The Art of Naming Characters

March is NaNoEdMo—National Novel Editing Month.  When I was laying down the first draft of my current work in progress, somehow I managed to give every walk-on a name, right down to the dog. I generally write to an outline, but sometimes my stream-of-consciousness takes over, and the outline goes out the window.

So, now I’m on a mission to whittle down my cast of thousands.

But who should go and who should stay? What is the optimal number of characters for a book? Some say only four, others fifteen. I say introduce however many characters it takes to tell the story, but use common sense.

When you introduce a named character, ask yourself if it is someone the reader should remember. Even if he or she offers information the protagonist and reader must know, it doesn’t necessarily mean they need to named. Some throw-away characters will give us clues to help our protagonist complete his/her quest, or show us something about the protagonist, give us a clue into their personality or past.

Does the person return later in the story or does he or she act as part of the setting, showing the scenery of, say, a coffee shop, or a store? If they are just part of the scenery, they don’t need a name.

Only give names to characters who advance the plot.

In an excellent article on screenwriting, Christina Hamlett of the Writer’s Store writes:

In a screenplay, the rhythm you're attempting to establish--along with the emotional investment you're asking a reader to make--is disrupted whenever you devote more than two lines of introduction to a character who is simply there to take up space. In order to justify their existence, each player in your script should perform a unique function or deliver a specific line that:

1. Advances the plot,
2. Thwarts the hero's objectives,
3. Provides crucial background, and/or
4. Contributes to the mood of the scene.

If you've included characters who don't fulfill one or more of these jobs, they're probably not critical to the storyline and can be deleted.

While she is speaking of screenplays, this is true of a novel or short story. A name implies a character is an important part of the story. Ask yourself if the character is an example of “Chekhov’s Gun.” Does this character serve a purpose the reader must know? If not, don’t give them a name.

My current work  in progress has this passage, which takes place in an inn and involves a conversation overheard from a table adjacent to my two protagonists and their sidekicks:

The older merchant’s face darkened at the mention of the prince and his henchman. Quickly looking over his shoulder at the other guests in the common room, he hushed his son. “We’ll have no more mention of them at this table. If the wrong person overhears such talk, we’ll all end our days in our own beds with our throats slit!”

Culyn’s eyebrow rose, and he looked at Jack, who nodded.

Despite the fact the merchant and his sons give my protagonists information they needed, they are in this scene for only one purpose: to be overheard and don't appear again. For this reason, only Jack and Culyn, and the three others of their party are named in the full transcript of this scene.

Novelists can learn a great deal about how to write a good, concise scene from screenwriters. An excellent book I have gained a lot of knowledge from is Story by Robert McKee. If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it.

We want the reader to stay focused on the protagonist(s) and their story. The second draft is where we make every effort to find the distractions we may have inadvertently introduced in our rough draft, and extraneous named characters is an easy one to fix. Simply remove their name, and identify them in general terms. The reader will move on and forget about them.

The tendency to make every character a memorable person is one we can’t indulge. The reader will become confused if too many characters are named.

Also, I learned a difficult lesson the hard way about naming characters. In the Tower of Bones Series, I have a main character named Marya. She is central to the series. Also, in the first book, a side character was important enough to have a name, but my mind must have been in a rut when I thought that one up: for some stupid reason I named her Marta. 

You can probably see where this is going—the two names are nearly identical.

What is even worse, halfway through the first draft of the second book in the series, Marta suddenly was a protagonist with a major storyline. She actually becomes Marya’s mother-in-law in the third book. Fortunately, I was in the final stage of editing book one, Tower of Bones, for publication, and immediately realized I had to make a major correction: Marta was renamed Halee.

My rule now is to NEVER name two characters in such a way that the first and last letters of their names are the same. To avoid that circumstance, I try to never have two that even begin with the same letter.

One last thing to consider: how will that name be pronounced when it is read out loud? You may not want to get too fancy with the spelling, so that the narrator can easily read that name aloud. You may not think this matters, but it does. I only have one book that is an Audio book, but during the recording of that book, my narrator had trouble pronouncing the names of two characters, because I had written the names so they would look good on paper, not realizing they were unpronounceable as they were written. We ironed that out, but the experience taught me to spell names simply.

In conclusion, don’t confuse your readers by giving unimportant walk-on characters names, never name two characters names that are nearly identical, and consider making your spellings of names and places pronounceable just in case you decide to have your book made into an audio book.

      ___________________________________________________________
Connie J. Jasperson is an author and blogger and can be found blogging regularly at Life in the Realm of Fantasy.
Credit: Minor Characters Don't Need Major Introductions, Christina Hamlett, Copyright © 1982 - 2017 The Writers Store ® Incorporated, accessed Mar. 11, 2017.