REMEMBERING WHAT I NAMED A CHARACTER

Black Opal Books recently asked on Facebook how we go about naming characters.

There is a lot that goes into naming, starting with remembering which character has which name as you write.

I may rename a character later, but when shehe first arrives in the story, I use the initials of hisher role in the story for the name.

The physics professor is Paul Powell, county sheriff is Charlene Sellers, funeral director is Fred Davis, and so on.

I try to allow for age and ethnicity in those names. For instance, an Italian funeral director would be Franco De Fiore. That is not important in the beginning, though. I don’t want to slow down the writing by contemplating too hard on a name. When a funeral director suddenly shows up, I take the FD initials that come readily to mind. After all, the point of this initial naming is for ME to remember who is whom.

It’s easy enough to remember your main characters, but the lesser ones can be a problem. You don’t want to just guess and end up with more than one name for the same character, nor do you want to take the time to look it up in your index. The initials approach makes it easy to remember that the Spanish teacher is Serena Toscano. Of course, if you don’t normally use Spanish names, and thus Serena Toscano is really not easily conjured up, it’s perfectly okay to name her Sue Taylor. She still has the initials of Spanish Teacher.

More tomorrow.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/