Names and roles

I am still-- always-- thinking about what we call our characters. Talk about picky. I was just reading a book where characters are referred to by their names, by their roles, and often by some physical trait. For example:

A woman is called Fidelia (I'm making this up for the usual reasons) on first reference.

Then next time, she is called "the ad executive" or "Peter's wife".

Then she's called "the brunette."

I actually came across a reference to her as "the brunette ad executive."

I remember my friend Lynn Kerstan remarking that such a passage made it feel like there was a big crowd in the room, though there are actually only two characters (Fidelia and Peter, the blond airline pilot husband :).

Anyway, take a glance at your own story, and tell me how you handle this. Do you always refer to a character by name, and then pronoun (and what do you do if there's more than one "he"?), and if you do replace the name with a noun, what do you consider acceptable and not?

I was just writing a passage where I was referring to a male character by his last name (Petrus). Now this scene is being told from the POV of another character, Lakoff. Petrus has come to Lakoff's city and office for a business meeting. So I had Lakoff think of his as "Petrus" and then "the visitor," and I stopped and thought... should I do this? Is it clear enough that the visitor is Petrus? Is there a good reason not to use his name?

Oddly, I think I find sort of generic terms like "the other man" or "the visitor" or "his guest" as acceptable, while personal terms (like those that tell much at all about this person, especially his hair color) make me squirm-- they seem amateurish somehow.

Okay, here's my justification, lame though it might be, for "the other man, et al" being acceptable substitutes. Those are all in relationship to the POV character. That is, Lakoff is a man, so "the other man" refers to, uh, the other man. Lakoff is the host, so the other man is "the visitor" and "his guest". This seems okay to me even if Lakoff himself would not necessarily think those terms-- after all, we don't think entirely in words, and "the other"ness of someone else is something so primal that we probably think it without language, and we writers use those terms (because we do communicate entirely with words) to replicate the feeling that the other is, well, the other.

But I'm not sure. I just feel that the generic terms are acceptable sometimes (not often, and never, I'd suspect, if the POV character KNOWS this person well), and "the blonde ad executive" conversely seems like a neon sign of amateurishness. What do you all think?

Alicia

More about names and pronouns

I was thinking about when a descriptor other than the name or pronoun works for me, and I think it might be a POV issue (of course :). When we're in Joan's POV, how would she think of the other person? I don't mean the actual words necessarily, but the relationship of "me" to "her." That is, consciousness starts with our distinguishing ourselves from everyone else, so the first descriptor would be "other," that is, "not me." So that's why, I think, you frequently see in a passage that's in one character's POV a reference to "the other man" or "the other woman," meaning the non-POV character.

I suspect the reader will have no trouble distinguishing with a term like this, and will have no objection-- that is, if we're seated solidly and deeply in Joan's POV, the reader will go along no protest with a term that Joan would use to describe (consciously or no) the other person.

That's why, with Dave's example, both clg and I thought of describing Podgorny as "her opponent," because that's what she is right then in Sally's POV-- the opponent. If we were so deep in Sally's POV that we were in her voice as well as viewpoint, that term might be more, um, colorful. But the term would describe the relationship at that moment. If Sally and P would both survive the fight and shake hands and go out for a drink together (okay, five drinks) and share sad tales of fights that didn't work out so well, in the scene where they drunkenly stumble back to the barracks, warbling Sting songs in two-part harmony, it might be "Sally and her new friend," or "Sally and her one-time enemy," or "Sally and her drinking buddy." That is, the descriptor would change because the relationship has changed.

(This reminds me of my sons, who were both home this weekend so they're on my mind. When my younger boy-- and see, there I am, using a descriptor instead of his name-- was born, the older one wasn't yet two, and of course he regarded A as an intruder. Once he started talking, he referred to the baby only as "that other little guy." It wasn't until they actually started having a relationship that he started referring to A by name, and then "my little brother." And I noticed this weekend, now they're both theoretically grown, he refers to A just as "my brother." I pointed this out to A-- "He doesn't call you his little brother anymore," and A said gruffly, "He can always call me that. It's okay with me." :)

Anyway, in deep POV, it seems to me that the descriptor should always be something that reflects how the POV character would think of this Other. (Again, this is not necessarily the exact words, as long as we're not "in voice"-- that is, writing the narrative in the character's own voice.") So if Sally initially doesn't know her opponent's first name, the narration shouldn't refer to her as "Olga." But after their drinking time begins, and Podgorny says, "Oh, hell, call me Olga," the narration could start referring to her as "Olga."

In omniscient POV, probably any descriptor that the reader would associate with that character would work, but not more than a couple for each. The goal is to limit confusion, not spread it, and too many descriptors for each character could get confusing. ("Which one is the redhead again?") I'd also suspect that pairing descriptors could get annoyingly clunky ("the redheaded detective") though Homer used them (cf. Homeric epithet).

What about in multiple POV? Well, in multiple, you're always (or should be always) in someone's POV. You just shift within a scene to another POV as needed. So whatever character's POV you're in at that moment should dictate what descriptor is used, and yeah, that can mean "her opponent" or "the other woman" refer to different people at different times in the scene. I think as long as you are deep in a character's POV -before- that point, the reader will follow no problem.

What do you all think?
Alicia

Naming names

I've been working on a scene with two women, and have been editing with an eye to clearing up the confusion of the pronoun. So here are a couple suggestions:

Situation-- two women interacting, talking together in a scene. So "she" could refer to either of the two women. And you're going to have sentences that involve both of them. ("She handed her the two-liter bottle.") So think about what problems this would cause for your narration, and how you'd handle that.

1) First, I'd try to make the names not start with the same letter. Sophisticated readers probably often "read" the shape of the word on the page or screen, rather than seeing the letters. Usually, they'll see that initial capital and associate it with one character another, and then quickly go onto the next word. This subconscious process is impeded when two character names start with the same first letter. So reconsider "Jane and Jackie"... but do it early, before the name becomes bonded to the character. You know how that happens. "But she IS Jane!! I can't make her Eve! I can't!"

2) Who's in viewpoint in this scene, or at this point in the scene? We tend not to think of ourselves as our names, but rather "I," and the equivalent of that in third-person is the personal pronoun he/she. So one way is to make she/her/hers always refer to the woman whose viewpoint we're in. (This only works with tightly controlled POV that stays clearly in one character a long time, preferably the entire scene.) But then you have to refer to the other character by name, even when you're using the possessive case. So "She watched Jackie comb Jackie's hair..." Nahhh. :) Some variation of the POV-character "she," however, seems to be what most of us end up with.

3) Use their names when there's any confusion at all. Clunky, yeah, but clunky is better than unclear. So "Eve watched Jackie comb her hair" works because we're going to assume the "her" refers back to the last name (Jackie). How would you do it if Jackie's a hairdresser and is combing Eve's hair, and Eve can watch it in the mirror? "Eve watched Jackie comb Eve's hair" is TOO clunky.

4) Recast whenever you can't make it work. Try putting one person in a dependent clause and the other in the main clause, maybe: "As Eve watched the process in the mirror, Jackie combed out her hair." Arrrgh. This is always hard. Two sentences might be necessary. Well, so what? Not like you're limited to a certain number of sentences.

Supply some examples of tough sentences with two "she" characters, and let's see what we can do to make them comprehensible and unclunky.
Alicia

Names

Oh, and I wanted to pose a few questions. How would you handle these situations?

1) Judy is undercover and pretending her name is Paula. What name would you use for her under what circumstances?
2) We're in Chapter 4. We the readers know that this guy is named Rich (because there has been a scene in his POV), but the heroine doesn't know him or his name. Again, how would you handle this?
3) Annie is Annie to her friends, Anne to her mother, and Mom to her son. She thinks of herself (when she thinks of herself by name) as her maiden name, Jones. What would you call her in the narrative?
Alicia