The small brown haired male, etc...is it just me?

[CL Mustafic]

Okay, I just got done reading the first chapter of a story, it was a m/m slash original. The word count was 1,564 words and the author used the MC's name twice, once in dialog when another character said it. The rest of the chapter he was referred to as the intern (5), the brunette (2), the slim intern (1), the slender intern (1), the slim brunette (2), the young man (2), the brunette intern (3), the young intern (3)(yes I went through and listed all of them) and my absolute least favorite the smaller male (1).

I felt bad because I had to quit reading after the first chapter and she'd asked me to review her work. I ended up sending her a pm with my critique because I didn't want my own bias to color other reader's opinion before they read the story.

Why can't people use their character's names or just him or he? I can see maybe once to get out one of the character's attributes but come on, it's so annoying. It totally ruins the story for me because I can't get past it. It's gotten to be my biggest pet peeve and I've even begun to notice it happening in published works lately.

Why has this become a thing lately and how do we make it stop?

Is it just me or does this drive anyone else crazy?

[CloverReef]

Speaking as someone who used to be frequently guilty of this sin... It was common in the fandom that was my training grounds. I've also noticed it a lot in original writing, and it definitely does drive me crazy too, even though that makes me a little bit of a hypocrite.

For me, and I think for some others, it was a fear of repetition. Especially in slash fiction where most characters are male, using pronouns too much can get confusing, and I had been nervous about repeating the character's names too often. Of course I've since learned that repeating character names isn't nearly as distracting as those alternatives, especially if you use a character name that isn't, itself, too distracting. Like not Beezelborp. If your character is named Beezelborp, you might want to find a less distracting shortform...

I think it's something that writers grow out of as they gain experience and confidence. For me it took a few years and a lot of research in writing techniques. It was all about insecurity.

[BronxWench]

My editor liked using alternatives to pronouns and names in my first published male/male novella. At some point, I'll revise that novella and fix some of that nonsense. I do understand that it's hard when writing to use pronouns all the time, and using names over and over is only marginally better, but you learn to find a balance, or should.

[magusfang]

I do it, though i mix the name in a lot more than that. but if you use the name too much it makes it sound repetative: Bob, bob, bob, ... i've read stories where a character's name appears as many a as four or five times in a sentence. you start hating the name, scratching it off your baby list

if you he or she in slash too much you get confused as to which he or she your talking about.

but i agree using the MC's name just twice in 1500 words is under-repetetative

[CloverReef]

It's okay, I think, to use alternative/descriptive nouns consciously and in moderation. I still use them sometimes too, such as when the character's name is unknown to the perspective/narrator. I have a lot of insane pet peeves when it comes to writing. Not even grammatical ones either, I'm talking makes-no-sense-to-anyone-but-me stylistic pet peeves. But even with those, I can deal with tripping over them once or twice, but when they're peppered generously throughout, it's hard to keep my head from exploding long enough to press the back button. So yeah... moderation.

Having the name Bob 4 or 5 times in one sentence is definitely overdoing it too. That's equally distracting and ideally there are other options to get around it without using those alternatives to pronouns. I would still avoid them, but that's just because I personally don't like them. I don't doubt for a second that some authors use them skillfully.

[CL Mustafic]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that it bothers but to be fair, I probably go the opposite direction. I did give one of my characters a nick name so that it wasn't always his name popping up and that seemed to help some with the repetition.

I guess the one I hate the most is when they use the word 'male', I get it when it's like a werewolf story because you can argue that they aren't technically a man but I feel like it's a little dehumanizing to use it when it's a human being.

@CloverReef, I get ya, there are things that I hate that are irrational too and I'll just stop reading a story because of them.

[CloverReef]

Ugh, I totally agree on the 'male'/'female' thing. I cringe whenever I see that or hear it on TV.

[BronxWench]

I frequently have elves or other fey as characters, so technically, "male" is more appropriate than "man" for them. But point taken in the context of human characters, very much so.

[magusfang]

I don't use male, but I have been known to use female to draw attention to that species when a character does something decidedly FEMALE like bring up something that happen ten years ago in an arguement