[ 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

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you.... I was starting to think I was totally alone in this response...

[(Anonymous)]

OP already has you covered: "[U]sing a description instead of a name or pronoun is BAD EXPOSITION (usually)." As long as the epithets in your fic fall into the "usually" part of that sentence, then you're fine.

[szaleniec1000]

My problem isn't with epithets, but with badly chosen epithets. It's easy to declare that they're all bad because some writers give no thought as to what's an appropriate one to use in a scene, but this would be wrong. It's like saying that you shouldn't use semicolons because of that one writer who never uses a comma when he can use a grammatically incorrect semicolon. I like to think I've never complained about an epithet that actually makes sense in context and reflects how the viewpoint character is thinking of the referent.