I had a thought while I was writing, about names and such.

When you are attempting to show a darker scene between two people, (rape, noncon, killing, etc), is it better to just use 'He' and 'She' all the time, instead of using names every so often?

I think that writing names during these long, wispy, and captivating sequences ruins the flow as they mean too much.

After seeing a person (You know who he is, Harry), doing dark, shadowy things, it ruins it to say "Harry", as the readers own beliefs interfere. When you say "He", what you say carries on to the reader, even though they know who he is.

It erases the "face" if you will, that they made for Harry when you stop referring to him as Harry every so often and just use 'He' all the time.

Am I right/wrong/misguided?

What do you think?

 

Absolutely. Not using a name dehumanizes the person and makes them either a monster if the aggressor or a plaything if it is the victim. In contrast if your point is to invoke sorrow for the person or to cause dismay at their downward spiral then use their name as often as possible.

Also, Generally speaking if you are writing the thoughts of either the aggressor or the victim then you should have them think the other person's name less and less as they both disassociate who the other person was before with who they see now.

 

I think you have to be careful. If the only reason you avoid the name is the connotations, then if you don't use the name at all during the sequence (besides at the beginning) you risk having the opposite problem later in your story. Sure, during the scene, using the name could pull up positive associations you don't want, but then, after the scene you have that same problem and by removing the name from the scene entirely, you continue that disassociation you are worried about later in the story when you probably need the name to conjure darker images.

 

Eh... it doesn't need to be that complex, I don't think. I would agree with Nec. Paen. Get rid of the name if you want to intensify a particular aspect of that person, whether good or bad, aggressor or victim.

Don't over do it or kill yourself for it, though. You can substitude he/she with appropriate signal descriptors for similar if not better effect. Too many pronouns just confuse the hell of the readers. Flow >> style in this case.