WIP Challenge Day 26, Wednesday

[jagnikjen]

How is your writing going or not going today??

~ It's going great!
~ It's going.
~ It's slow going...
~ It's going nowhere...
~ It's gone.

Discussion topic...let's talk about describing characters and I don't mean hair and eye color or build....

When you refer to one character by another character how do you do it? I ask because I recently read a fic where one particular character was constantly referred to using the same phrase over and over and over. It was good the first time and would have been fine twice or three times throughout the *whole* fic, which was quite long. But as you can imagine, it became quite tedious to see it over and over and over.

I'd much rather see the character's name more often then, say, "the redhead" too many times when referring to Ginny or Ron from the Harry Potter series.

Also when referring to other characters, think about how the point-of-view character is going to think of or refer to another character. For example, in Harry Potter, Harry's best friend Ron does not think of or refer to Harry as 'the boy who lived.' He thinks of Harry as Harry or his best mate.

Do you see this in fic? Are you guilty of it yourself?

Comments

[sylvaine]

I wrote.... uh... one sentence today. But the day is not done yet, and I might end up avoiding doing my homework by writing instead of reading for a change. I live in eternal hope...

Discussion topic: seeing characters referred to as "the redhed" or "the brunette" or "the taller man" or "the younger" or... well, you get what I'm saying - is one of my pet peeves. I'd MUCH rather just see the name every sentence. If the writing sounds repetitive without the use of epithets, then the sentence structure isn't varied enough.

My annoyance is mostly directed at epithets that describe the looks of the character - the blonde, shorter woman, etc. Other epithets, I think, are perfectly valid to use in the right circumstances, provided you don't overuse them - for instance, if I'm writing about a group of people, one of which is a mage, I might then use "The mage raised her hands to the sky" when describing how said mage is casting a spell. Or if I'm writing from a certain character's viewpoint, I'll occasionally use "his brother", or "her wife", or "his daughter", just, you know, not ALL the time. As you said, it has to be appropriate, both to the characters and to the situation. For instance: I have sisters, and when I'm thinking about them I tend to think about them as individuals with names first, rather than as my sisters, unless I happen to be thinking about something sisterly at that moment. So if you're referring to someone as the viewpoint character's brother all the time, it throws me out of the story because I'll be thinking "but why is he constantly so hyperaware that it's his brother?"

... obviously I have Opinions about this topic. ^^

[krait]

The way I've always understood it/had it suggested to me, one should only use an epithet instead of a name if it's highlighting something -- so X might think of Y as "my brother" if he's talking to someone about their sibling, or if Y has just done something kind/siblinglike (or, perhaps, unkind, and he's trying to remind himself why he loves Y).

That was actually my first reaction to your HP example, actually -- one of the reasons I dislike Ron is that he too often does appear to see Harry as "The famous Boy Who Lived" when he should be thinking of him as "Harry, my friend". *makes face*

Possibly it would also be okay if it were the narrator trying to highlight something, even without the character him/herself being aware of it? That one might depend on the narrative style, for whether or not it would be jarring...

[lacygrey]

Well, the nearest I got to editing my scene was ordering it and taking out all the bits that belonged elsewhere. It's considerably less of a mess but still needs work. Tomorrow I will try to tie the first three scenes together and make them beta ready.

I avoid using labels for characters as much as possible. I find it distances the narration from the character and this doesn't suit the types of POV I choose, which are usually very close to the POV character's thoughts. Other characters in the story are often people close to them as well, so such labels just feel wrong. With a distanced omnipotent POV it might work better I suppose, but I neither like writing these epithets nor reading them.

[littlebutfierce]

Wrote some words that I don't like at all, but I don't mind b/c I did loads of editing today instead. Doubly good as it was my long work day, which involves 3 hours on inter-city trains & usually leaves me too tired/out of it to do anything productive fic-wise. But I edited lots on the train, hooray!

Most of the time epithets seem to throw me out of the story for the reasons you described. I generally dislike them.

[lilly_c]

It's going good, well it was till I had to stop writing and go out earlier for a meeting and when I got back all I wanted to do was eat and watch the footy on TV. I do plan on getting back to the fic tomorrow.

Right now I'm working on a fic for a show I've only recently come across and gotten in to a fair bit too. I'm having a few nerves with it because it's my first in the fandom so of course nerves are natural in this situation. Quite like how it's turned out so far :)

Although I don't read fic very often these days, I do get thrown off when I see "the petite redhead" and I came across that a lot in my X-Files days and it did and still does annoy the life out of me.

I may have used "the tall black man" as an example in some fics but I can't remember if I over used it though, I'd probably need to look over my old fics.

It's almost midnight here and I'm rambling :)

[linaewen]

It's going! I've been doing research all evening, and I'm not sure I've gotten any closer to writing as a result, but it sure has been interesting! Maybe after I sleep on it I'll awaken with sure knowledge how to make it work as something written....

I really, really dislike the use of hair color to describe people -- as well as other physically descriptive terms. Now and then it's useful for a change, but it has to be used SPARINGLY, not be omnipresent. Characters' names are awesome things and should be used, not barely mentioned.

When I write, I use personal names as much as possible, though I also like variation. I might use a descriptive term, a title or an office in place of the name, but only for variety. Some of my characters speak a bit formally, and I might have them say "my brother" instead of using the brother's name -- but only if it fits the situation, and only now and then.

[elistaire]

Today was posting day! Whew!

As for describing a character...oh, dear. I usually try just to avoid it as much as a I can. I think I would have done it more, except I ran across a lot of comments about how you shouldn't do it, so I try to avoid it a lot now.

[bay_alexison]

Yesterday and today has been mostly editing my Big Bang and a couple other projects. Cherry-picking some scenes/chapters here and there I wanted to edit, heh. Most likely tomorrow I'll do more editing and then Friday I'll be able to write something new and hopefully brainstorm a bit for NaNo.

I tend to use labels for characters once in a while but only for describing the character I'm writing the POV of. Rarely will I have the main character refer to his/her friend, love interest, etc. "the blonde woman," and such.