The Name of Things

It's been awhile since I've written about . . . .wait for it . . . writing.

Of course that was the whole reason for this blog in the first place. But writing exclusively about writing stuff can come over a bit stuffy and boring, so I tend to digress. . . a lot. And notice how much I like ellipses? The little dot, dot, dot thingies. They're fun, aren't they? Well, word through the publishing grapevine is that they look down on the little ellipses as lazy writing. I try to leave them out of my novels, and actually succeed sometimes, but they needed a place to play so here they are.

But today's topic isn't about ellipses--those darn things just sneak in. If I'm not careful I'll have this blog full of em-dashes--the double long hyphen thingies--uh, oh . . .

Back to the topic at hand: I have a tough time with names in my stories. I over think them, because names tell so much about a person. Readers form their first opinions when they see a character's name. If you see a name like Donna, odds are you know of a Donna(s) and have formed an opinion of what she looks like/sounds like/her personality. A reader's life experience can influence how they enjoy a story. And writers can throw in red herrings simply by giving a secondary character an unexpected name, or villain could be acting villainous because he has a simple and boring name.

I have a habit of going overboard in the opposite direction. I make my names too unusual, therefore they stand out in the stories I write. Unless you write fantasy, then you have to come up with something 'different', though the trend seems to be using apostrophes in place of vowels. Anne McCaffrey did this with her Pern stories, the dragonrider's name becomes abbreviated when he impresses a hatching dragon. There's a reason for her names, but I have no idea how she manages to keep everything straight throughout her numerous series. Sometimes characters in one series make cameo appearances in another series. ACK! I can imagine the spreadsheets and wipe boards!

*sigh* I digress. . . again. Sorry about that.

If a writer is writing a historical novel, the writer must have a name that fits the time frame of the story. There is a little wiggle room, but you don't want to yank your reader out of the story by introducing a 'Tiffany' to a Regency. Even if the name was around at that time period, I don't know and I certainly didn't check my sources so if I'm wrong--oops, it will jerk the reader from the story. Trust me, I've read some contest entries like that. Now, if it was a time travel that would be a different story.

I'm writing a middle grade novel right now and have the child's name of Rhiannon who I call Rhee (and I don't even want to get into the -rhea thing!), and the mom is Bryn. Yeah, two weird names. I did better with the males in the book, Jason and Mike. :-) But I think I'll need to change the girl's names or one of them, but I'll finish writing the story and worry about that later. If I manage to get an agent/editor who is interested, I'll do whatever they feel is best for the story. Remember, names are important to the characters, but don't drive yourself crazy about choosing the right name. In the end all that matters is that this is YOUR story.

Or am I the only one who has this problem?

Write on!