Greetings, Exalted One. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and friend to Captain Solo.
I know that you are powerful, mighty Jabba, and that your anger with Solo must be equally powerful. I seek an audience with Your Greatness to bargain for Solo’s life.
With your wisdom, I’m sure that we can work out an arrangement which will be mutually beneficial and enable us to avoid any unpleasant confrontation.
As a token of my goodwill, I present to you a gift: these two droids. Both are hardworking and will serve you well.
I don’t think writers realize that “strong female character” means “well written female character” and not just “female character who punches stuff and shoots stuff”
writers of the world: please stop using epithets in your writing, trust me “the blonde army doctor”, “the curly haired detective”, “the blue-eyed man” etc. do not sound as good in writing as they may sound in your head
instead, use the characters’ names, they’re there for a reason and it’ll make your writing much more crisp, tight, to the point, and still entertaining
Names, along with common words like “said” and “asked”, become invisible. The more invisible your words, the deeper your reader will fall into your writing, to the point where the reader will forget that there are words at all and just become part of the story.
When your words aren’t invisible, there’s the unfortunate potential that people will turn them into a drinking game instead of reading the story.
Just about the only time that epithets work instead of using a name is when the POV character doesn’t know the other character, and so the physical description is pretty much all the POV character has to go on. You don’t think of people you know as “the tall man” or “the blonde woman”. Your POV character shouldn’t, either.
Yo I actually wanted to make this post a while back and I think a lot of this stems from when you have two characters who use the same pronouns interacting (which happens in fanfic). There’s this fear that the reader will confuse who the characters are referring to, so that’s why epithets are used. Instead of using epithets, use syntax, which is word order, and carry your subject through multiple sentences and actions. So, Imma teach you how to do this under the cut. (It’s a bit of a grammar lesson tbh)
I have a really hard time with this. It doesn’t bother me reading it, is the thing. That’s what catches me up. I don’t have a problem reading it, and I have to take it on other peoples’ word that it’s a bad thing.
THIS. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL SPACE, DO NOT FUCKING USE EPITHETS unless they actually add something to the story, or unless you are Homer, in which case rock on with your dead and classical self. I wish I’d come up with the “because people will turn it into a drinking game” illustration, because that encapsulates pretty much everything I loathe about the things. It throws me right out of the story.
Click through to read the post on syntax, which is good and useful and says what I’ve wanted to say every time this comes up: my version goes “write in such a way that you do not NEED to use epithets to clarify who is doing the action or dialogue,” but weissruby does a great job explaining how to do this.
(ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ✧ 