JUST WORDS: In Naming Characters, Remember the Reader

I loved reading Alistair Maclean, especially his WWII books, like Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. [My wife still shudders when I mention the latter because she had just read the scene where the hero is fighting Nazis on top of a cable car when I decided we should ride a cable car up to a remote French village.]

He really knew how to tell a story, but he did not name characters well.

Maclean had a thing for the name “Mary.” He did name one character Marian, which was far as he ever strayed from the name Mary for his female characters. In one book, he named the female characters Mary and Mary Two, and had the gall to claim it was the other characters in the book who did it.

His male characters were all Johnson and Henderson and Peterson and Nelson, et al, ad nauseum. Those names are too much alike. I couldn’t keep them straight.

It is important to keep the reader in mind when naming characters. Will the name help my readers remember who this character is, and differentiate him/her from the others?

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: I have heard that when the first baby laughed the first laugh, it broke into pieces and that is how we got fairies.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: John Boyne, NEXT OF KIN . Set in London, in 1937, with writing style appropriate to the time. An examination of how integrity does and does not work, and how we delude ourselves about who we are. Well done.

                    

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

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml