Nekosmuse is my new god.

[icarus]

amethyst_lupin pointed me in the direction of a great meta by nekosmuse The Ten Commandments of Fanfiction.

Thou shalt never use epithets. Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou. If I never see Draco referred to 'the blond' or Ron called 'the redhead' again, it will be too soon.

Thou shalt use warnings. Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou. I cracked open a fic the other day and halfway through it - Surprise! - was the rape scene. Ack. I still have that unpleasant image in my mind, and I'm glaring at author and never want to read them again.

I shalt not spoil the rest. Enjoy!

Comments

[mad_maudlin]

I agree with that part, but I don't think it's a point related to epithets per se. It's more like another manifestation of thesaurus abuse, when writers use the most bizarre words, phrases and constructions known to the English (or any other) language rather than repeat themselves. Since epithets are a very visible manifestation of it, they get a bad name.

And the thing about fanfic is that you're more likely to get away with it than profic; because your can assume your audience knows your characters as well a you do, your epithets almost always have very obvious referents, just not in the text. I had no trouble with the HP essay that Neko linked, even the exaggerated examples. Someone who doesn't follow HP would've been way more lost.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you condemn epithets, you declare yourself cleverer than Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Shakespeare - all of whom used them with gay abandon. The point is not letting them get in the way of the developing sentence. Personally, I feel that your source is fanatical and wrong-headed in this matter, and I dropped a very broad hint to that effect in her LJ. Speaking of which, what is wrong with characters reading poetry or singing at each other? That is plain silly. She has read a couple of poorly conceived scenes and has abstracted a rule from them.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think it's a handy guide for new writers, and pretty funny to boot. These are all things that are easy to screw up, but can be done successfully. I follow no rule-book slavishly, and broke all my own personal rules of writing long ago. Never write rape? Never write first person? Chan- ick? Parent-child incest- ew? Never write PWPs? Oh yeah, it's all gone by the wayside.

Icarus

[mad_maudlin]

Actually, I think her point about poetry and song is that it's fantastically hard to do well (especially with contemporary/pop music) and it's frequently out of character. Her comments seemed to be addressed specifically towards the Lost fandom, you might note.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. But the post is still quite funny and I think accurate in that new writers abuse epithets terribly. I think another way writers abuse epithets is that they use a characteristic to denote the character that doesn't add to the story.

For example, calling Gandalf "Stormcrow," well, that brings a lot to the Lord of the Rings. The sarcasm and the very different view of Gandalf's help is eye-opening. Or calling Aragorn 'the ranger' as in 'the ranger sought ahead for a way through the marsh,' that's useful. It makes sense that the character whose POV we're seeing would think of Aragorn as a ranger in that context.

But very often epithet abusers will have the POV character think of Draco as 'the blond' in an intimate situation. That doesn't work. It adds nothing to the story, and it's too distant for that moment.

I've used epithets in situations where we don't know anything about the character except their appearance. The brown-haired guy sitting next to Harry in Cursed Artefacts For Sale. I chose that epithet with care. It tells you something about Harry's attitude towards the auction: he doesn't care, he doesn't view the others as competition; he's seeing the auction through a rather mundane perspective.

Let's see... where else... oh yeah - the second part of Reunion, Name Dropping. I use it because I use a vary limited outside perspective, witnessing two men meet outside a fine restaurant, one dark-haired, the other blonde. The reader already knows that Draco was going to meet with Snape, but since the story pertained a lot to gossip and appearances it makes sense to start out with how this appears.

Primer to the Dark Arts, Harry thinks about Snape (right after the relationship had begun), oh what was it? Something to the effect of 'the man was paranoid.' The epithet there signals that Harry has started to think of Snape as a man, not as his teacher.

So I'm agreeing with you. In a rambling sort of way. :) Epithets can add layers of meaning, but I hate it when they're laid on with a trowel, pointless, or inappropriate.

Icarus