What’s wrong with this paragraph?
Ryan stepped over to Isaac’s unconscious form. Red blood dripped from Isaac’s forehead to the ground. He placed his fingers on the wound; it was not deep. He pulled a cloth from his satchel and bound it around Isaac’s head. He glanced over at Jim. “Isaac is out, but he’s okay.”
There are an awful lot of pronouns in this paragraph. No question that is one problem, but look a little deeper. Most of the sentences start the same way: “Ryan stepped…He placed…He pulled…He glanced…” The sentences can be rewritten to fix this, but that will only mask yet another, deeper problem.
Ryan’s character is experiencing the story on his own, filtering out the story from the reader. The story would be stronger if instead the reader experienced the story with Ryan, looking through Ryan’s point of view (POV), seeing what Ryan was seeing:
Ryan stepped over to Isaac’s unconscious form. Red blood dripped from Isaac’s forehead to the ground; the wound was not deep. The cloth in the satchel should fix it. “Isaac is out, but he’s okay.”
The first and second sentences remained the same (except for a period changing to a semicolon). The third sentence originally was: “He placed his fingers on Isaac’s forehead; the wound was not deep.” To see through Ryan’s eyes, I removed the phrase, “He placed his fingers on Isaac’s forehead.” Unfortunately, when I did that, I lost the interesting detail of how Ryan checked the wound—using his fingers. Details are important, so the sentence needs to be revised again. I’ll do that below.
The fourth sentence originally was: “He found a cloth in his satchel and wrapped it around Isaac’s head.” I changed that to: “The cloth in the satchel should fix it.” Ryan is thinking that the cloth will bind the wound, and the reader thinks along with Ryan. This is a technique called interior monologue.
Finally, the fifth sentence was, “He glanced over at Jim.” I deleted that sentence entirely, because Jim was the only other conscious character in this scene, and the reader didn’t need Ryan glancing at anyone to know who Ryan was talking to.
The paragraph is much improved, but it still needs work. Here’s a third revision:
Ryan stepped over to Isaac’s unconscious form and felt the gash near the hairline. Red blood dripped to the snow, but the wound did not go deep. The cloth in the satchel should fix it. “Isaac’s out, but he’s okay.”
Ryan again touches the wound to find out the extant of Isaac’s wound, as he did in the first revision.
A “gash” is more specific than “wound”, so I substituted that word in. I also had a hard time imagining a cut on the forehead dripping. I moved the wound to Isaac’s hairline. I also changed “ground” to “snow”, because the whiteness of snow contrasts with “red blood.”
The phrase, “the wound was not deep” is passive, so I changed it to the active, “the wound did not go deep.” The rest of the paragraph remained as it was.
Now the name “Isaac” is used twice instead of four times. The pronoun “he” and “his” have been completely wiped out. I added more details, and the sentences flow in a nicer rhythm.