I’d some LOVE writing tips always!!!! Can u pwease give an example of the epithet thing? 🥺🙏🏻
yeah sure !!! so... say you’re writing about someone named ocean (i’ll just use my blog name) from a third person limited perspective. if this is an original work and my audience doesn’t know what ocean looks like i might use something like this to describe them:
ocean weaved the verdant stems of daisies together with expertise. the brunette (here is the epithet) found that the gentle white petals complimented the color of their hair beautifully.
now i’m not the best writer myself, so like. you definitely don’t have to listen to me, but here an epithet is used to introduce information we don’t already know. however, i tend to avoid epithets altogether, so i’d probably say something like “they favored the gentle white of the petals; it complemented the brown of their hair beautifully.”
but if we already know that ocean has brown hair,,, why use an epithet? so say we’ve gotten past this point and now ocean is talking to someone, and i say: “the brunette piped up over the clamor of their classmates.” it’s just a little odd, especially since i’ve repeated it, and we already know ocean has brown hair. saying “ocean piped up over the clamor of their classmates.” is just as good, if not better, because it doesn’t include any information that distracts from the action of the sentence.
so if you begin using “the brunette” over and over again... it’s just introducing the same information over and over again, and (here’s the important thing) that’s not how english speakers think or speak. we do continually use names and pronouns when referring to people, so defaulting to those is... acceptable. recommended, even!