When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that characterâs name, you are bringing the readerâs attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is âthe blond,â âthe magician,â âthe older woman,â etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.Â
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, donât do it. Youâre fixing a problem that actually isnât one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. Itâll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, donât do it. I.e. if youâre writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called âthird person deep POVâ. If the narration is filtered through the characterâs perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. Itâs the same, and just as bad, as writing âMy bright blue eyes returned his gazeâ in first person.
Furthermore,Â
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though itâs in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldnât refer to the characters in ways that character wouldnât.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says âDumbledore appearsâ, not âAlbus appearsâ. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as âSteveâ, where another character might think of him as âCapâ. Chekov might think of Kirk as âthe captainâ, but Bones thinks of him as âJimâ.Â
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as âthe other manâ, âthe taller manâ, or âthe doctorâ: usually when you donât know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other manâs hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as âthe doctorâ even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as âthe taller manâ even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as âthe green-eyed womanâ or one of my best friends as âthe taller personâ or anything like that. Itâs not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation - itâs too impersonal for someone youâre so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldnât think of that person as âthe other manâ: you only think of âotherâ when youâre distinguishing two things and you donât have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit. (It doesnât help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.) I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.
A good rule of thumb: a characterâs familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really donât need one at all).
