[ SECRET POST #3209 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3209 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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04. [WARNING for incest]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 054 secrets from Secret Submission Post #459.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. http://i.imgur.com/jDEUwm2.png

[dreemyweird]

LOL, where is this from? It actually sounds like someone sat down and purposely wrote disastrous writing advice to mess with people.

[vethica]

PREACH. Unnecessary epithets are my number one hated convention in fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

What is wrong with epithets?

Yeah, that is pretty bad.

[(Anonymous)]

Though names are fine - essential, in fact, if you have a long scene with two or more people of the same sex, especially if there's a lot of dialogue.

[fingalsanteater]

Oh god. That made me cringe so hard. Just use their names strategically and vary your sentence structure so it's obvious which "him" you are referring to and we can avoid terrible epithets. I don't think I could've resisted responding to this. I'm not sure I admire your fortitude, OP, because now I might have to suffer through epithet laden fic if this is the type of advice that's going around.

[(Anonymous)]

I would rather read the names a million times in a row than epithets. I backtrack like no one's business when epithets enter the scene.

[(Anonymous)]

God, LOL, hahaha!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my god! Lol

[inkdust]

The pain.

[wannabe_influential]

I read that you should only use epithets up until you reveal the characters names, or something like that. :P

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed so much.

The sad thing is that you know someone is going to fall for it and follow this "advice".

[raspberryrain]

What's wrong with just using names?

[iambecomebees]

This is advice for amateurs, by amateurs. I'd expect to see a hot tip about breaking out a thesaurus for more ~descriptive~ words.

My biggest nitpick is when people write the events/actions in one paragraph in the wrong order. People doing things after others' dialog lines (in the same paragraph), in particular. A lot of writers in fandom, despite being very good at writing otherwise, really fail at this one technical aspect of it.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, that's crappy advice. It's so bad you almost wonder if they're doing it in purpose.

(... said the anonymous commenter with the glasses)

[insanenoodlyguy]

Be mean anyway. It's the only hope to learn em.

[naemi.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I used you to think that using epithets was like the best way to avoid pronoun confusion or name repetitions—but I was young at that time, and I didn't know much about writing or the English language (let alone grammar rules of any kind).

After years of learning and improving, and even making a living out of editing, I still see why some people might prefer epithets over repetitions. (Hell, repetitions bug me like nothing else.) But that makes the advice none the better. Either the person giving this advice is inexperienced, or s/he is a person of dubious style (without meaning to be rude or disrespectful here), or—and that's something I encountered before—the writer in question creates so much pronoun confusion that the easiest way out is using epithets whenever possible. (Of course, that doesn't tackle the real issue.)

Either way. Most likely, epithets are out of character voice. If not handled with extreme care, they can make a story (or a character) sound and seem ridiculous. They can be helpful; they can make sense. But if you don't know what you're doing, by all means, don't ever sell it as a rule set in stone.


As for the "authors never want concrit these days" part—I find that to be true and not true. My main contribution to fanfic is beta'ing, and I'm harsh; some say I'm brutal. No excuse, but my own beta is brutal, too, so that I effing learn my shit (kinda her own words). Maybe it's because I make clear how picky I can be right away, but I never met an author who was offended or taken aback by my level of concrit. And, I have to add, only one of the authors ever asking me to beta for them was a friend of mine. The others were strangers who became friends later. However, I hear you, OP. A lot of authors out there seem to give a damn about improving, but want someone to hold their hand and tell them how fantastic they are. That's totally not my cup of tea, but … I guess it's okay if you don't have ambitions to be a pro writer.

Wow. Long comment is long. Forgive me, y'all; I'm tipsy :o)

[quantumreality]

Oh god, that advice is like scratching a blackboard to me. (>_<)

[(Anonymous)]

Nothing will make me back button faster than overuse and lazy use of epithets. I can't help but wonder if the advice was tongue in cheek. Who on earth would seriously tell someone to do this?!

[(Anonymous)]

My native language doesn't even have gendered pronouns. Characters have these "name" things though. The whole point of having names is to differentiate between people.

[(Anonymous)]

Epithets are fine... in moderation.

[(Anonymous)]

people say "but you can't just keep using the character's name, that's boring".

It's boring like using "said" instead of coming up with increasingly strange ways to tell us someone said something. By that I mean, it's okay to use "said" all the time because it becomes invisible after awhile, your mind just glides past it, the same thing happens with character's names.


It's actually an even worse thing in fan fic, because at least in original fiction, we may need the author to explain to us who is the taller man and who is the blond, in fan fic, we.already.know. We know the characters well enough that the author wouldn't have to describe them at all and we'd still be able to fill in all the details.

the monster truck entered the story

[esteefee]

Using epithets is like using a monster truck to get into a parking place. Hopefully new writers will ignore this advice and learn how to parallel park instead or they will end up wrecking perfectly readable stories.

[(Anonymous)]

I really dislike this as it's applied, too. I mean, an epithet is fine, but make sure it fits your writing style, and perspective. If you're using 3rd person from the perspective of one character, the way they refer to the people around them needs to fit their train of thought. Their voice, so to speak. Otherwise, it's going to throw me right out of the story.

[rbhudson]

Agreed, that's terrible advice. Where is this from?