Naming Characters
Do you love your name? Hate it? In her book, The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp suggests picking a new name for yourself then thinking about why you chose it. What does that say about you, about who you'd like to be and what you want to do?
Naming characters is important business - they're your babies. What do their names say about them? How do their names shape them? And if that wasn't enough to think about, there's also the nasty business of the "fictive dream," that place you want your readers to go and stay. To keep readers in the fictive dream, you need to make sure your character's names fit the setting of your story. Some names stand the test of time well. Others, not so much. Bertha, for example, was a popular girl's name in the 1880s but if you name your contemporary female lead that today it's going to affect her life. Likewsie, if your story is set in the 1880s then Heather isn't going to get you any reader cred. For some fun research on names, dig into the offerings of the Social Security Administration. You can sort U.S. baby names by year and state back to 1960 and see popular names by decade as far back as 1880.
Another thing to consider is the way people's brains respond to reading. Because of this, you'll want to try to avoid giving your characters names that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. Our brains want to quickly associate that first capital letter with one name. When it belongs to two different names, the brain gets slowed down differentiating. You want your readers to devour your stories, right? So they clamor for more and you get to write more? Don't slow them down.
Naming characters is important business - they're your babies. What do their names say about them? How do their names shape them? And if that wasn't enough to think about, there's also the nasty business of the "fictive dream," that place you want your readers to go and stay. To keep readers in the fictive dream, you need to make sure your character's names fit the setting of your story. Some names stand the test of time well. Others, not so much. Bertha, for example, was a popular girl's name in the 1880s but if you name your contemporary female lead that today it's going to affect her life. Likewsie, if your story is set in the 1880s then Heather isn't going to get you any reader cred. For some fun research on names, dig into the offerings of the Social Security Administration. You can sort U.S. baby names by year and state back to 1960 and see popular names by decade as far back as 1880.
Another thing to consider is the way people's brains respond to reading. Because of this, you'll want to try to avoid giving your characters names that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. Our brains want to quickly associate that first capital letter with one name. When it belongs to two different names, the brain gets slowed down differentiating. You want your readers to devour your stories, right? So they clamor for more and you get to write more? Don't slow them down.
Three Dimensional Characters
Part of what keeps readers interested is the elusive element of three dimensional or multi dimensional characters. What this means, in essence, is that no one is perfect. No one is entirely good or entirely bad. We are all a combination of traits and, more importantly, we act at different points on our trait spectrums according to the situation. For example, do you have a friend who brings out the best in you? A friend who encourages you to do things you know you shouldn't?
"The words hero and heroine sound impossibly grand, invoking wartime bravery and inhuman fortitude. Actually, ask most people what heroic attributes they admire and you will get a list of qualities that any of us might have: belief in others, the ability to overcome one's own flaws, conviction in the face of opposition, acting in spite of misgivings, steadfast love, moral integrity, tenacity, generosity, a sense of plentitude, unconditional love, and so on.
Such qualities are not seen every day, but they also are not found only on battlefields or in arctic wastes. The actions that reveal them can be quite small. Adding such an action to the introduction of your protagonist will have a huge impact on reader identification. Even if your protagonist's opening circumstances are ordinary or even awful, we need at least a small reason to like, care about, and to hope for this character." (Maass 12) (from Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook)
In the 2010 film Despicable Me, super villain Gru admits he's bad. And not only does he want to be bad, he wants to be the baddest, the most heinous villain of them all. Giving a young child a balloon animal only to pop it in his face and freeze-gunning his way to the front of the coffee shop line are only the warm-up for his heinous plan to use three orphaned girls to steal the moon. Yet in Gru's despicable behavior, we find a heroic trait. The super villain has tenacity. When he blows up a rigged carnival game that cheated the three orphans, we see he also has his own sense of loyalty. Over the course of the movie, these traits, with a little help from the three orphaned girls, transform Gru from super villain to super dad.
“If you can't love them, don't write them” (McKee 386).
"The words hero and heroine sound impossibly grand, invoking wartime bravery and inhuman fortitude. Actually, ask most people what heroic attributes they admire and you will get a list of qualities that any of us might have: belief in others, the ability to overcome one's own flaws, conviction in the face of opposition, acting in spite of misgivings, steadfast love, moral integrity, tenacity, generosity, a sense of plentitude, unconditional love, and so on.
Such qualities are not seen every day, but they also are not found only on battlefields or in arctic wastes. The actions that reveal them can be quite small. Adding such an action to the introduction of your protagonist will have a huge impact on reader identification. Even if your protagonist's opening circumstances are ordinary or even awful, we need at least a small reason to like, care about, and to hope for this character." (Maass 12) (from Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook)
In the 2010 film Despicable Me, super villain Gru admits he's bad. And not only does he want to be bad, he wants to be the baddest, the most heinous villain of them all. Giving a young child a balloon animal only to pop it in his face and freeze-gunning his way to the front of the coffee shop line are only the warm-up for his heinous plan to use three orphaned girls to steal the moon. Yet in Gru's despicable behavior, we find a heroic trait. The super villain has tenacity. When he blows up a rigged carnival game that cheated the three orphans, we see he also has his own sense of loyalty. Over the course of the movie, these traits, with a little help from the three orphaned girls, transform Gru from super villain to super dad.
“If you can't love them, don't write them” (McKee 386).