Writing: The use of pronouns and who says what?

I think as a writer I'm noticing more and more grammar when I read. Today, I want to talk about two points which are different but still closely linked. The first is the use of pronouns and the second is who says what in a dialogue. I'm puzzled and annoyed at things I have been reading lately.

On the use of pronouns:

 

I use a lot of my "Frenchness" in my writing and it seems to me that in French, we use personal subject pronouns a lot more than "contemporary" English writers does. I don't know if it's a trend or not but I get really annoyed when I see the name of a character when there could be a pronoun. In the same way, if I have two male characters and I use "he" for both, people seemed to be confused about who does what, which feels like an aberration to me.

The characters aren't supposed to be differentiable only by their names, they are supposed to be differentiated by what they look like, what they wear, where they are in the room, what they are holding in their hands and what they are feelings.

They are different! 

I have the feeling that the extreme use of names in a single paragraph is robbing the reader from looking at the character in a general manner. It takes away dimensions of the character. The writer only has to put a name there and can forget about all the other elements that would give life to the character. 

I, personally, would rather use names only when things get really ambiguous.

Who says what?

Which leads us to "Who says what?" In an equally frustrating way, I can't figure out who is speaking in a lot of pieces I have been reading lately. Lines and lines of dialogue without tags and without a single change of vocabulary for the characters to be distinguishable from each other. Dialogue and action of different characters in the same paragraph, so you think x is talking but the tag belongs to y and then x is talking again or with it y this time, it doesn't make any sense. Sometimes, I feel so confused. But seeing other people's comments on the same piece, I also feel like I'm the only one. 

Am I really missing something? 

I would rather have some more tags, or break the dialogue with some motion than to have the reader needing to read everything three times and still barely manage to know who is talking. It is infuriating when the same authors have so many names in a single action paragraph. 

Once again, I'm not saying I'm doing it right but I'm saying that there is a problem here and I don't see any rules about when to use pronouns and tags to be clear.

So I'm going to give you mine:

1) When introducing a character, use his name three times then you can go with pronouns.

2) When adding a new character in a scene, use his name three times and use the name of the other characters once before changing to pronouns.

3) If you have more than 2 characters talking always use tags.

4) When a characters talks a lot without interruption, use tags for the other characters before and after him/her. And I hope you actually put a tag in the middle of the tirade.

5) When two characters are talking, if they don't have extremely different view points or different accents, use tags at least every three interactions.

And please, please, please, don't start all your sentences with a pronoun, have some variety. 

And please, please, please, if one person is talking and another is doing the action have separated paragraphs. I won't kill you to hit "enter" one more time.

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Old-fashioned writer

Sometimes I feel like I'm an old-fashioned writer. 

Other writers I know are using a lot of professional applications on tablets and pc when I'm just adding one words after another. I don't even know what those tools do or how to use them. Is it my Romantic/Romanesque style or just a way to avoid going into something which seems complicated?

I'm not too sure.

Once upon a time writers were able to write for monthly magazine and to add one chapter a month. They didn't have to go through months of editing processes of course there might have been typos and some inconsistencies but it still gave us some of the best books of all time. I'm not saying that editing is bad, I use a lot of it. But I think that sometimes a natural story coming strait out of the mind of it's creator has a lot more chance to describe something profound than something that has been revised by several people in months especially when there ideas dramatically differ. For example, I had always been told that I needed to add more characters in "Demon Soul", there is a place particularly crowded and I was asked to had more to make it great contrast with the quiet library where my main character spend a lot of time. Some readers wanted to know more about secondary characters so I developed them in the story giving them each backgrounds. I was told recently, for the first time, that I had too many character making the first chapters hard to read. I'm not sure how to go about it. I might try to have more 2 dimension characters and less 3 dimension characters in the sequels. I don't think I will reedit Demon Soul with the new point of view, it seems like going back to earlier version which were less appreciated. I believe that in the end, I have the last word anyway as the author.

Another reason why I think editing can be stealing something out of the story is that you evolve when you write a story and if you pause long enough you are not the same person anymore than you were when you started. All in all the characters change during revision and they might lose an indescribable flavor. If Jane Austin had edited Emma many times, I might not have ended up hating the character for the first half of the story only I might have hated here all the way. But liking her in the end made me like the novel. 

As you become a better writer with time I think it is important to understand that if your old stories don't seem as good as the new one,they  still represent where you were at when you wrote them and a lot of people are still there and probably enjoy them a lot. 

I find the description of Paris in Notre-Dame de Paris absolutely atrocious but I still read through it and enjoyed the rest of the novel. I'm probably not the only one who got frustrated with the fish catalog in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Stay true to your story !