Bad Epithets

[cimorene]

• beside the pleased-looking boy


• immediately taking the young, anxiety-prone nerd under his wing


• The door of the named one's house was being knocked on insistently.


• shooting the golden boy sitting by her side half a smile,


• The balding man rolled his eyes


• He really was a sucker for the rocker.


• He couldn't help but let his mind wander to the mousey haired boy who walked in the door


• incredibly conflicted feelings towards the 5'11" former jock with beautiful hair and a mean right hook.


And finally, the best one of all, because it's using a bad epithet FOR A WATERMELON:


• the muscles in his arms and stomach flexing with the force it took to clamp down on the larger than average melon, even by internationally imported fruit standards.

Comments

[cimorene]

It's funny how they (and certain other stylistic quirks) are like a social disease, isn't it? You don't necessarily appreciate just how VERY social they are until you find an isolated interconnected patch of incredibly high and bad concentration, like this or the Lestrade/Mycroft BBC Sherlock fandom.

[msilverstar]

I'm sure it does spread, people imitate what they read, what they like, what people in the fandom praise. Plus those awful writing advice books & articles. If no one sticks their head up and explains why epithets are a problem, people will use them.

Huh, https://fanlore.org/wiki/Epithet needs updating.

[cimorene]

That's true, but I think they can actually imitate the style of the fic they read and simply not use epithets as much because the stuff they're reading doesn't use it. You'll still, of course, see the common basic substitutions like "the other man" and probably "the blond" more often than I or another strict beta would allow, but they won't be spontaneously adding epithets for doors and windows and whole sentences as adjectival clauses into them.

[msilverstar]

OMG "the tall veteran cocked an eyebrow at the slightly shorter, stockier blond man who stopped dead in front of him. "

It was on ff.net of course

[cimorene]

Oh dear.

[msilverstar]

I can't escape! Today it's "the actively undercover man"

[cimorene]

I love this one. I've got a very funny mental image.