What's in a name?
Mar. 5th, 2005 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pbray(day job ranting on) When a colleague asks you to assist her with her project over the weekend, it would be helpful if said colleague actually did her part of the project when she said she would, so I could then do mine. Instead I went in to work at the agreed upon time, only to find no trace of either her or her project. Left cranky message telling her I would check again tomorrow. Since, of course, this has to be done by Monday morning. And as team lead her failure is my failure, so I can't just blow her off, much as it would give me satisfaction to do so.(day job rant off)
And people wonder where I get the inspiration for my torture scenes....
Writing: 2,184 words today. I thought that the new character was going to make his appearance, but turns out I needed two scenes to show Josan's journey, and not just one.
Writing related: Updated reference table with character names and descriptions. Still have more to do, only about halfway caught up.
Which brings me to my writing rant of the day. Why do we need so many characters in our books? Why do all of these people need their own names? I'm not talking about the protagonist, nor the secondary or even tertiary characters. I'm talking about the disposable characters, those that get mentioned once and then thrown away. You know, the merchant who sells the hero his provisions before the hero sets off on his quest, the wise woman by the well who cackles maniacally as she informs the heroine that her betrothed has fled, the supercilious innkeeper, the grizzled warrior who taught our hero how to cast a spear, and the like. All of them need their own names, identifying traits and descriptions. And if I don't keep track of them, I wind up reusing the same names.
In one of my early Regencies all of the disposable characters were named Grimes, which was undoubtedly due to the Martha Grimes' novels that were on top of the nearby bookcase. The footman, the maid, the steward, the drunken young fop at that ball-- you guessed it, all Grimes. Pretty funny actually, since I didn't spot this until I was doing the first pass through the entire manuscript. I thought about leaving them in, waiting to see if anyone noticed the plethora of Grimeses poised to take over Regency London. In the end I took all but one of them out, but then in subsequent books I always tried to include at least one Grimes in honor of the near faux pas.
It would simplify my life if I could just put "Stock Villager (Old but Kindly)" rather than having to assign names to these folks, and then keep track of them. Especially when you're looking at a trilogy, the bookkeeping side of writing adds up.
And people wonder where I get the inspiration for my torture scenes....
Writing: 2,184 words today. I thought that the new character was going to make his appearance, but turns out I needed two scenes to show Josan's journey, and not just one.
Writing related: Updated reference table with character names and descriptions. Still have more to do, only about halfway caught up.
Which brings me to my writing rant of the day. Why do we need so many characters in our books? Why do all of these people need their own names? I'm not talking about the protagonist, nor the secondary or even tertiary characters. I'm talking about the disposable characters, those that get mentioned once and then thrown away. You know, the merchant who sells the hero his provisions before the hero sets off on his quest, the wise woman by the well who cackles maniacally as she informs the heroine that her betrothed has fled, the supercilious innkeeper, the grizzled warrior who taught our hero how to cast a spear, and the like. All of them need their own names, identifying traits and descriptions. And if I don't keep track of them, I wind up reusing the same names.
In one of my early Regencies all of the disposable characters were named Grimes, which was undoubtedly due to the Martha Grimes' novels that were on top of the nearby bookcase. The footman, the maid, the steward, the drunken young fop at that ball-- you guessed it, all Grimes. Pretty funny actually, since I didn't spot this until I was doing the first pass through the entire manuscript. I thought about leaving them in, waiting to see if anyone noticed the plethora of Grimeses poised to take over Regency London. In the end I took all but one of them out, but then in subsequent books I always tried to include at least one Grimes in honor of the near faux pas.
It would simplify my life if I could just put "Stock Villager (Old but Kindly)" rather than having to assign names to these folks, and then keep track of them. Especially when you're looking at a trilogy, the bookkeeping side of writing adds up.
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slightly fan-girlish comment :)
Date: 2005-03-06 05:53 am (UTC)btw I happened onto your LJ I believe from rolanni's f-list and decided to go ahead and read a few pages of "Devlins Honor" tonight at B&N . . . *snrk* I started reading about 8 next time I looked up, they had just pronounced the store closed. Ended up buying both of the novels in the series. Needless to say, found it a very good read.:)
Re: slightly fan-girlish comment :)
Date: 2005-03-06 01:55 pm (UTC)I have five books of names on the shelf right over my desk. The one that is most useful right now is The Writer's Digest Character-Naming Sourcebook, but I also have The Dictionary of Given Names, From Aaron To Zoe (15,000 Great Baby Names), the even scarier 40,001 Best Baby Names, and the Book of Irish Names.
Plus for the Devlin series I also use printed lists of Scandinavian names from the sagas.
It's not naming these people that I object to so much as it is keeping track of the names. For instance on a little piece of paper I have a scribbled note to use the name Florek. Being me, I will probably name the former innkeeper in my next scene Florek. And then five chapters later I will forget that I've used that name, and use it again. Or worse yet, in book two of the series, Florek will be used for an entirely different character, thus confusing eagle-eyed readers.
These are the things that no one tells you when you set out to be a writer. Sure, they talk about point of view, and the ubiquitous maxim "Show don't tell", and someone will almost certainly advise you how to write realistic sounding dialogue. But no one says "Hey, you better figure out how to organize all the stuff you put in your book so that point A is always west of point B, and that Bill the Pony doesn't morph into Frank the Mule between chapters 3 and 17."