it, but it’s another good tool to have in your back pocket.
6. When All Else Fails, Change Your Sentence Structure
When writing your enby character, there will be times when you find yourself with just too many instances of the word “they” in a single chapter, page, or paragraph. Because the word has a dual use, this is kind of unavoidable. If your writing flow breaks down or ProWritingAid starts yelling at you for word repetition, congrats! You’ve reached this point on this list.
Most sentences that use the word “them” in a plural or singular context can be rearranged to eliminate the word altogether. If you find yourself eager to apply this trick, though, I encourage you to step back and take a breath first. Ask yourself what you’re erasing, and why.
I put this trick last on the list because it has the same caveat I mentioned in point #4 above. If you’re still unfamiliar or uncomfortable with using they/them pronouns in writing (especially writing that other people will read), you may find yourself using substitutions and sentence rearrangements to avoid the pronoun’s singular form. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Just that you were raised in a society that’s more familiar with plural “they” than singular, and (like the rest of us) have old habits to break and new habits to form. If you’ve ever strategically rearranged your spoken sentences to avoid gendering an enby friend, celebrity, or character with people who won’t take it well, you know what this feels like.
Because of how society trains us, this can be a very easy trap to fall into. Unfortunately, it also defeats the point of writing a non-binary character. Good representation means becoming comfortable with other people’s pronouns, and then writing them in a way that helps normalize them for others, and does not apologize for their existence.
And so, this trick should be a last resort, not a regular feature of your writing. Challenge yourself in other, more constructive ways!
Conclusion
If this post feels overwhelming to you, that’s okay. You’re not alone.
Take these tips at your own pace. If you’re new to third-person they/them, you might stay in the “getting used to it” stage for quite a while, then move on to later tricks while editing. You also don’t need to jump in at the deep end. Start with an enby side character, not a main POV. Experiment with flash fiction, not a full-length novel. Write a single character before you put them in a group scene.
You’ll get there. It may not be easy, but it’ll be worth it in the end!