How can I steer myself away from using pronouns too often as I write in 3rd person?

Question

I noticed that I use "she", "he", and "they" - and a lot of sentences also begin with the aforementioned pronouns. How can I steer away from doing this so often as I write in 3rd person fiction? Here is an example:

Rosa took off her shoes, and stepped onto the hardwood floors in the old Victorian home. She peered into the kitchen as she stood in the dining room, but there was no sight of a single soul around. She walked further down the hall, and that's when she heard the sounds of giggling voices, so she stopped midway. The voices sounded as if they were coming from the back bedroom, so she then proceeded to walk that way. Her heart thumped against her chest. She took one step forward, and that's when she heard it, the deafening scream.

Answer 1

Having read your example it seems to me that the reason it sounds like your overusing ‘she’ is because, particularly when used to start the sentence, ‘she’ tells the reader which character is doing stuff in the sentence. In this case however Rosa is the only character in the scene so continuously telling me that she is the one doing everything is superfluous and it breaks the flow.

So to rewrite your example:

Rosa took off her shoes, and stepped onto the hardwood floors in the old Victorian home. Peering into the kitchen, from the dining room, there was no sight of a single soul around. Walking down the hall the sounds of giggling voices stopped her midway. They sounded as if they were coming from the back bedroom, so she then proceeded to walk that way. Her heart thumped against her chest. One step forward, and that's when she heard it, the deafening scream.

So I’ve not removed all the shes, having some if fine. I’ve just changed a lot of things from being ‘she peered’ to ‘peering’ and this works because it’s obvious who must be doing the peering. In a scene with more than one character you would clearly still need to specify who did what, but even then if you specify that Rosa is doing something then afterwards anything else that is done will be assumed to be being done by Rosa, until you say another character is doing something.

Answer 2

I worried about this recently, so decided to do some analysis on some ebooks I owned by exporting sections into word and writing some VBA code to analyse the sentence starter words. Pronouns and character names appeared in the top 10 most used words on every one. It was only a sampe of 8, but made me feel better about my own writing.

My advice is that if it stands out to you, then there is a good chance you need some revision, but be aware of the accepted norms.

Here are a few results just in case they are of interest.

	Sentences Analysed	No. different words used	Starts with a Pronoun	Starts with Char. Name
Gaiman	1,119	242	22%	13%
Hemmingway	1,058	224	23%	8%
Simmons	710	211	17%	10%
Martin	989	242	20%	20%
Brin	981	231	19%	11%
Mariani	980	199	31%	11%
Herbert	1,070	252	25%	12%
Clancy	889	249	18%	11%
My MS	994	263	23%	8%

Answer 3

Pronouns Aren't the Problem

I see two potential issues here: repetitive sentence structure, and focus on choreography.

Repetitive Sentence Structure

She [did a thing] [connecting word] [another thing].

The sample has 6 sentences, and they are basically all compound sentences with ~20 words. So it feels a little repetitive, because it is — but it's more than just the one pronoun!

Focus on Choreography

This is the real issue. The sample is all a summary of the POV character's actions. There's no description of the environment, no build up of tension, and no insight into the POV character's thoughts.

When OP wrote: "Her heart thumped against her chest" I was surprised; I hadn't realized this was a tense / scary scene until that point.

Suggestion

Rosa took off her shoes, and stepped onto the hardwood floors in the old Victorian home. The floorboard croaked like a dying man, and she shuddered. Where had that thought come from?

She peered around the entryway, but there was not a soul in sight. The dim pool of light from the front windows provided just enough illumination to give motion to the dark shadows. Rosa steeled her nerves, and started down the hall. The croaking of the floorboard hounded her steps.

She heard the incongruous sound of giggling voices, and she stopped dead. The high, sharp tones sounded as if they were coming from the back bedroom. It didn't sound anything like Uncle Fredrick. Her heart thumped against her chest. She took one step forward, and the stillness was shattered by a deafening scream.

This revision adds details designed to give insight into Rosa's state of mind and describe the unsettling appearance of the house.

Also, the sentence structure is varied. I have some short, simple sentences, some longer simple sentences, and finally some of the long, compound sentences OP started with.

Results

I used 5 "she"s and 2 "Rosa"s compared to OP's 7 and 1 — so overall, a pretty similar number of pronouns. But I don't think this version sounds repetitive at all.