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In a name.
I received an email over the weekend from someone who shall remain anonymous, inquiring about how I came about using their own name in a story of mine. Of course I didn’t use “their” name intentionally; rather, it was one of those things that I managed to pluck out of the interminable void or collective unconscious or whatever you want to call it. Everything was cool once I explained this to them. No lawsuits or anything (at least I hope not).
The incident led me to wonder about how many authors out there get this sort of thing from time to time, if not every day. I imagined Stephen King under a constant barrage of letters from various “Johnny Smiths” across the country following the publication of The Dead Zone. While I can only hope to one day receive actual correspondence from a ton of readers, I admit the thought of hearing the same question over and over, to varying degrees of vehement annoyance, is rather nauseating.
And this thought led me to ponder all the names of characters I’ve created over the years. See, this is how I work. My thoughts leap-frog one another to some conclusion just over the horizon – I can’t see it right away, but if I keep hopping along, I’ll eventually get there. You could probably relate this to answering the age-old question, “How do you write?”
The answer: “One word at a time.”
So. Names. Character names. Sometimes they hit me right away; other times I slap on some generic moniker and hope the character grows into it, or vise-versa. Usually they come out of nowhere, or are composites, sometimes pulling a first name from this person and a last name from another. The same goes for characteristics – I usually try and think of qualities of two different people, combine them and then take or leave whatever I think doesn’t work. Characters a la carte. Usually this works for me; sometimes it doesn’t, and I go back to the drawing board.
To be perfectly honest, in my opinion (and per a discussion I had with an editor friend of mine), I’ve really only recently figured out how to write real characters, and that could best be exemplified by A Life Transparent. Prior to ALT, my characters were figureheads – walking and talking symbols for ideologies or some other nonsense. Only on a few occasions did they happen to transcend the horrid archetype to which I’d bound them.
But for some reason, ALT changed that. A few weeks ago, a co-worker who’d recently read the book inquired about the characters in general – were they based on anyone, how did I come up with the names, and so on.
Donovan Candle came about after the initial idea. I chose the last name “Candle” to keep with the idea of flickering out of existence. His first name was chosen with the opinion that it’s a rather bland name. As for who he is, well, I imagined myself twenty years from that point in time if nothing had changed. Try doing that – if you’re working a shit job you can’t stand, and life isn’t where you want to be, trying picturing yourself doing the exact same thing for the next twenty years, and then see how bleak things look.
His wife, Donna, was a play on the name Donovan. I was after something quirky and painfully normal. Two love birds whose names would look just perfect on a Christmas card was my goal, and I think I hit it. “Donovan and Donna” was just too sappy to pass up. Her own snappy, sometimes witty, independent nature, as well as her neverending love and devotion for her husband despite the hell he sometimes puts her through, was inspired by my fiancee.
Don’s older brother, Michael, was a necessary foil. While the name “Michael” is equally common, it has more of an edge to it than “Donovan” does. Besides, Donovan needed a role model of sorts, so I thought of a few of my own real-life role models, and who better to serve as inspiration than my own best friend, Tony (even if his aspirations of becoming an attorney aren’t nearly as interesting as being a private investigator).
Dr. Albert Sparrow came about early on, though I didn’t discover his integral role to the plot until about half-way through. In the early stages, he didn’t even have a name, and was instead just an anonymous doctor on the talk radio show Don listens to during his daily commute; later on, I went back and gave him a name. I chose Albert because, to me, that just sounds like a professor’s name. Albert. Like Einstein. I know – not exactly groundbreaking. The last name, though, is a bit of a nod to one of my favorite Stephen King novels, The Dark Half. The sparrow is regarded as a kind of psychopomp in the book and, seeing as how Albert is a liminal figure, the use of “Sparrow” as his last name was obvious.
Finally, the last major player, Aleister Dullington, was probably my favorite. He crept up after Donovan, and was originally just “Al Dullington.” I experimented with “Dullard,” but “Dullington” had a better ring to it. As for why I initially chose “Al,” I honestly have no idea. I’ve always had a thing for the name Aleister, and seeing as how the character resembles a Crowley-esque figure of sorts, what with his mystigue and faux-gentlemen sensibilities, it stuck. On a side note, his physical appearance also included facial hair, but after viewing David Lynch’s Lost Highway for the first time and being thoroughly creeped out by Robert Blake’s performance, I opted to leave him completely bald. And just to share the creepiness with you, here is a clip from the very scene that gave me the heebie-jeebies:
The double laugh gets me every time.
And there you have it – a peek inside my brain. Well, sort of. I suppose I really didn’t answer any great riddles, but rather exposed a method of thinking that sometimes leads to character names and traits. But how you do it is probably altogether different.
In fact, I’d love to hear about it. So tell me, how do you conjure up characters and their names?
TK
Comments
7 Responses to “In a name.”
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A theme in my stories is to work entirely without names until I absolutely must. I don’t know why; it makes it really hard to avoid pronounomania.
I’ve got about a hundred .txts with ‘50 yr old man doing blah’ and ‘16 year old girl with blah’. I suppose the naming of characters means I’ve decided to actually write them properly. Interesting.
I find creating names to be difficult most of the time. I actually try to make names that are different that leave an impression because I want my characters to stand out. For one of my stories I’m using the name Gabriel Quinn and another series I got Caden Raynes for the main character. I can’t stand writing without a name, it helps me think of the character more I guess. Though I do like the names you chose for ALT, they fit well with the characters you created and makes them seem more real.
Matt
I choose my character’s names based on sound: for example, Ian Harvey or Zach Miller are cool-sounding names, at least to me. I’m usually better at putting together male names than female names. I’ve noticed, for example, that in several recent stories of the women are named either Monica or Leah. (The fact that the girl I’m obsessed with right now is named Monica may or may not be a contributing factor.)
Sometimes names just happen, I’m writing someone and the first time I need to call them by name the name’s just there. Sometimes a name has to have meaning, something subtle and non essential, but a meaning for someone who’s inclined to look for it. I had a character in a short story who was a mirror (the story was ‘Mirror Girl’), she mirrored back the emotions of those she was with, and wound up hooking as a way of meeting her own needs and making ends meet. If someone was sad, she’d be sad with them, but if they were filled with hate she’d turn them inside out. I looked at translations of ‘Mirror’ for ages in a pile of different languages before I found that ‘Ayna’ in Turkish meant ‘mirror’, and thus the mirror girl had a name and a heritage, and it changed in some small way my ability to picture her, which made her easier to write.
Lost highway was entirely too much fun, and I think it might just be time to watch it again.
Half the time it’s just whatever pops into my head. The other half of the time, I try to think about the essential qualities of the character and have the name reflect those, or the name will reference something I specifically want to convey. If I have something specific in mind, I’ll usually research names on Behind the Name or try to find reference points.
When I do write prose (a rare occasion indeed, and it is never made public) the characters’ names are never well thought-out. “Gregory” if I’ve been watching a lot of House, “Scott” if I’m basing the character roughly on my friend of the same name, and “Richard” if the character is a thinly-veiled version of myself.. Richard coming from Ric, which comes from Eric.
This is why I don’t share my stories with anyone. They’re half-assed in every single aspect! Ha!
The names I choose for my characters are always random. There is very little thought put into the names. I don’t think they are that important; who they are is all i care about.