Today we are happy to have guest poster James R. Callan, author of A Ton of Gold here to talk about the importance of naming characters. Welcome James!
Names Are Important
by James R. Callan
Is selecting a name for you
characters important? Have you ever just
picked up the telephone directory, opened it at random and grabbed a name?
Suppose Margaret Mitchell had
named her protagonist Jane. Would she
have started the reader with a different impression than she did when she
selected Scarlett? Before we even meet
Scarlett we have a feeling about her.
Scarlett reminds us of heat, emotion, energy, fire. We expect a fiery, energetic, volatile
woman.
Do we start out with a
different impression if the man guy is named Winston or Joe?
J.K. Rowling is one of the
most successful writers of our time. Do
you think she spent time on her characters’ names – and not just the major
characters? And did they start us out
with an impression? Draco Malfoy? Nymphadora Tonks? Ron Wesley? Servius Snape? Those names did not just trip off her tongue;
she worked to come up with them. Why,
with all those great names, did she name the protagonist a rather plain name –
Harry Potter? Perhaps she wanted to give
us the impression that he was an ordinary person, a reluctant hero.
The name is part of the
character. Why do people change their
name in real life? Because they want a
different persona, a different outward expression that better reflects how they
feel about themselves, how they want to be viewed. So you, the writer who is creating this
character, need to decide how the character views herself.
In Deadly Additive, Donn Taylor
named a secondary character who always operated on the edge, Brinkman. An accident?
I don’t think so. Ian Fleming
gave us some insight into the character of his antagonist in The Richest Man in the World when he
named him Auric Goldfinger.
Can the name mislead us? Certainly, if you want it to. Just don’t let it happen by mistake. Tiffany can be a person who spends her life
helping the homeless, living and eating with them, and then returning to her
one room under the Elevated. Maybe her parents are rich and she was to be a
debutant. But the girl wanted to do something
more important.
You can use the name to help
make the case for who this person is, or who the parents imagined she might be. Holly Golightly was a happy, carefree
woman. Sam Spade was a straight forward,
no frills, hard working person who dug for clues.
Suppose your heroine is named
Catherine. If she calls herself Cat, that tells us how she sees herself, and
how the reader should view her.
Select the names of your
characters carefully. Do not use the
name as simply a way to distinguish one character from another. Make a conscious effort to select a name that
helps build your character.
You work hard to give your
book a name that will entice the reader to pick it up and read. Select your character name to make your book
memorable.
A Ton of Gold
A contemporary
mystery / suspense novel
Can long forgotten, old folk tales affect the lives of
people today? In A Ton of Gold, one certainly affected young, brilliant Crystal
Moore. She stands on the brink of losing everything – her only family, her
self-esteem, her career and quite possibly her life. Two people are killed, others threatened, a
house burned and an office fire-bombed – all because of an old folk tale, greed
and ignorance.
On top of that, the man who nearly destroyed Crystal
emotionally is coming back. This time he
can destroy her career. She’ll need all
the help she can get from a former bull rider, her streetwise housemate and her
feisty 76 year-old grandmother.
About James Callen
After a successful career in mathematics and computer
science, receiving grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA, and
being listed in Who’s Who in Computer
Science and Two Thousand Notable
Americans, James R. Callan turned to his first love—writing. He wrote a monthly column for a national
magazine for two years, and published several non-fiction books. He now concentrates on his favorite genre, mystery/suspense,
with his fourth book, A Ton of Gold, released in February,
2013.
Website: www.jamesrcallan.com
Blog site: www.jamesrcallan.com/blog
Facebook: James
Callan
Twitter:
@jamesrcallan
On Amazon, in paperback, at:
http://amzn.to/UQrqsZ
Or the Kindle edition at: http://amzn.to/12PeHJb
Or from Oak Tree Press at:
http://bit.ly/WJXcWl
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