#There's so many ways to signify and you'll be so much happier once you can step away from this habit

[jyou-no-sonoko19]

Please, fic writers, take this to heart:

If this is the first time a character is shown to your reader, or if that character does not show any notable aspect of their personality for a while, then by all means refer to them as “the redhead”, “the brunette”, etc. 

But I’m begging of you. When you’re having two characters in conversation, and they both know each other well, there is no reason to be calling one of them "the blonde". Especially not just to avoid saying their name again. 

Nervous that using she and her will be confusing for the reader, when it’s two women? Just make it contextually clear. Use line breaks. Use actions to indicate it, pre-speech. 

Because never ever do two intimate people think of each other such that they reduce them down to their hair colour. When you describe your partner, there’s no way the first thing you’d tell a person is the colour of their hair. I’d be willing to bet that’s one of the last things you’d mention, unless their hair was particularly striking, enough to find the person if you need to seek them in a crowd.

And don’t worry, their names are their names. It’s okay to use them. You won’t sound like Baby’s First Fanfic. Yes, it’ll take some practice to figure out the balance, but it’s worth it. Because the alternative is stripping a character of every meaningful thing you know about them, just to point and go “hair colour is different, that’s how you know”.

Heaven forfend there are two people with the same hair colour. Because then it becomes ‘the tall woman’ or ‘the freckled one’, on chapter 50 of people becoming deeply involved in each other’s existences.

Tune in next week, when I discuss how it’s okay to call a drink what it is, instead of referring to it as ‘[x]-coloured liquid.’

#fanfiction advice #writing advice #writing tips #There's so many ways to signify and you'll be so much happier once you can step away from this habit