But Stephen King says to do it this way....

[slaymesoftly]

I love this. Many essays or lists on writing advice from well-known authors make me cringe. Yes, there are some things you should/shouldn't do, but in something as creative as writing nothing is cut and dried. There are no "musts", there is what works for you and your style, and for your audience. Anyone reading writing advice should learn to

Comments

[cindergal]

Hah! Funny.

I think the only times one should use epithets is outlined in this article, which someone posted to this community recently. Gah, they really are one of my pet peeves. :-)

[slaymesoftly]

I do remember seeing that. Possibly why that particular thing was the first example that occurred to me.

[slaymesoftly]

*nods* I'm sure that's true much of the time. However, I continue to disagree with the common wisdom that characters' names and "said" are invisible. I've had to edit too many stories in which a character's name has been repeated so often I want to scream "I know who he is!". lol Repeating a character's name three times in the same sentence is never a good plan, and if a simple "he" won't work due to there being two characters actions being described, then a "the other man" or something similar has a place. Obviously, as pointed out in the articles referenced above, constantly referring to a character with an epithet is tiresome and reduces the character to that one characteristic, but contorting ones writing in an effort to avoid violating "rules" like this one is no less appealing to a reader. IMHO. Ditto for putting "said" on every line of dialogue. If the writer has a good grasp of the character's speech habits and cadences, and especially if there are only two people in the conversation, it's possible to write quite a bit of