wingstocarryon:

deathbycoldopen:

mittensmorgul:

almaasi:

(about this post)

hey, no, that stuff is totally cool if the reader hasn’t learned the character’s names yet, or its use is very occasional. it only irks me when we know the dark haired-man is (for example) named Cas, or the boy with the green eyes is Dean.

here are some examples to clarify…

–

this is totally fine:

“Hey,” the green-eyed man rasped through the smoke. “Name’s Dean. What’s yours?”

The fellow with the dark, glitter-strewn hair turned his eyes to the floor, and he smiled. “Castiel.”

-

this is also totally fine:

“Dean, why are you such a pig?” Castiel demanded, slamming a spoon down on the table in front of Dean.

The green-eyed swine looked up from his bowl of slop and oinked.

-

perfectly acceptable but could be clearer:

“I’m not going in there again,” Dean said, folding his arms and looking towards the donut stall, away from his friend. His brown hair ruffled in the slight breeze, and for a moment, Castiel caught a whiff of the other man’s cologne.

-

probably going to get on my nerves a little, but it’s okay if there’s a good reason (like so):

“I’m calling the cops if you don’t shut up, Dean,” hissed the shorter man.

The taller man huffed and turned up the radio’s volume. “I’m sorry, Cas, what was that? Can’t hear you!”

Castiel stomped up onto the verandah, and immediately found himself staring eye-to-eye with his neighbour. They were the same height in bare feet.

-

absolutely no please don’t (unless it’s crack):

“I love you, Cas,” said the green-eyed rocket scientist, placing his hand against his viewscreen.

“Dean,” cried the older man tragically, in his gravelly voice. He put his hand on his screen too, mirroring the younger man’s handprint. “Dean, I– I–”

There was no time left because the countdown hit zero. The crying rocket scientist pressed the button, and suddenly the rocket containing the blue-eyed man zoomed off into space.

–

I hope this highlighted the difference between using those basic descriptors sparingly in an acceptable context and over-using them in an unnecessary context.

the space those words take up would be better used describing little details (sight/smell/touch/emotion/character motivation) which your characters experience at that precise moment. those add a hell of a lot more to a reader’s sense of immersion than descriptors they’ve read a hundred times in the story already.

it’s important to remember that it’s absolutely okay to use your character’s names as many times as you need to to avoid confusion with someone else. names kind of blur into the background of in a reader’s mind, so using a name where necessary doesn’t bother people the same way as using words like “tremendous” or “splendid” five times on one page.

stories with multiple same-gender pronouns can potentially be confusing, but they don’t need to be. there’s no limit to the ways you can refer to everyone without using only their eye colour, height, occupation, age, hair colour - whatever. any sentence can be split or rearranged to avoid wording dilemmas, too. sometimes it’s easier to start a sentence over if you’re stuck.

tl;dr – using basic descriptors is fine so long as:

• it’s not done every other sentence
• there’s a logical reason for not using their name
• the characters are recognisable by more than just that one descriptor.

feel free to use these as prompts if something inspired you. (tag me?)

I’ve heard this advice from practically every writer/editor/publisher/literary agent who’s ever written a treatise on writing. This is why writing is hard. The hard thing is to be able to show the reader who is speaking without having to describe the characters over and over again.

The trick to dialogue tags and character references throughout the rest of the story is the introduction you give them the first time they appear. Describe them well and then pin a name tag on them, and you shouldn’t have to describe them again. Every time you use their name again, readers will subconsciously pin the description to the name.

In text, and in dialogue especially, less is more. It doesn’t sound “bad” to keep repeating a character’s name in dialogue tags. Trust me. It’s supposed to become like part of the background noise, like a tiny blip of recognition on a radar screen. This is what you want to happen, because dialogue tags are not important story progression. The story progression is in the actual dialogue, not in the tags.

The tags are there like an index to keep track of who’s speaking. That’s it. And readers can follow along for two or three “exchanges” before you need to throw in another tag as a reminder of which character is which in longer dialogue passages. We’re all “trained” to understand this writing structure, and it’s when a writer deviates from it that we notice, because it feels clunky and weird; or worse, purple and overly-dramatic.

Changing up the characters’ descriptive tags constantly pulls the reader out of the story and forces them to think about something that’s essentially irrelevant to the conversation. Instead of instantly recognizing the name and moving on, even a familiar character description such as “the taller man” or “the blue-eyed man” forces the reader to stop reading, even for a split-second while their brain processes it. As a writer, that is something you do not want.

This obviously doesn’t apply to reactions, as Elmie stated above. And if we know the characters well enough, sometimes their reactions alone can identify them. But please, PLEASE don’t make your readers work harder than they have to. It turns reading into a pointlessly mentally exhausting chore.

These writing conventions have become writing conventions for a reason. Please, please take advantage of them.

Honestly, as both a reader and a writer I would say avoid descriptors like that even in a lot of the cases the OP mentioned, especially if you’re a new(ish) writer and don’t have a feel for when too much description is WAYYYY too much. Adding descriptors will radically change the pace of the scene you’re writing, just like changing “said” to “intoned/uttered/giggled/etc” changes the pace and feel of a scene. Beginning writers tend to overdo it with the purple prose because it feels like that’s what makes the writing grand or literary- except that in fact, most of the time less is definitely more.

Consider the following:

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Cas looked down at the shirt. On the rack, it had called to him with its bright colors and bold patterns; he hadn’t expected it to be so soft and comfortable. “What’s wrong with it?”

Dean rubbed his hand against his face in exasperation. Even so, Cas could see traces of a smile behind his palm. “Dude, everything is wrong with it. You wear that, and the ghosts’ll see you from a mile away. ”

“I wasn’t aware that we needed to wear camouflage to hunt ghosts.”

“Cas, you look like a tourist.”

“Technically, everywhere we go we’re tourists, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is the Liberace Museum called, and they want that shirt back.”

Cas sighed and started unbuttoning the shirt. “I don’t know what that means,” he grumbled.

-

Even though there are literally no descriptors, and only one dialogue tag in the whole scene, we can still follow who is saying what, and on top of which the dialogue flows quickly without getting tripped up on the descriptions. We can infer the tone of the character speaking just by their words, just like we can infer who is speaking by their speech patterns (a really important reason why character voice is crucial). Compare that to the same scene filled with descriptors:

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” the hunter said, rolling his green eyes.

The former angel looked down at the shirt. On the rack, it had called to him with its bright colors of shocking pink and sunshine yellow and bold patterns; he hadn’t expected it to be so soft and comfortable, like the caress of feathers against his skin. “What’s wrong with it?” the blue eyed man asked.

The taller man rubbed his hand against his face in exasperation. Even so, the dark haired
man could see traces of a fond smile behind his wide palm. “Dude, everything is wrong with it,” the hunter groaned. “You wear that, and the ghosts’ll see you from a mile away. ”

“I wasn’t aware that we needed to wear camouflage to hunt ghosts,” the angel said, tilting his head in a habitual gesture.

“Cas, you look like a tourist,” the hunter told the other man, shaking his head of dark blonde hair.

“Technically, everywhere we go we’re tourists, so I don’t see what the problem is,” the blue eyed man declared.

The green eyed man tugged at the lapels
of his sensible canvas jacket and the red and black plaid shirt beneath it. “The problem is the Liberace Museum called, and they want that shirt back,” Dean ribbed.

The former angel sighed and started unbuttoning the shirt. “I don’t know what that means,” the man grumbled.

-

With the descriptors added in, the flow of the scene is suddenly choppy and ungainly, filled with information that we don’t need to understand what’s happening. It’s also more confusing to read, because every time you change descriptors, the reader has to take a step back to figure out who’s talking. This is especially true with ocs or in original fiction, because the audience doesn’t necessarily know right off the bat that this particular character is shorter than the other, or that they used to be an angel.

That isn’t to say that lengthy descriptions don’t have their place, but you should always thing about why you need to take the time to describe something in depth- are you assuming that the reader doesn’t know what a pencil looks like, or is it necessary for the flow of the scene to take a breath and examine the teeth marks in the yellow painted wood from years of nervous test taking?

If you’re concerned about sentences getting confusing when you have several characters with the same pronouns, rearrange those sentences until they no longer look confusing. Try to use pronouns for one character per sentence- i.e. “Dean brushed his hand against Cas’ cheek, his fingers trembling just a little,” vs “Cas’ cheek was soft under his fingers, and his lips trembled when he brushed against them.” Remember that just because you thought of a sentence one way doesn’t mean you have to stick to that exact structure.

Basically, don’t worry so much about how many times you’re repeating a name. Instead think about the tone and pacing of your scene, and about what exactly you’re trying to reveal with each sentence. Always keep in mind that tone and atmosphere will go a lot further in describing your setting and your characters than actual descriptions. And always, always assume that your readers have basic comprehension skills, and can remember what a character looks like without you repeating it a billion times to the detriment of the rest of the scene.

Another way to think about it is this: 

1. Whose point of view is the scene from? And… 

2. Would that person reasonably think of the character in those terms?

For instance, to borrow a line from OP’s original example:

“Hey,” the green-eyed man rasped through the smoke. “Name’s Dean. What’s yours?”

“Uh, Castiel,” he said, before he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be using that name. “I mean, uh. George.”

Dean looked surprised, then smirked. Those green eyes were laughing at him. Cas looked down at the bar and swallowed.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he heard Dean say.

1. Who’s point of view is this from? The point of view character is Cas. Cas is sitting at this bar, and this guy just leaned over to talk to him. 

2. Would Cas reasonably think of Dean as “the green-eyed man?”

Yes! IF this is from Cas’s point of view in an AU where they are just meeting for the first time, and he’s only had a moment to notice a couple details of Dean’s appearance, he might. He doesn’t know Dean’s name yet. He’s just met this guy, and is mentally referring to him by a distinguishing characteristic - in this case, his eye colour, which he’s clearly noticed.

Actually, it says something about Castiel. It indicates that Cas is paying attention to little details of Dean’s appearance. Not everyone would pick up on someone’s eye colour as the first thing they notice about someone. It’s a probable indication that he’s attracted to Dean, or at least that he’s tuned into how Dean looks. In fact, Dean’s green eyes were so striking that he actually forgot as an undercover cop that he wasn’t supposed to use his real name. Then he got flustered. Now Dean’s gonna think he’s just cruising for guys under an assumed name and for other reasons which will lead to complications down the road! Plot! All from noticing a detail.

Trying again with a different example, let’s say this scene isn’t from Cas’s point of view. Let’s say… to borrow again from the OP’s awesome example:

“Hey,” the green-eyed man rasped through the smoke. “Name’s Dean. What’s yours?”

The fellow with the dark, glitter-strewn hair turned his eyes to the floor, and he smiled. “Castiel.”

1. Whose point of view is this from? We’re not in either Dean’s or Cas’s head. It’s from “the narrator’s” point of view. The narrator isn’t someone in the story, but the voice the author is using to tell the story. So “green-eyed” isn’t something another character is noticing about Dean, it’s just something the narrator is telling us about him.

2. Would the narrator reasonably think of Dean as “the green-eyed man?”

In some cases yes. Sometimes you can play a trick where the narrator doesn’t know the character’s names yet, either. The narrator is describing the character like an outsider would, and won’t refer to them by name until they introduce themselves. Hard-boiled detective novels sometimes use this kind of style. It’s a bit clunky, but it’s fine. Once we get the names of the characters, the narrator will switch to using them.

“Hey,” the green-eyed man rasped through the smoke. “Just got a call from Bobby. They found Sam.”

“Where is he?” the blue-eyed angel demanded. “Is he alright?”

“He’s with Bobby. He’s gonna be ok.” The green-eyed man scrubbed his hands through his hair. “But possession is no joke.”

1. It’s from the Narrator’s Point of View.

2. If the narrator were a person, would they refer to Dean in those terms? In this case, no. We’re in the middle of a story and the narrator already knows the character’s names. Once you know someone’s name, you don’t refer to them as “the green-eyed one” unless for some reason you’re obsessing over their green eyes. But see… unlike Cas, the narrator has no business being attracted to anybody. The narrator’s only business is to report the scene, in the way that works best for the story. Why would the narrator obsess over those details? It doesn’t seem natural. It’s implying that eye colour is for some reason the most important thing about the character, to the story. Which in this story which is about Dean worrying over a lost Sam, Dean’s eye colour is hardly relevant.

So there you have it. If you think about who’s telling the story, imagine what terms they would use to describe that person in real life, and stick with those. Usually those terms are the person’s name. Sometimes they will include a detail of appearance if there’s a reason for it, but usually they won’t.

Don’t worry about using too much “Dean said”/”Cas said”/”Sam said”. But if you do want to switch it up, try using action instead. 

”Hey.” Dean gave his best, charming grin. “What’s your name?”