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Using Epithets Effectively in One’s Writing
Putting alternatives for a character’s name to good use.
For the use of epithets, where you’re using something other than a name to refer to the character — the other man, the blond, her elder, the policeman, etc — it’s good to think about WHY you want that epithet.
Why would you use an epithet instead of that character’s name?
Firstly, does the POV character know that character’s name?
If the POV character doesn’t know it yet, they’re likely to fixate on the most obviously unique or identifiable aspect of that person’s character to use as an epithet, and then stick with that epithet.
(I’m going to focus on first- and second-person narration and limited third person, where we’re generally either limited to one person’s perspective, or we’re “head-hopping” between different people’s biased and individual perceptions of an outsider. I’ll talk about omniscient narration later.)
A uniform or position of authority is often the clearest — the policeman, the nurse, the flight attendant, the postman, the grandmother.
When your epithet focuses on aspects of the physical, for a character that the narrator doesn’t know yet, the descriptor chosen might depend on intimacy.
