If you have over a million words of fiction set in the same world, you’re very likely going to have a lot of characters and those characters need names.\u00a0\u00a0 The names have to fit the world, and each other.\u00a0 In real life, many people may have the same name (which is how the innocent get blamed for crimes they didn’t commit): there are dozens of Elizabeth Moons across the country, with at least one in most states and at least nine in Texas.\u00a0\u00a0 But in a book (as I discovered in my first one, when I didn’t know better) readers expect one name per character and one character per name.\u00a0\u00a0 They need those names to be easily pronounced (and “easily” varies with the reader) and distinctive.<\/p>\n
I can’t fix the names I used in the earlier books–they’re canonical now–but I have tried, in the new books,\u00a0 not to compound the difficulty with more identical or similar names.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Sometimes it’s plot-relevant that names are alike.\u00a0 Can’t help that.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some obvious “rules” include:\u00a0 characters with the same name shouldn’t be talking to one another unless there’s a nickname or other way you can tell them apart.\u00a0\u00a0 Characters with names that look too similar (even if they’re not identical) shouldn’t be in the same conversation since “said Jan” and “said Jon” are going to be mixed up.\u00a0\u00a0 As with software–if there’s a way for confusion to exist, someone will be confused, so write it so it’s not possible.<\/p>\n
I bring this up now, because months ago I wrote a scene in which a new Marshal was introduced as Marshal Cedlin.\u00a0\u00a0 He’s male, a native of Fintha.\u00a0 The name fit the personality (solid, reliable, competent) with the \/ed\/ sound.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It wasn’t until revision time, when that chapter ended up near a chapter with a female character (more minor, but talked about) named Celbrin (notice the different feel of the sounds.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She’s a native Tsaian.\u00a0\u00a0 They never meet, so there’s no direct contact of the names.\u00a0\u00a0 The names\u00a0 don’t rhyme; they don’t sound much alike, but to look at–typographically–the \/dl\/ and \/lb\/ are a potential problem.\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve argued with myself about this for a week now–I really like both names for the people they are, and as usual, in writing them, they grew into their names–but have come down on the side of clarity.<\/p>\n
Cedlin is about to be changed, in a global search & replace.\u00a0\u00a0 (He’s in more than one chapter, at this point.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s taken a couple of days to come up with a replacement name that does everything a name for a minor character with an important role must do.\u00a0 I hope it does work for all the name functions. \u00a0 I hope the search-and-replace actually catches all of them this time.<\/p>\n
(See your writer at work, trying to make your reading experience smoother.)<\/p>\n
EDIT NOTE:\u00a0 Meant to mention that the ms. for Book IV, which had shrunk to under 160,000 words (I forget the exact amount: 157-ish, I think), is now right at 166,000 and growing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The decision to move everything after Mmmph into Book V, and split Ummph between this book and V, meant opening up room to enrich some squashed-feeling stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 Some things will still be covered fairly quickly, as there’s a ceiling not far overhead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have over a million words of fiction set in the same world, you’re very likely going to have a lot of characters and those characters need names.\u00a0\u00a0 The names have to fit the world, and each other.\u00a0 In real life, many people may have the same name (which is how the innocent get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[22,62],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","tag-characters","tag-craft-of-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1428,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions\/1428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}