[ SECRET POST #2111 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2111 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 124 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/Iusoe.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I hate that SO much. I also hate when Brits write Americans and use terms like "tucked in", "bloody hell", and a few other terms that 20 something American dudes would say. Get and American to beta please. I'm assuming that sentiment also goes both ways.

[(Anonymous)]

The best part is when they write shit like that when the character is standing in a crowded location like a train station or something. "She turned to look at the brown-eyed girl." That's nice, author. Which one? Lots of times it's actually more specific to use their names.

[(Anonymous)]

It's one of the evils you learn in school. Like not writing "say".

The worst I've ever seen was (which works "better" in German) "the one who had just gotten dressed".

[(Anonymous)]

Shit, I'm guilty of this. It's just so repetitive to say the same namse over and over again that you get self-conscious it sounds stupid.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, yes. This. I think it's okay if one uses the occupation of the character (like "the scientist" or "the spy"), but "brunette" and "blonde" for some reason completely freak me out. Well, I don't know, maybe I have some issued with hair colour. "Red", by the way, doesn't really annoy me.
And all those "blue-eyed", "the older man" and "the yonger girl" are disastrous.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. It's fine if the character can't tell if it's someone they know in certain situations, but if there's no reason to not use their proper names instead of descriptors, it's annoying. I refuse to read fics that read like this secret's example, and unless I'm careless, I refuse to rec them.

[(Anonymous)]

I see this a lot in published work too, but it's always with third-person/omniscient POV. I find it more acceptable then, because using pronouns and names gets boring after a time; additionally, it works if it's being used to prove a point in the previous dialogue. It hardly bothers me as much as some other writing cliches, or just poor skill to begin with.

[(Anonymous)]

YES THIS

[(Anonymous)]

God, yes. This. I hate it so much. Unless it gets so bad it loops back around to being funny again. Like when you get Sam Winchester being called 'the blue-eyed moose'...

[intrigueing]

God yes. Preach.

And non-fic authors do it too. I mean, I love Tamora Pierce, but sometimes I wanted to whip out and red pen and just cross those fucking stupid pronoun-substituting descriptors out (especially the age-related ones. Who the fuck refers to someone as "the fourteen-year-old"?) And I remember not being able to give Rowling shit for her five billion adverbs and adjectives because she had the ability to write action and dialogue in 3rd person omniscient prose with nary a descriptor in sight.

[(Anonymous)]

Those are called epithets.

And I just flat out refuse to read any fic that uses them. Unless there is a really, really good reason for it, the moment an author uses anything other than a character's name, I back button.

I mean, when there's so much fiction out there that I could be reading, I'm not going to waste time reading fiction that keeps irritating me. (I am a liiittle more lenient with fic for tiny fandoms or rarepairs, but not that much, TBH.)

[(Anonymous)]

The only time labels like that should be used is when the POV character or narrator doesn't know the character's name. And even then, sparingly. Things like, "The taxi driver", "the waiter", "the bank robber"--but when it's a named character, use their name.

Please. Please please please.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously. This is only okay when the character whose POV you're writing from doesn't know the name of the person that's being referred to. After he/she gets that name, USE IT. There are so many otherwise decent writers out there who basically poison their stuff with crappy epithets.

I tried to explain this to a writer once. They pretty much brushed me off. Such a shame.

[cloud_riven]

Yeah, I don't think I've ever used epithets like that in real life.

But it would make it so much more entertaining!

"Hey. Pass this carton of eggs to the younger man."

"What."

"I'm sorry, The Co-Worker. I wasn't clear enough. The raven-haired lad."

[shinysylver]

Related to this. I HATE it when people write something like this in their summaries:

"a certain Navy Seal"
"a certain Alpha wolf"
"a certain Slytherin"
"a certain blue-eyed boy"
"a certain Jersey detective"

Where did that even come from and why does everyone do it? Not only does it sound stupid and take up valuable summary space, but it is not at all useful. I mean either the canon only has one Jersey detective in it and highlighting "a certain" one is ridiculous or it has a shit-ton of Slytherins and I have no clue if you mean Draco or Goyle or Crab or Pansy... Okay, usually I know, but when someone phrases something that way I feel like being willfully ignorant.

I read a lot of fic and a LOT of bad!fic but summaries that have that phrasing almost always get the pass from me because it just frustrates me so much. A summary with a stupid epithet on top of that ridiculous "a certain" thing repels me faster than even bad spelling.

...sorry I have strong feelings about this. LOL.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a really hard habit to break once you're firmly entrenched in it, too. Doesn't help that a lot of the fic I used to write would be centered in 'verses where not everyone is human, so you had to occasionally drop something in to remind the reader what exactly the other character is.

[szaleniec1000]

If you must use an epithet, there's no reason at all for not choosing one that makes sense in the context of the scene. If you write an epithet that doesn't fit the way the viewpoint character is currently thinking of the referent, then the reader is no longer in their head and this is distracting.

[(Anonymous)]

"She has a name, one Jenny is quite familiar with...instead you find yourself referring to Jenny's best friend as 'the tall girl' or 'the brunette'..."

When I see this keep cropping up repeatedly in the same story, it's bothersome, but otherwise? Unless it's a first-person story from Jenny's perspective...that bit of narration is not about how Jenny thinks/feels. It's for the reader's information, and has nothing to do with Jenny.

[mekkio]

I am the opposite. Seeing a name repeated over and over annoys me to no end. I also think it depends on what type of genre it is. Hardboiled crime noir fiction practically does this "foul" every page. But it works there. And I adore that genre so much so that when I don't see the same thing in other genres, it's really jarring.

[truxillogical]

There's definitely a knack to doing it right, and it doesn't happen often. I can understand why it gets a lot of play in slash fic, what with both pronouns being the same. But...oy.

What bugs me a lot is in Clint/Coulson fic, they keep referring to Clint as "the blonde." Which isn't just bad writing, but also...Clint isn't blonde. In the comics he is, but if you're writing a movie-based fic, I'm sorry, that's not even dirty blonde. So now it's bad and confusing.

[vongroovy]

Oh, ugh, I've been running into this so often lately, and I despise it. I've been reading a lot of Inception fic, and it's just everywhere. I was trying to read a fic the other day that was otherwise well-written and that seemed to have an intriguing plot, but I just couldn't when 95% of the time characters were referred to by their job description. And always capitalized too! Like, "The Point Man looked over at The Forger." NO. What is wrong with using names? Or "he"? I promise, I won't be confused!

[(Anonymous)]

Uhg, I hate this so much. It's distracting, it pulls you out of the head of the character.
"She looked at the boy." No? He's not "the boy" to her, so when I read that I'm no longer seeing things from her perspective.

[inkdust]

Ugh. Yes.

[maverickz3r0]

*facepalm*

No really, that's my response to this. Facepalming.

Epithets are a valid writing technique. The fact that they get abused in fic sometimes? Does not make them 'bad writing' automatically. That's like saying you've seen too much purple prose so people should stop describing things, okay?

Obviously they should be used sparingly. But they exist for a reason. And no, that reason is not 'to deliberately piss you off' as apparently half the people around seem to think. It's because it can be really irritating to throw names around all over the place, and pronouns only work well if you have only one male and one female character in a scene.

As for people complaining about clunky ones (the raven-haired lad, a certain Slytherin, etc.) you're actually complaining about epithet abuse, not use. A clunky epithet is not a good epithet.

What're we gonna get rid of next, dialogue tags other than 'said' and 'asked'? Descriptive dialogue tags that include character actions? Sorry. I'm just. Wow. There are lots of ways to designate the speaker or the person acting in the scene, yes, but epithets are one of them. And there is nothing inherently wrong with them.