characters

The Name Game: Go Anglocentric or Go Home?

Naming characters is something every writer has to deal with, and every writer has strategies. Some use baby name sites/books to find names with certain meanings, some draw from names in their own lives, and some (hello, fellow sci-fi/fantasy writers!) make up names from scratch, among other methods.

I want to talk about those character names today and ignore the making-it-up situation, assuming we’re in some kind of contemporary setting.

First, a day-job detour.

I’ve heard some people bemoan the lack of time-honored, long-standing names like John and David among YA characters. As I approached the start of this school year, I looked at my class lists. Out of about 200 kids, all around 14 years old, I have no one named John. No one named David. No Sue or Jane. I do have a couple of Josephs (one goes by his initials), and a handful of Annas-or-Anns. A couple of Nathans and Andrews.

You know what else I have repeats of? Braden (or Braeden). Cole. Hunter. Parker. Brianna. And all kinds of variations on McCall, McKenzie, McKayla and the like.

So we can conclude that these names were trendy fourteen years ago. Maybe that trendiness didn’t hold, so by the time our books are published, a teenager with that name may seem out of place. In that sense, the advice to use more “tried-and-true” names makes sense.

But here’s something else from the day job that happened just yesterday. We were discussing a couple of story problems in class. If you’re in education, you probably know that in the last 10-20 years, textbook writers have made a transparent effort to include more culturally diverse names in things like story problems.

One problem involved a girl named Pietra. A student said, “That’s not a real name!” I said it was (and a boy named Pieter in the class noted it’s the female version of his name). We moved on. Another problem involved a girl named Pilar. Someone said that wasn’t a real name, either.

The Hispanic kids in class weren’t very amused, and neither was I.

Let’s bring this back around to writing.

Regarding one of my early stories, several people commented that I was trying too hard to make “unique” names for my MCs. I wasn’t—at least, I didn’t think I was. I’d chosen one Hispanic name, and one somewhat related to a Hispanic name. Not quite as straightforward as Rosa or Carmen, but Hispanic readers didn’t bat an eye. Both were names I’ve encountered in real life, so I didn’t think of them as rare.

The thing is, I didn’t state anything else in the book about the characters having any Hispanic heritage. It wasn’t the focus of the story. I’m clarifying some of that in a rewrite, but here’s my question:

Should we only use ethnically/culturally diverse names in stories deeply rooted in cultural identity or discovery? Do we stick to Tom, Dick, and Harry otherwise because that’s more “comfortable” for the caucasian majority?

Back to those sci-fi and fantasy writers. We have to be careful not to create names that are a reading-roadblock … the kinds of names that make our readers desperate to either buy or sell some vowels. Similarly, in contemporary settings, we probably don’t want to pick names that are difficult for the mental reading voice to get a pronunciation for. It interrupts the flow of the story, and no one wants that.

But is there anything wrong with a character named Pilar? Or Dai-Ling? Or Tiave?

Because those are real names.

(Of course, if we create such characters, making them culturally authentic is another matter entirely … but maybe one we should think about challenging ourselves with. Myself included.)

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The Real Teens of YA County

Hopefully this is preaching to the choir. A lot of YA writers are great about having textured, nuanced teen characters. Still, sometimes the cast is filled with an overabundance of “the regulars.”

The jock. The cheerleader. The nerd. The nondescript average teen.

Wait, there’s no such thing as that last one. Never in all my classrooms have I come across one of those. They show up in novels, though. Weird, that. It got me thinking about what I have seen. Here’s a sampling of students I have taught or am teaching.

Students who weren’t supposed to live past the night they were born.

Students whose parent is world-famous.

Students whose entire family is deaf (and sometimes that student is the most hearing among them).

Students who excel in a sport and qualify as a “geek” in another area (math, music, theater, …).

Students with such a mix of half- and step-siblings, there are six or seven different last names in their household.

Students whose bodies could break all too easily.

Students with the most spectacular cases of ADHD.

Students who are in foster care because their parents are in jail.

Students who aren’t supposed to have much of a life expectancy.

Students who are quiet for a reason … and very NOT quiet when you get them going. (By the way, this group is never, EVER boring.)

I could go on if I let myself, but you get the idea.

Some of those I see in novels. Some not so much. (Of course, I’m not as super-wide-read in some genres of YA as I’d like to be.) Some only when it’s the “issue” of the story. Maybe some things could be incidental to the plot. The MC’s best friend is in a foster family, but that’s not the point of the story.

Or maybe that’s just me and my preferences. Maybe some people would read that and keep waiting and waiting for that fact to become relevant.

What do you think? Are there certain types of teens you’d like to see pop up more in YA literature?

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Imperfection vs. Idiocy

Here’s another case where something I noticed as a reader has carried over to my writing. Flawed characters are a good thing. Perfect characters are boring, not to mention severely unrealistic. If characters are perfect and always do the right thing, there’s no interest and frequently no story.

Like everything else, though, flawed characters can go to an extreme that doesn’t work any better. A student of mine (now graduated) probably shouldn’t ever get an e-reader, because judging by our conversations, I think she may tend toward throwing books across the room. Or at least slamming them down on a desk.

The reason? Idiotic protagonists.

This is particularly prevalent in certain YA novels (or at least, that’s where I notice it, since it’s the world I know). Teenagers are in a stage of life that’s naturally more self-centered, and maybe that leads to the idea of making dumb decisions.

Okay, we all make bad decisions. That’s normal. But a character’s bad decision should be something that a real person would really do under those circumstances. More particularly, the bad decision should be consistent with what’s known about the character … not just something that’s convenient for the plot. (Hmm, I think that goes back to my post on front-end/back-end motivation, too.)

Here’s the thing. I’ve only known one teen in my whole life (including when I was a teen) who seemed to be 100% self-interested in their actions. And in that case, a personality disorder was likely. I also have a hard time thinking of any teens who act outright stupid in the way some novel characters do.

A cohort of the super-self-interested character is the one with false selflessness. The one who supposedly does what she does because she loves the boy, or wants to keep her friends safe. But when you look at it, the actions don’t match the supposed motivation. The character is just being stupid … because it’s convenient.

So where’s the line and the balance? How do we instill our characters with realistic, interesting flaws (and appropriately get them in trouble) without our teen readers thinking we’re insulting the intelligence of their species?

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Character Curve-Balls

Veteran writers know all about it, but the first time it happened to me, I was floored. A character did something I didn’t expect. But wait! I’m the writer! How can something happen in my writing that’s not premeditated on my part?

Fact: Fictional characters are the truth behind Invasion of the Body-Snatchers.

They live in our subconscious, and once they’ve burrowed a nice cozy nook for themselves … they evolve. And once in a while, they kick down the door between subconscious and conscious, and start making demands.

Or they skip the demanding and just take over.

Sometimes they go a little too rogue and have to be reined back in. Often, though—at least in my experience so far—they make better decisions than I would if I knew I was making them. (If that makes sense…)

So I thought it’d be fun to categorize the various curve-balls my characters have thrown at me thus far.

1. The “Don’t Think You Know Me Better Than I Do” Curve-Ball This was the first I ran into. I was maybe a third of the way through the first draft of Fingerprints when a side character decided to be a snotty brat about a (planned) turn of events. Who knew she felt that way? Or that it’d end up being a critical development for the whole series?
2. The “Let’s Talk Technique” Curve-Ball This one happened after I’d added terms like “POV shift” and “head-hopping” to my functional vocabulary. I had great momentum going, writing the last quarter or so of the new project. Great hook at the end of a chapter (I think), went to a new page for the next chapter and … it immediately played out from 2nd-Most-Important-Character’s POV, not Ms. MC who’d been running the show (in tight third person) up to that point. I think there were good reasons for making the shift, and it ended up helping with a dilemma I was already worried about in an upcoming scene. We’ll wait for my critique partners to let me know whether I pulled it off.
3. The “You Think You’re Done With Me?—You’re Not Done With Me!” Curve-Ball Another fairly recent development. I thought the Crossing the Helix books were set as a solid trilogy. A couple ideas for short-story or novella length prequels, maybe, but that was it. Then Taz (who’s usually been much quieter than Raina—no deaf jokes, please) piped up with an idea for a fourth book, launching a new arc. So it’s on the list of possible projects.

Have you experienced these types of curve-balls, or others I haven’t mentioned? Did they lead you to the promised land … or down a certain path paved with good intentions?

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How Hard Do You Push?

People who say teenagers are lazy, don’t care whether something’s good for them, don’t know the value of hard work, etc. don’t know what they’re talking about.

Okay, I know there are teens who fit that description.

So do some adults. (That’s beside the point.)

Here’s my evidence: Despite the fact that they want to have fun and don’t really like homework (except for Student X, who asks for extra work just because she gets bored at home), I’ve had a surprising number of students complain about teachers not challenging them enough.

Some teens out there who have nearly a full load of AP classes will wonder what planet I’m living on where such a complaint could be voiced. It’s a very small one, where “on grade-level” is pretty much the top of the food chain. But maybe we could push them higher.

After slogging it out for nine months, they want to feel like they’ve accomplished something—like they’ve completed their first marathon … not like they’ve been doing daily jogs around the local park. They may complain about how hard it is while they’re running, but deep-down, many of them seem to want that push.

I have a point, I promise.

I think our characters want to be pushed, too. And they want to push back. Throw a tough situation at them, and get them to slog through it. There’s a balance to maintain with believability, but don’t make it easy on the little dears. Let their reactions happen in vivid high-def with surround-sound. Challenge the characters. Challenge your readers.

Problems shouldn’t be solved too easily. The path of the plot shouldn’t be laid out neatly with big, bright roadsigns posted every mile. Emotions shouldn’t be consistently lukewarm, only half-felt. Sometimes, a character needs to have a solid freak-out.

And yes, most of this post is directed at myself.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to brainstorm some ways to torture challenge both my characters and my students.

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You Think You Know Me?

No, I’m not talking about you knowing me. The title above is a question asked by our characters. But I also don’t exactly mean knowing our characters on an individual level—their likes and dislikes, personality quirks, deeper values, etc. (Incidentally, though, From the Write Angle recently had a couple of great posts on that. Here’s one. And here’s the other.)

My question is related, yet different. A more global perspective—more demographic, maybe—where knowing our characters and knowing our audience overlap.

When you write about teenagers, and teenagers are your target audience, this is kind of important.

Everyone knows generalizations are ridiculous. You can’t say, “All teenagers are like this.” You can’t even say ‘most’ are. The opposite, though—where you’re pretty sure no teenager would say or do something, or act a particular way—that can happen. When teens read the story, they don’t have to think, “Every character’s just like me,” but they should identify the characters as real … like some teenagers somewhere.

How do you make that happen?

I consider myself lucky. I’m surrounded by the target audience throughout the workweek. A pretty good cross-section of personalities and backgrounds, too. That definitely helps. Not a possibility for everyone, though. And not a necessity.

What are the other options? Believe what TV and movies would have us believe about teenagers?

I grew up with the running joke of actors pushing (and pulling) thirty playing teenagers on 90210. So, um, no.

Better option for those who don’t have a lot of teens in their everyday lives (or even those who do): READ.

Unlike when I was a teen, there are a ton of great YA books out there. Even better is the wide variety of character types you can find. They’re not all perfect—some Mary-Sues, some clichés and stereotypes—but if you look carefully and read (a LOT), you can get a feel for the modern teen character.

Personally, I can’t imagine trying to write a YA novel without reading stacks of them first.

And if you can find some brutally honest teens willing to beta-read for you and call you out when the adult-writer is overpowering the teen-character … so much the better.

Any other ideas about getting that reader-character synergy? Experiences where you got it right on … or way wrong?

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