Tag Archives: character names

Handling a Cast of Thousands

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Handling a Cast of Thousands
Terry Odell

street scene with a crowd of people I recently read—okay, started—a book that I set aside after three chapters. I’d received the book at Left Coast Crime, when one of the publishers hosted an “open house” for its authors in attendance and they had stacks of their books to sign and give away. I accepted almost all of them. It would have been rude to tell them you weren’t interested, especially since the books were free. I have giveaways via my newsletter, and I figured the books would be put to good use, either before or after I read them.

What made me put this book into my giveaway pile? Characters. I’m not talking about unlikeable characters, or cardboard characters, or TSTL (too stupid to live) characters. It was the sheer number of characters that had my eyeballs spinning.

When you give a character a name, it sends a signal to readers that they should pay attention. This character isn’t an “extra” or a spear carrier, or any other term given to those who remain in the background. It says “Remember me. I have a name.”

Opening chapters—opening pages—need to entice the reader. Normally, unless it’s a prologue with characters who might not appear again, the protagonist shows up pretty darn quick. There’s the hint of a question, a problem, something of interest. Something to convince the reader this is someone they’re going to want to spend the next 300 pages with. Which is why you don’t want to start a book with a dream—major regrouping when the character wakes up and the reader realizes they haven’t been in the here and now. Or with a major battle scene. We don’t know who’s fighting, why they’re fighting, who the good guys and bad guys are. These openings are probably manufactured by authors who are told “start with action.” Action doesn’t mean combat.

The book in question started on the right foot. There was a dead body, and the cops show up at the protagonist’s door, ask her if she knows the man in a picture they show her. So far, so good. We get a view of the cops and how they’re connected to the protagonist. The protagonist says “no,” the cops leave, and we’re left with a return to the protagonist’s everyday life. Which happens to be running a hotel, and we see people checking out. Are we going to see them again? I think not. Then there’s the staff, all introduced with descriptions and perhaps a bit of back story.

Now, this is the 8th book in this author’s series, and maybe she feels obligated to bring everyone up to speed, but my brain can’t handle meeting all these people.

How many? I made a list of every named character introduced in the first 2 chapters, which comprised 21 pages. First names only (unless none was given) because I don’t want this to be about this book, or this author.

Here you go:

Amber
Kieran
Poppy
Mitchel
Viola
Mrs. Applegate
Joanne
Mrs. Newman
Aunt Ginny
Victory
Thelma
Dodson
Mother Gibson
Gia
Kim
Teresa
Iggy
Royce
Courtney
Virginia
Josephine
Augie
June
Tildy

At that point, I was past trying to keep track of who was who, and who might actually be important to the story. The fact that the book was over 400 pages long might have helped me decide to put this one away.

You have to consider that this might be the first book your reader has picked up in your series. Long time readers might know many of the cast of regulars, but you have to work them in slowly. Preferably with some connection to the story, another prominent character, something distinctive.

Sometimes, you do need to give these “extras” names. One example. Your POV character is interacting with a worker of some sort. A receptionist, admin, clerk. They’re on the page often enough so repeating “the receptionist” over and over gets annoying, so you name them. Just make sure their names are distinctive enough so readers won’t confuse them with another, more significant, character. (I keep mine on an alphabetical spreadsheet so I can see if I’ve used that or a similar name already.)

When I’m faced with this, I’ve sometimes resorted to “naming” the characters with physical characteristics, or even clothing. In the current WIP, my POV character is being held by two detectives. In her state, she doesn’t want to get personal with them, so she refers to them as “Red Tie” and “Blue Tie.” There’s another character she thinks of as “Green Blobs.” They’re only on screen for two chapters, and it wasn’t worth me thinking up yet three more character names.

Don’t start, as one author did, with a celebratory dinner with the whole darn family—three generations of them—around the table and have it become “let’s catch up with everyone” time. New readers don’t know the back story of these people. They probably won’t care. (That was the first and last book I read by that author, big name though she was.)

What about you, TKZers? How do you handle introducing characters, and making sure you’re not overloading your readers?

Any examples where you think an author handled it well? Or not well?

One last thing. I’ve officially launched my “Writings and Wanderings” Substack. I hope you’ll take a look and subscribe if you’re interested.

How can he solve crimes if he’s not allowed to investigate?

Gordon Hepler, Mapleton’s Chief of Police, has his hands full. A murder, followed by several assaults. Are they related to the expansion of the community center? Or could it be the upcoming election? Gordon and mayor wannabe Nelson Manning have never seen eye to eye. Gordon’s frustrations build as the crimes cover numerous jurisdictions, effectively tying his hands.
Available now.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

Tips for Dealing With Character Names

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Tips for Dealing With Character Names
Terry Odell

Character NamingLast week, John Gilstrap addressed coming up with character names, and there were a lot of helpful suggestions in the comments.

I tend to hit the Google Machine. “Male (or female) Names Starting with …” is a frequent search. Another thing to add to that search is the year/decade that character was born. Name trends change with time.

I had a shocking realization when seeking a name for a character in a recent book.

Names have to “match” the characters to some extent. For me, it’s a loose match. Our country is so much of a melting pot that names often don’t match one’s ethnicity, and it’s often a stereotype to try to give them “appropriate” names. I recall my daughter, when she was in middle school, asking if her friend Kiesha could come visit. What’s your first visual? Probably not the blue-eyed blonde who showed up. But if I want an ethnic name, I just add that to my Google search.

This week, I thought I’d expand on John’s topic, because coming up with names is only part of the problem. You’ve cleared the choosing names for your characters hurdle. But there are pitfalls to avoid so you don’t confuse your readers.

A tip I picked up at a workshop was the reminder that the characters should sound like their parents named them, not you.

Major warning: Names shouldn’t be too similar to other characters in the book.

This mean no Jane and Jake, or Mick and Mack, or Michael and Michelle—and that includes nicknames. If everyone calls Michael Mike, and there’s another character named Norman, but Norman’s last name is MacDonald and everyone calls him Mac, then you’re setting things up for reader confusion. I recently read a book where the author had fixated on the letter B for character names, and these were major players, not bit parts. I don’t think I ever got them straight.

Many readers see the first few letters of a character’s name and connect it to whatever image they’ve created for that character. Your character might be named Anastasia, but the reader might be thinking “The blonde woman with the A name.”

So, how do you keep track so you don’t confuse or frustrate your readers? Here’s my system.

The late Jeremiah Healy prefaced one of his workshops with a very vocal complaint about character names in books. He said, “How hard is it to take a sheet of paper, write the alphabet in two columns, and then put first names in one, last names in the other?”

Now that we’re using computers, instead of a sheet of paper, I use a simple Excel spreadsheet. When I name a character, I fill in a blank field in the appropriate line. This lets me see at a glance when I start to fixate on a letter. I hadn’t been to Healy’s workshop when I wrote What’s in a Name? but when rights reverted to me, I used the spreadsheet and was shocked at what I’d discovered. THREE characters named Hank? Okay, only two, but the third was Henry “but you can call me Hank.” I still haven’t forgiven my then editor for that one.

This is what I found when I went through the book:
(You can click to enlarge the images)

Character NamingIn addition to making minor revisions to the text, you can be sure I updated the character names. Here’s the “after” spreadsheet.

Character Naming TipsOther considerations. Foreign names might be realistic, but what if a reader is unfamiliar with the name, or its pronunciation? One of my critique partners wrote a book with a family of Irish descent, and she’s calling one of the characters Siobhan. (If I were naming a character that, the first thing I’d do would be to set up an auto correct, because I’d probably spell it wrong more often than not.) But typing it right is the author’s problem, not the reader’s. Do you know how to pronounce Siobhan? (shi-VAWN) If the author tells you, when you see the word do you “hear it” or is it strictly a visual?

(With apologies to Brother Gilstrap, I never see/hear his character Venice as Ven-EE-chay, no matter that he’s made the pronunciation clear. To me, she’s “Not Venice” in my head.)

And then, there’s a whole new set of problems. Audiobooks. When I started to put my books into audio, I had to focus on what things sound like as well as look like. In my third Triple-D Ranch book, the heroine’s ex-husband’s name is Seth. Her sister’s name is Bethany. They don’t look very similar on the page, but when spoken, I’m concerned that they’ll sound too much alike, especially if they’re in the same sentence. Or even paragraph. I don’t want my narrator stumbling (or calling them both Sethany).

All right, TKZers. Share your tips for keeping track of character names.

Trusting Uncertainty by Terry OdellNow available for Preorder. Trusting Uncertainty, Book 10 in the Blackthorne, Inc. series.
You can’t go back and fix the past. Moving on means moving forward.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.” Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Character Name Crisis!

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I’m at the point in my current WIP where I’m having a ‘naming crisis’. Although I’m happy with the names of my key protagonists, my antagonist currently has a name that just doesn’t fit (sigh…) so I’m in the throes of character naming angst. Being the type of writer that finds it hard to write a character until I have adequately ‘christened’ him or her, this angst is causing me quite a headache as well as producing a weird kind of writer’s block as I write and rewrite the antagonist’s name in various scenes as I struggle to get it right.

Finding the right name for a character is always a critical first step for me. I can’t just put in a placeholder or any old name in a first draft, I really have to be sure of at least the main character’s name before I can find the right voice. Usually female character names are easy – they come to me right away, or at least after just a little historical research (when you write historical like I do, the last thing you want is a modern name that’s completely wrong for the period). When it comes to male characters, however, there’s always some degree of angst. For example, in my current WIP I’ve only just realized that I’m using the same name for my principal male protagonist as in a book a wrote a few years ago – so obviously I have some favorites that I need to eliminate:) I also avoid names of ex-boyfriends or former colleagues (I find it difficult to separate the real person from the imaginary one when using particular names). When it comes to female characters I don’t seem to have the same sensitivity (I also accidentally named a maid after my sister and had no idea until she pointed this out to me…). In my current WIP I can’t work out exactly why the name of the antagonist doesn’t fit (my beta readers are happy with it after all), all I know is that it doesn’t…and I’m struggling to find a name that does.

This character angst has got me desperately looking for new naming strategies including scouring my bookshelves for random author and character names in the hope that these strike some inspiration (nope…) and resorting to baby naming websites (also with little success). So what to do when a character’s name is so elusive?? Honestly, I’m not sure (but maybe you TKZers can help!).

When starting a first draft I often ‘try on’ a couple of character names for my main protagonist (or protagonists) as I work through accessing their voice and POV. Usually this isn’t a major hurdle, but with my current WIP every time I try on a name for the main antagonist it just doesn’t seem right (ugh!)…So TKZers, any advice? What is your character naming process? Have you ever had a ‘naming crisis’ and if so, how did you eventually find just the right name in the end?