I've always been poor at naming characters and titling books and chapters. Which is a worry when it's crucial to get one particular character's name right.
One of the biggest problems I’ve always had in the twenty-plus years I’ve been writing fiction is naming characters. I’ll frequently change a character’s name halfway through writing a story. And it’s not unusual for me to change it a second time, or even change it back to my original choice.
The problem is that sometimes, once you’ve written a good chunk of a story it becomes clear that a name you’ve given to a character doesn’t really fit that character and how they have developed while writing the story.
Now, this may be nonsense. It could well be that the character name “Greg” is fine for everyone who reads the story, even if for me this character isn’t a “Greg” at all. He was, when I started writing him, but his actions since and the way he talks means he’s not a “Greg” now.
My characters are alive, you see. They live in my head, but they are alive. And as much as I might want them to be this way, or that way, or have this personality trait or that one, they frequently have their own ideas about who they are and how they would behave.
And that means that sometimes the name I originally gave them, isn’t who they really are.
I have a problem like this now with the fourth Paul Robertson book. There’s a new character I’ve introduced. I won’t tell you anything about her, but the name that Paul uses with her is a shortened version of a traditional old name. That’s all fine—nothing wrong with that, happens all the time.
Clarissa, for example, was Clarissa to her mother, ‘Rissa to most of her friends, but ‘Riss to Paul.
Similarly, different characters called Vanessa either Ness or Nessa.
In Lost & Found the female lead, Beth, short for Elizabeth after her Grandmother, made a point of confronting her father over him (and only him) calling her Lizzie.
So I have a character who needs a name that’s short for an old, traditional name, but—and here’s my real problem—could also be short for another, more modern name. I can’t tell you why at this point, but that’s what it needs to do. It’s quite important for a plot point that I would find it hard to change or write around.
Only thing is, right now, I can only this of one combination of these three names and, honestly, I don’t really like it. It doesn’t fit the character I’m writing. So I need to change it. But what to? That’s the problem. What can I change it to?
It’s a dilemma.