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Introducing Names in Fiction

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My name is Myrtle McGherkinsquirt and I’m going to tell you about my life.

I’ve seen blog posts from editors who hate stories that open like that, as if the character is giving a self-introduction to a room full of readers. Can’t say I’m a big fan of it myself. Characters in fiction are more often introduced something like this:

Myrtle McGherkinsquirt was a buxom brunette, fifty in the shade, who was actually one of those women – oft spoke of in car dealerships – who took her mini out of the garage once a week to do the shopping.

ie. Character name, followed by some broad strokes of physical details and something more specific or unique.

Then you get real masters of writing, who have discovered other ways of introducing their fictional characters.

Some do it without any ceremony whatsoever:

She could barely throw out a twisted paper clip or a fridge magnet that had lost its attraction, let alone the dish of Irish coins that she and Rich had brought home from a trip fifteen years ago. Everything seemed to have acquired its own peculiar heft and strangeness.

Carol or Virgie phoned every day, usually toward supper time, when they must have thought her solitude might be at least bearable.

- Alice Munro, from Free Radicals.

In this story the protagonist’s children — Carol and Virgie — are introduced partway through the story, and the reader is to assume the relationship. We already know that the protagonist is an older woman whose husband has just died, so it comes as no surprise that she has grown children. I suppose that’s why there was no need to explain who they were and how they are related.

It’s also a fairly middle-aged woman thing to do — just throwing names of extended relatives and friends into a conversation. It engenders a sense of familiarity between speaker and listener, because the listener is being drawn into the speaker’s home circle.

At other times, an author offers a portrait of the character, then inserts the name into the next paragraph:

In history class she sat next to an intriguing girl in the back of the room… She wore no makeup other than a set of obviously false eyelashes. She sat with her body twisted dramatically sideways, her long black-stockinged legs crossed once at the knee and again at the ankle, a Chinese puzzle of tension and beauty, while her torso leaned over the desk with exaggerated indifference. She was sketching on a sketch pad. Was she an artist? Justine noticed a huge book open in her lap, for the moment ignored. She was an intellectual! Her strange, temperate gray eyes met Justine’s. “Hi,” she said.

Within a week Justine was walking home from school with Watley Goode.

- Mary Gaitskill, from Two Girls, Fat And Thin

As for minor characters, must we name them at all?

“I beg your pardon?” said the library woman who had passed out the three sheets of paper. Her name was something or other.

- Daniel Handler, wrongly

*

On that point, I have a bad habit of failing to name characters in short stories. Sometimes I’d just prefer to call someone The Man or The Child or The Backpacker.

Eleanor Catton does this too in her novel The Rehearsal:

“Is he in prison already?” says first alto.

“Probably under house arrest,” says double bass.

This is probably because these are characters in a play, and because reading the novel is sort of like watching a rehearsal of that play. The decision to call characters by their parts helps the reader to sink into this atmosphere. I suppose if  you’re going to avoid naming characters, you have to have a good reason for it. (ie. Not just because you can’t think of a good name.)

I’ve talked to readers who feel it’s almost an insult for the writer not to name a character. Others find it annoying. Some think it’s an artificial attempt at sounding literary or abstract.

I’m in two minds about it.

THE ADVANTAGES OF NAMInG CHARACTERS

Well, it’s convention. I’ve never had anyone say, ‘Why did you need to name that character?’ (Though I will now, to be sure.)

Assigning characters names is all part of the ‘be specific’ thing. If writers are specific in fiction, readers can pretend the world really exists. If characters are named, we can imagine they really live. Verisimilitude.

DISADVANTAGES OF NAMING CHARACTERS

Names themselves have connotations, and not always the same connotations for different readers. I love the name Hannah because of the Hannahs I know, but you may feel differently about this name. I’ve had beta readers tell me that a certain name doesn’t suit the character, when to me, it fit perfectly. Neither of us is right or wrong, of course. Such is the nature of names.

Depending on HOW we introduce a name, readers will think they need to remember this character for later. If you’ve already expected the reader to remember other names, it may not be worth asking them to take in the names of minor characters too. Too many names is confusing, especially in a short story.

Fact is, we don’t always know people’s names in real life. We walk past many people each week whose names we don’t know – office block cleaners, the woman at number 12, the delivery man, the butcher. If the characters in fiction are unlikely to know the names of other characters, and if writing from tight third person point of view – it makes no sense to name them in fiction either. That takes us out into omniscient point of view. (Which is fine, if that’s the POV you’re writing in. I don’t share the widespread modern contempt for omniscient narration.)

Sometimes, stereotypes are useful. If I describe ‘the butcher’ you probably have an image in your mind. Your butcher might be called ‘Kevin’ and I wouldn’t want to interfere with that. I might not want to go messing with your image by calling the butcher ‘Sheila’.

Sometimes, an unnamed character stands for The Everyman. That’s why I quite like writing with ‘The Man’ or ‘The Backpacker’. Alternatively, there are certain names that stand in for certain tropes: Marjorie (a conservative middle-aged woman), Nigel (a… well, a ‘Nigel’), Mary-Sue, Billy Joe Jim Bob Earl Jr., Mr Joe Bloggs, Lolita… You get what I mean. These names tend to be utilised when a writer wants readers to accept a stereotype so the story can progress. In this way, reliance upon an ‘allegorical name’ is similar to not naming a character at all.

Related Link: Two Notes On Names from Keli Gwyn’s blog.



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