Character Charades

Names are important to me. Note: Please refer to the chapter entitled ‘Numerous Names’ in this book. Our names define us and naming characters is something I take quite seriously. Sometimes a character will walk right up and introduce him/herself to me. “Hi there, glad to meet ya.” Those are the easy ones. It’s the ones I have to find names for that can set me to hours of searching baby-names-and-their-meanings websites. (It’s another great way of procrastinating too.) Note: Please refer to the chapter entitled ‘Procrastination Problems’ located in this book. As you can tell from my real name … oh wait … you don’t know my real name. As you can tell from some of my pseudonyms and characters (if you’ve read the books) I come from a long line of strange names and think everyone else should too.

What a name means is also important. (Several ex-boyfriends have run screaming into the night when I whip out the … baby name book.) Note: Please refer to the chapter entitled ‘Real Relationships’ located in this book and not in volume two … in hopes that there is a volume two. For example: John Colaw (in ‘Hunter of the Law’) means masculine lawman and he’s the chief of police.

Never name your character something you don’t like to type (or can’t spell). I wore the V button (and my finger) out on the laptop by the time I got through ‘The Adventures of V’. The female lead calls him V though the entire book and the sequel (if I ever get it finished), while everybody else calls him Marshal Verge. Trying to keep track of all those V’s through two hundred pages just about did me in.

In ‘Stealing Spirit’ everyone’s name except for the witches is a mishmash of all the people I work with. Apparently, none of them ever read the book because I never received any complaints (or compliments). I made the mistake of naming all four generations of witches ‘Bridget’ (a good old fashion pagan name) so I had to go back and give them each a type of tree as a middle name so readers (and I) could tell them apart.

Ex-boyfriends’ and ex-husbands’ names work well for victims or bad guys. When desperate and nothing is working, I have been known to open the phone book (that’s that big yellow thing they kill several forests with by printing it then dump it on your front porch where it gets rained on and you stick it on a shelf and never look at it again until the shelf sags from years of accumulated weight and I don’t even have a house phone) at a random page to find a first name or last name. Ah … don’t use the whole real name. Careful. This activity can lead to procrastination. Note: Please refer to the chapter titled ‘Procrastination Problems’ located in this book which counts as procrastination because your searching and reading instead of writing. (“What was his mother thinking naming him Richard? Now his name is Dick Comer.” or “Didn’t she realize her name would sound like a sexual position after she married him and took his last name? Now her name is Layla Bedstrom.”)

And just when you think you’ve master the talent of naming characters, just remember there are pets and towns and street names and body parts, but that is a whole different chapter.