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Sometimes a character's name is important. Sometimes it defines their personality. Sometimes you just want a convenient background character, with no intention of ever using them again, and then they start to grow on you, and you wish you'd put more thought into that character's name.
I now find myself such a situation with one of my characters. Well, two, technically. This was an absent-minded moment on my part.
When I chose the name of 'Rachel' for Rachel Kleiner, the girl Robin met at camp, I originally had two names picked out for her, in either Rachel or Regina. Rachel seemed fitting at the time, and she became a minor background character going forward into Book Two. Much farther in B2 however, I needed another female character who would, in time, become more important to the story.
This is where the absent-minded part comes into play. I genuinely thought that, when I created the photographer Rachel, I had used Regina for the other character. So now I'm faced with a difficult choice.
As I'm writing B3, both characters are going to be involved in some capacity going forward, and that's going to get very confusing, so I need to re-name one of them.
There's another situation where I mistakenly thought I had named Laura "Lisa", but I know where that confusion came from. I spent some time with a dear friend of mine, dating a wonderful lady named Lisa, when I was writing B2, and the two just kind of got mixed up. That's an honest mistake I intend to correct as well.
I'm thinking about, since the photographer is the newer character and as such, fresher in anyone's mind that's been reading my writings, going back and changing the girl scout Rachel to Regina. It has a similar ring to it, to my mind, and I feel it fits her personality just as well (else I wouldn't have considered it originally ;-)).
It's a little more work tracking down every instance across two novels, but it's not that bad, and it makes things easier going forward as I write B3.
So my advice to my fellow authors is this: keep an updated character list if you don't already, and if you have to (like I'm doing ;-)), post a sticky note on your monitor to remind yourself to check that list when introducing a new character, so you won't fall into the bog I now find myself visiting :-D
Cheers,
~Zoe
Edit: I. Am. An idiot :-P
Looking back, I DID end up using the name Regina for the photographer. I think that's where I got myself confused. I'll go back and correct it. Again. I should've double-checked, which was mistake number two.
Somebody shoot me :-P
This just emphasizes keeping track of names though. Wow. I can't believe I did that.
What happened was, as I was writing Book 3, I mistakenly thought I had named Regina (the photographer) Rachel because I HAD considered giving Rachel that name, and as such, as I continued to write well into Chapter 4 (about 40ish pages so far), I kept reinforcing my own mistake.
Luckily I have the tools to quickly fix this so it's not a problem, but the VERY FIRST THING I do when I'm done is updating my character list to include every major and minor character I've added to the story. I got lazy, and I'm paying for it now :-)
Everything's as it should be now, and I'm adding the extra character names and backgrounds to my big list. I'm fast-learning why more experienced authors have expressed upon me in the past an important need for organization. I'm such a scatter-brain sometimes that it's especially true for me >_>
G'night everyone :-)
Names -
I was in a department of 15 once - we had 3 James and two Sues - So we just had a suffix to differentiate the James - Jim A, Jim C and Jim N. One of the Sues had the surname Thomas, so she became Sue T, which quickly changed to Sooty, so the other got called Sweep, of course. Wouldn't that be an approach? But if you need some help changing names, then I'd be glad to assist
"The Cost of Living Does Not Appear To Have Affected Its Popularity" -
in most, but not all, instances
Oh my God, I'm an idiot
Looking back, I DID end up using the name Regina for the photographer didn't I? I think that's where I got myself confused. I'll go back and correct it. Again.
Somebody shoot me :-P
This just emphasizes keeping track of names though. Wow. I can't believe I did that.
Edit to add: What happened was, as I was writing B3, I mistakenly thought I had named Regina Rachel, and as such, as I continued to write well into Chapter 4 (about 40ish pages so far), I kept reinforcing my own mistake.
Luckily I have the tools to quickly fix this so it's not a problem, but the VERY FIRST THING I do when I'm done is updating my character list to include every major and minor character I've added to the story. I got lazy, and I'm paying for it now :-)
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Names...
I tend to have a hard time coming up with names for guys... I can just pop girls names off my head like it's nothing, but guys names, I end up with "Tom, Jack, Frank, James." I think that every thing I've ever written has one of those four names for a guy. Girls names, on the other hand, just sort of flow out of my fingers. They flow out so well, that I was going through my 2010 NaNo, and I changed a (dead) female characters name three times in something like 200 words... I have no clue how I did that...
Samantha
An Annoying Habit
I do not know how many times I have added what I call a throw away character, someone you mention once and never use again who has had a nasty habit of suddenly popping up later on in the story. The little buggers have a tendency to take on a life of their own, so do keep track of all your characters as Zoe suggests. Ya never know when the sneaky little devil will come in handy.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
I realized another case of
I realized another case of character name re-use, though this one was actually intentional, in the form of Jane Garrett sharing the name "Jane" with Jane Evans, Robin's half-sister's mother. Originally it just amused me to have someone who, in Robin's mind, confirmed everything she'd always feared sharing the same name as the woman who, in essence, is her hero after the 'Raggedy Man' incident. I probably brought closure to that too quickly, but ah, live and learn.
Maybe the Raggedy Man can come back to stalk the camp all Crystal Lake style (Crystal is named after said lake, after all :-))
Er, right, back to the topic at-hand I go!
Someone once told me that if a character is unimportant to the story, that you should treat them like a piece of furniture. The trouble I run into is, someone sooner or later some finagling fairy godmother comes along and waves her magic wand.
I never meant, for example, for Andrea to become so important, but that whole sub-plot felt it needed some closure.
This is all why I'm completing Book 3 before I start posting it though. Too much can change over the course of writing, and I want to be able to go back and fix things to make sense without messing with anybody's head (most especially my own!) :-D
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And what a fine mess that is! :)
Don't worry too much Zoe, we love messing with you, it's fun!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Bonana Fanna Fo-Fonie Fee-Fi-Mo Monie Joanie
Authors need to keep in mind the readers' desires. They want a story they can follow. If characters are meant to be on stage quite often or are important to the plot so that the reader must think of them a lot, those characters should have distinctive names. Avoid having characters whose names start with the same letter because the reader will confuse them. Some of your confusion might have been centered around too many "R" characters.
You might avoid using different names for the same character. You might easily follow that Elizabeth, Izzie, Bella, or Beth are all the same person, but your reader could drive right off the curve,
What do you want the name to tell the reader about the character? One of the steps i take is to check the character's birth year against the list of most popular names for that year. Often i can signal how old the character is by using a popular name from that era that is no longer in vogue. Do you want your character to be relaxed and fun . . . or rigid and quite studious? I've several times used names that are something i'm trying to convey -- only spelled backward. An example of this is Miss Recudes. She's a misunderstood teacher who becomes the main player in a young man's fantasies.
Think of Dickens and the wonderful names he gave his characters. And yet, one of his most enduring characters was named Tim, although easier to remember with the modifier "Tiny".
Sometimes characters demand certain names, that go against convention. It's probably good to allow characters to go by a name that they find comfortable, If you don't, they might just jump off the page and make your life miserable.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Especially with nicknames
I've literally gone back and tried to completely stop using, for example, the fictional band Heedless Despair's stage names in normal dialogue ever since their real names came into play because using both was just too confusing to follow. They're identified in dialogue as their stage name when it's important.
I've also tended toward the convention of only using a character's nickname in dialogue while attributing their full name otherwise (Jen being Jennifer, Nikki as Nicole, etc.) though I've thought many, many times about going back and entirely scrapping that as well, for example using "Nikki smiled" instead of "Nicole smiled". I'm still kind of feeling out my 'voice' to that end.
That's a fantastic idea about using the date of birth as a point of reference for their names, too. In the case of my four 'main' girls, though, you hit it exactly. Allison, Jennifer, Nicole and Robin practically demanded their names for different reasons. Margie's name, while probably unconventional, has a great deal of sentimental value to me (so in-universe she's named her after her grandmother :-))
Going forward I'm definitely going to start looking at names their birth year when nothing else really stands out begging to be picked.
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I Think I Have A Solution
I think there could be a backstory where one of the Rachel's reveals that her real name is Regina, but she had so many people call her Rachel that it just kind of stuck and she just quit worrying about it. Another possibility is that she disliked the name Regina and insisted people call her Rachel. I had friends in school that had a name they disliked, so on the first day of school when the teacher would call roll, she would ask what a person would prefer to be called. Whatever they said was what people called them from that day on.
Great solution
For me I did a name change without doing a name change by doing just that. My legal name was never changed as it was too darn convenient to not have to do it and I suffered with it for ten years until one day I gave myself a dope slap and just asked people at any new place of employment that I go by Kim and problem solved. BTW, like it or not, a name change is a red flag to people who look up your credit and I know of Ts who have been rejected with regard to getting an apartment because of that. Not to mention what happened to Bobbie C, one of our posters who got outed by somebody because her HR report was read.
Anyway, unfortunately there are relatively few places with that kind of legal protection for trans folks and he did get an apartment eventually, but still, grrrrr.
Kim
rebecca ≠rachel
for reasons that make no sense to me at all, for years people have been mixing my name up. it seems incredibly easy for people to confuse the name rebecca with rachel. both jewish, i guess. it happens a lot.
maybe i chose the wrong name when i transitioned?
not as think as i smart i am
Little paper cards...
I quite like little paper cards with information written on them, because unlike computer files, which one has to open and look at, one can pin them to the wall, or a corkboard, or a magnet on the icebox, or stick them to the edge of the monitor with sticky tape, and keep them in front of your eyeballs *while* you're writing. Computers are very nice, but primitive technologies have their own rewards as well.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Boy's Names
Part of the problem with coming up with boy's names may be due to the fact that there are so few 'BOY'S' names left. They have all been usurped by females!
Zip
I did something like this
the first time I tried writing "The Lucky One", about half-way through I changed the name of the main supporting character, and didn't notice until someone pointed it out. When I was writing my "Vision Spring" series, I wrote down on paper the names, countries, and powers of all the major players to help keep track. Hugs.
"Treat everyone you meet as though they had a sign on them that said "Fragile, under construction"
dorothycolleen
Ummm...
In real life - people with the same name run into each other all the time - or quite often. (An example - a colleague of min in my former job had the same first and middle name I did - only reverse order. And, we both went by the same name. Did it cause confusion? Yes, once in a while. But, it also lead to some interesting discussions. But, it's not as confusing as it was in High School, where two of the math teachers were identical twins...)
If you really feel you need to change one of them, I'd be more likely to introduce a nick-name (Rach?) for one of them... That, or have one of them, "decide" in the early part of the third story that they want to go by their middle name... And have them correct folks for a few pages.
Going back - and renaming a character in an older story - may confuse some of those who've been following your stories.
Just my 1 1/2 cents (not worth 2 cents...)
Anne
Running into each other....
Take for instance my story 'My Mistake' I have a Morgan, Jennifer, and a Katie. I'm sure in a high school of probably 1500 students, there are more than one of each of those names... My characters just haven't come across any of them yet... :D
One Steve Limit
You are giving way too much importance to the One Steve Limit trope.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneSteveLimit
Names...
I have a download of baby names (top 1000) from the SSA. I also got a download of popular American surnames that I Googled. I don't want all my characters John Smith, but some uncommon surnames, too. It wouldn't be to realistic if you have Jane Smith who meets John Smith and they meet Mary Jones...
TGSine --958