Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Mon, Aug 23 2010
I need a name. Give me a name.
I was trying to form a visual image of a character this morning, but was having a tough time of it. For some reason I began to think of names, since I hadn't yet given her one. Once she had a name, details began to clear up. I felt a little conflicted about that. Was it somehow unprofessional to need a name in order to fill in the rest of the blanks? But names really do have a lot of clout, in life and in fiction. How often have you talked with someone on the phone or corresponded with them for awhile until an image of that person began to form in your mind? If you saw them in person later you may have been disappointed to find that they looked very little like what you had imagined.
The reader of a short story or novel usually has the advantage of getting to know your characters along with their names. You, the writer, have described John Leonard as the short, gray-haired, pencil-chewing physics professor with a fondness for military macaws and a weakness for red-haired women who compete in sand volleyball. That gives a reader a nudge in the right direction. But before John Leonard can come to life for the reader, John Leonard has to become a force in the writer's mind. And as strange as it might sound to a non-writer, a lot of what is going to make that happen has to do with John Leonard being called John Leonard. And just wait until CEO Miriam Hahn and Chef Cristo Yale start forming images in some writer's mind.
posted at: 21:11 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
I was trying to form a visual image of a character this morning, but was having a tough time of it. For some reason I began to think of names, since I hadn't yet given her one. Once she had a name, details began to clear up. I felt a little conflicted about that. Was it somehow unprofessional to need a name in order to fill in the rest of the blanks? But names really do have a lot of clout, in life and in fiction. How often have you talked with someone on the phone or corresponded with them for awhile until an image of that person began to form in your mind? If you saw them in person later you may have been disappointed to find that they looked very little like what you had imagined.
The reader of a short story or novel usually has the advantage of getting to know your characters along with their names. You, the writer, have described John Leonard as the short, gray-haired, pencil-chewing physics professor with a fondness for military macaws and a weakness for red-haired women who compete in sand volleyball. That gives a reader a nudge in the right direction. But before John Leonard can come to life for the reader, John Leonard has to become a force in the writer's mind. And as strange as it might sound to a non-writer, a lot of what is going to make that happen has to do with John Leonard being called John Leonard. And just wait until CEO Miriam Hahn and Chef Cristo Yale start forming images in some writer's mind.
posted at: 21:11 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
