writers of the world: please stop using epithets in your writing, trust me “the blonde army doctor”, “the curly haired detective”, “the blue-eyed man” etc. do not sound as good in writing as they may sound in your head
instead, use the characters’ names, they’re there for a reason and it’ll make your writing much more crisp, tight, to the point, and still entertaining
Names, along with common words like “said” and “asked”, become invisible. The more invisible your words, the deeper your reader will fall into your writing, to the point where the reader will forget that there are words at all and just become part of the story.
When your words aren’t invisible, there’s the unfortunate potential that people will turn them into a drinking game instead of reading the story.
Just about the only time that epithets work instead of using a name is when the POV character doesn’t know the other character, and so the physical description is pretty much all the POV character has to go on. You don’t think of people you know as “the tall man” or “the blonde woman”. Your POV character shouldn’t, either.
