On Epithets and Substantive Nouns in Writing
N.B. - This ramble is not directed at anyone on my friends list.
Last night I was reading Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker. I noticed the absence of something I've grown so used to reading fanfiction that it took me a moment to realize what was missing: epithets.
Fanfiction writers appear to have a passionate love of referring to people by either job class, title, or hair colour. "The warrior grasped his sword." "The blonde shrugged." "The king leered at the visiting noblewoman." Whence this habit?
Most published authors that I am familiar with (at the moment, I'm thinking of Jacqueline Carey, George R.R. Martin, and Anne Bishop, though there are certainly others) don't use this particular convention. Looking back through my own writing, I do not tend toward this usage either. I prefer names. It personalizes the characters for me. After all, I usually don't look at sabrielrose and think of her as "the blonde." I think of her by her name.
I can see substituting someone's title for their name in particular situations; I've been known to occasionally refer to Kain Highwind as "the Dragoon" in situations when I feel the sentence calls for it. What I don't understand is this passionate love for using people's hair colours to describe them. In certain fandoms, this works particularly poorly (cf. "the blonde" in Final Fantasy IV. I can think of three characters right off the top of my head that could apply to. Or "the blonde" or "the brunette" in Final Fantasy VIII - there's three of each, just counting the six party members plus Seifer.) There are a couple of writers out there who do this to such excess that I refuse to read their work anymore because it just annoys me too much, and they aren't good enough otherwise to compensate.
The only reason I can think of that this is so incredibly popular in fanfiction versus original fiction is that people are busy waving themselves about and proclaiming "Look how big my knowledge-of-canon wang is!" But really, that's a crappy reason to do it.
Thoughts, opinions, and counter-arguments are welcome :D
Last night I was reading Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker. I noticed the absence of something I've grown so used to reading fanfiction that it took me a moment to realize what was missing: epithets.
Fanfiction writers appear to have a passionate love of referring to people by either job class, title, or hair colour. "The warrior grasped his sword." "The blonde shrugged." "The king leered at the visiting noblewoman." Whence this habit?
Most published authors that I am familiar with (at the moment, I'm thinking of Jacqueline Carey, George R.R. Martin, and Anne Bishop, though there are certainly others) don't use this particular convention. Looking back through my own writing, I do not tend toward this usage either. I prefer names. It personalizes the characters for me. After all, I usually don't look at sabrielrose and think of her as "the blonde." I think of her by her name.
I can see substituting someone's title for their name in particular situations; I've been known to occasionally refer to Kain Highwind as "the Dragoon" in situations when I feel the sentence calls for it. What I don't understand is this passionate love for using people's hair colours to describe them. In certain fandoms, this works particularly poorly (cf. "the blonde" in Final Fantasy IV. I can think of three characters right off the top of my head that could apply to. Or "the blonde" or "the brunette" in Final Fantasy VIII - there's three of each, just counting the six party members plus Seifer.) There are a couple of writers out there who do this to such excess that I refuse to read their work anymore because it just annoys me too much, and they aren't good enough otherwise to compensate.
The only reason I can think of that this is so incredibly popular in fanfiction versus original fiction is that people are busy waving themselves about and proclaiming "Look how big my knowledge-of-canon wang is!" But really, that's a crappy reason to do it.
Thoughts, opinions, and counter-arguments are welcome :D