Character Names
If you ever want to get a group of writers talking,
ask them which are plotters and which are pantsers. You’ll get a group who
insists that the only proper way to write a novel is to meticulously plan it
out beforehand, you’ll get a group who says that planning takes all the life
out of the process and creates wooden, formulaic stories, and, hopefully, you’ll
get a group who says that it’s a false dichotomy and really more of a spectrum
with very few writers being pure plotters or pure pantsers.
I’m generally a member of that third group who say
there’s a continuum, but if I’m honest I have to admit that my own spot on the
continuum is well toward the “pantsers” end. I keep trying to be a plotter, but my outlines never work out. Too many of
the ideas I like best just come to me without having a place in the outline and
I decide I’d rather stick with the new idea than with the outline.
Which brings us to character names. There have been
times when I’ve had to think about names and really hunt for them, but in
general, they just come to me. I think the name for Jericho Crewe came to me
before he was even a fully-formed character. And when I had a character read
his name with only an initial and realized that it sounds like the name of the
store, I made his nickname be Jay just so people could call him Jay Crewe and I
could snicker to myself.
For a while I wanted to call the series The Walls of Jericho but it felt like it
was trying a bit too hard, and/or would make people think I was writing Bible
fanfic.
The name Wade Granger just came to me, too. I think
“Granger” may have come from my memories of Huck
Finn, with the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. That’s a bit remote,
obviously, but every time I ask myself “where’d that name come from” I think of
Huck Finn, so… maybe. And I can
definitely see the Grangers as the sort of family that would have a long-running
and bloody feud with another family for no clear reason.
What a completely unsatisfying explanation for an
aspect of my story. Yikes. But it’s all I’ve got.
Do you guys think names are important to characters?
Can you think of any characters who have the perfect names for who they are or,
conversely, and characters whose names just don’t seem to fit?
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About Home Fires:
Trouble comes
to Mosely, Montana, from the outside world. When the residents of Mosely are
left on their own, they can make things work. Sure, there’s always been a
militia operating up in the hills, but they were small-scale—just survivalists
doing their thing—until organizers came in from out of state. Now Jericho Crewe
and the rest of the sheriff’s department are facing down a heavily armed band
of fanatics, and the feds are busy elsewhere.
The odds are
hopeless, but Jericho swore an oath to serve and protect the citizens of
Mosely. He won’t walk away from that, even if Wade Granger’s begging him to run
away somewhere and finally be together the way they always should have been.
But this time,
it’s Jericho who refuses to leave Mosely, even if staying kills him.
Now available
from Riptide Publishing and Amazon.
