George By Any Other Name

Frankie here. The subject of naming characters has come up here on occasion. In fact, I probably bring it up more than anyone else. Well, I'm back there again -- resorting to everything from name generators on the Internet to staring at the names on the books on my bookshelves. A first name here, a last name there.

I've been struggling with this because I'm starting a new book. The only characters who have names that haven't changed in the past few days are my protagonist and the police chief. And I still don't know the police chief's last name. Well, I have managed to name a dog and a cat, but I looked at a lists of popular canine names to find one for the dog.

The problem is that I need to do a synopsis for my editor for this book. I would like to get it done before I'm a whole lot older. I have the basic plot. I've even managed to write chapter summaries. I won't be able to move any further until I have given my victim, killer, and suspects names. I certainly can't begin to write the book until my characters all have names. Placeholder names are dangerous because they can end up sticking. 

However, I think I may have had a breakthrough as I was waking up this morning -- or rather between the time I turned over because the light outside was seeping around the blinds and the moment when my cat, Harry, decided it was time I got up and meowed outside the door. Luckily, this morning, he let me sleep in. That gave my brain long enough to process the thoughts that were drifting through it. 

What occurred to me was that maybe I was going about naming my characters the wrong way. For example, I had an image in my head of one character and assigned a name based on that image. But this morning before I was completely awake I started playing with other names. Silly names. And one of them stuck and the character morphed into someone else. And suddenly I had a solution to how to handle that character's essential presence in the book. 

Having solved that problem, I got up and began to think about "George". George is the name I gave to a character who I wanted the reader to think of as an average guy. But this morning, it occurred to me that each reader will bring his or her impressions of and experiences with "Georges" to the book. Maybe I'm thinking George Wendt, who played "Norm" on the TV sitcom "Cheers". 

Maybe they're thinking George Washington. And then I thought of my own two grandfathters, both named George. I was too young to have known my paternal grandfather well and my maternal grandfather died before I was born. But they were both farmers, and I suspect not the kind of average guy the George in my book was intended to be. 

What if instead I named this character Malcolm or Ross. How would my former George, who would be playing the same role in the book be different? Maybe instead of rejecting a name because it doesn't seem to fix my character, I should think about who my character might be if he had that name. How would George's life have been different if his parents had named him Donovan or Adam. 

Yes, names conjure up images in our heads and we all associate certain names with certain personalities. We expect Brandi (with an "i") to be more likely to be a stripper than a lawyer. We might expect Cyrus to be a bit gruff or at least taciturn. 

But what if the stripper were named Catherine? How would a Catherine have become a stripper?

I confess that I am thinking a bit about my own name here. Being a woman named "Frankie" has certainly give me a different view of the world than if my given name were Ann because I have to take into account that some people may anticipate a male person when they see my name. For example, the driver of the airport shuttle bus who was picking me up at my hotel a couple of weeks ago -- he was surprised when the male passenger he had anticipated turned out to be a woman -- which caught me off-guard because I was thinking about something else and had forgotten the driver might expect a man. I could always put a "Ms" in front of my name, but that's a real drag -- although it seems "Drew" one of "The Property Brothers" on HGTV, does have "Mr." in his email address. 

But I digress. My point is that I've stumbled on this idea of picking interesting names and then thinking about who that character might be if he or she had that name. But I am naming-challenged. I discovered a few days ago that I had given the victim in my new book the same name as the victim in my last book. Two very different guys but I'm apparently fascinated by the name "Kevin" -- which would suggest that a name can send one in a number of different directions. Or maybe I was just desperate to find a name for my new victim and plucked the first one that occurred to me out of the air. 

Thoughts?  How do you go about  finding names that suit your characters? Name first or personality first?

Using Boredom

I want to speak in praise of boredom. Not the kind of sitting around the house with nothing to do boredom -- or looking at me and meowing his complaint about having nothing to do as my cat Harry sometimes does -- but, instead, the sitting in an event and being bored silly kind of boredom. The "I can't get up and leave" but I really wish I could kind of boredom. For a writer those moments and that kind of boredom can be incredibly productive.

Of course, good manners requires that one try to look interested -- not yawn, not squirm, not glance at watch or check text messages. But I am of the opinion that it is acceptable to think about something else if you look like you're paying attention (please, don't tell my students I said that). I think it is much better to have an active, but distracted mind, then to nod off.

And then there is what I think of as passive listening. This is when you don't think of something else but instead allow what is going on to flow over and around you. In this state, you are hearing if not processing. Recently, I did this while attending an event. A few days later, I reaped the rewards of relaxing into boredom. My subconscious used what I had heard to provide the solution to a plot problem.

Right now, I'm attending Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh. I'm not at all bored. I'm happily running into people I see only once or twice a year. Tomorrow, I intend to attend some panels. But I suspect that even though I am not bored my mind will drift. I will engage in active listening, and something someone says will have me reaching for a pad and pen because I have an idea. And I may miss some of what is said after that. But I will try to jot down just enough so that I can come back to it later.

It seems to me that whether I'm bored or invigorated, what works best is to let my subconscious do its thing. I'm depending on that for a problem I'm trying to solve. I'm working on a plot outline for a book and in spite of using my usual multiple pronged approach -- name generators, baby name websites, sites with surnames by nationality -- I am having a more difficult time than usual finding the right names for my characters.

I've named my protagonist but several characters have only a first name, and others are identified only by occupation. I am one of those writers who needs names for my characters before I can move forward. But I'm assuming that whatever the block I'm experiencing is, it must be a part of the process. There must be something important I need to consider about these characters' names. And if I wait for it, my subconscious will make the connections.

How do you tap into your subconscious? Does boredom work for you?

One way to have some fun with character names

by Rick Blechta

I’m one of those fiction writers who struggles with coming up with good character names, or should I say, I used to be one of those people.

The answer to my dilemma came to me “like a cold fist at the end of a wet kiss.” (Wish I could take credit for that bit of descriptive text but it comes from an old Firesign Theatre sketch.) I have perfectly useable names right at my fingertips: my friends!

It started back a number of novels ago in Cemetery of the Nameless. At first I didn’t want to throw actual people I knew into the mix as characters. I mean, what if they didn’t like who I made them? So in Cemetery, I used them for my sort of “Greek chorus” idea at the beginning of each chapter where various people make comments on the action going on in the story. It was a fun project, and the names of reporters, reviewers, and other musicians were all various people I knew. It worked out well for me, and the friends whose names I used loved it.

As further books were written and I got more comfortable with the idea, I began to name minor characters after people I knew. With my current novel release, Roses for a Diva, I jumped all the way into the pool. Nearly every one of the supporting characters are friends and people with whom I grew up.

If you’ve read that book, you’ll remember Leonardo Tallevi, the general manager of the Canadian Opera Company (a real entity). Lenny is a friend from way back and a great tenor sax player. I left off that last bit, but I did use something of the real person in my character. A Roman cop is another old friend, Steve Pucci. Drummer Tommy Giorgi turned up as the conductor for the Rome Opera, and Eddie Furci saved the day in Tosca.

Back in Toronto, the two detectives from the Toronto Police Services are former colleagues from my band teaching days and very good friends. I don’t even know if they’re aware I “borrowed” them. Somehow I don’t want to be the first to break the news.

Minor characters are fine, but I don’t think it would be fair to use a real person’s name – at least, real to me – for a main character in that it would be too restricting. Walk-ons are one thing, but protagonists and antagonists need depth (warts and all) to be believable, and I know what I’d wind up doing to a real person would probably lead to hurt feelings — if not law suits.

As for main characters, I rely on my wife to tell me what their names are.

So…problem solved for moi. And it’s a hoot to do. Does anyone else use a dodge like this?

The Name's the Thing

I've been thinking about names -- character names. My strategy for finding names when I first started to write was to go to the telephone book (the old days when we received a printed directory). Often, when I was feeling creative, I would compile a list of first names from several alphabets, and a list of last names from other alphabets and mix and match. Often this strategy didn't work. I would start to write and find the name didn't fit. That's why when I look back at the notebook that I kept in the early days of my writing career, I'm amazed to see how often names -- even those of my protagonist and other ensemble characters -- changed. My crime historian Lizzie Stuart was "Sarah" at one point. John Quinn, the cop in that series, was once "Nicholas". He is definitely not a "Nicholas" or a "Nick". And the former "Sarah Adams" has fared much better as "Lizabeth ('Lizzie') Stuart".

Luckily before I stuck my characters with names they would have to live with, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to think about who they were. Maybe that was why I struggled with names in the beginning -- because I hadn't figured out who my characters were or would be. Interesting how much easier the naming of the characters came with my second series. But by then -- fifteen years later -- I had learned to think first, then write. Yes, I'm a plotter, not a pantser. I need to plan, not plunge in. Or, rather, I'm a hybrid. I need to plan enough so that I have a rough road map. That now includes knowing enough about my main characters to give each a name that conjures up an image in their head. "Hannah McCabe," the police detective in my second series, is the daughter of "Angus". Once I knew her father's name, I knew much more about her and who she would be.

The Bad Seed (1956), a movie that I'm using for some academic research, provides a textbook example of how to get maximum mileage out of names. In a riveting performance, Eileen Heckart portrays the mother of a small boy who has drowned under mysterious circumstances at a school picnic. His penmanship medal -- pinned to his shirt by his mother -- is missing. Drunk and grieving, she comes to visit the mother of another student, wanting to know if the woman's daughter can tell her what happened. In a raw, painful scene, she compares her name -- "Hortense" -- to that of the other mother -- "Christine". Christine is a "gentle name," she says. "Hortense" is "fat" and awkward. She recites the limerick that her own schoolmates made up to tease her. The two characters are a study in contrast. As Hortense Daigle points out, Christine Penmark is wealthy (the daughter of a famous reporter and the wife of a colonel). Christine knows how to wear simple clothes. When Hortense buys simple clothes, they never fit right. The irony of this scene is that Christine, of the gentle name and good breeding, is about to discover that her birth mother was a serial killer and that her pig-tailed, curtseying daughter "Rhoda" has her grandmother's homicidal tendencies. Rhoda kills "LeRoy," the janitor and contemplates the murder of their landlady, "Monica Breedlove," a large, nurturing woman, whose married name once became a topic for discussion with her analyst. Monica is a Freudian.

Some of the lessons I've learned about naming characters:

1. Consider character's size, shape, and other physical characteristics
2. Consider the time period and region of the country in which character was born
3. Consider the naming traditions of the racial/ethnic/religious/cultural group into which character was born
4. Consider the name customs of the family into which the character was born
5. Consider the special circumstances that might have affected the choice of character's name
6. Consider decisions that might have been made by others after character was named
7. Consider decisions the character might have made about his/her given name

For example, do you want to give a character a name that "fits" or that will surprise others and/or make the character uncomfortable or resigned to the reaction. If you're naming a female character born in colonial New York into a Dutch family, it might be a good idea to do some research. Do you want to challenge stereotypes and assumptions your readers might have about certain names and the people who have them? Do you want to use the character's name to reveal something important about the character's history? What does the character prefer to be called and by whom?

The more I think about names, the more I realize how names choices by a writer can open up a story and invite the reader in. Names matter. Just ask "Sherlock Holmes" or "Jane Eyre".