Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Things have been a bit crazy here at Casa del Jasperson. When your spouse has Parkinson’s, life occasionally gets out of control, and writing falls to the bottom of the to-do list. Everything narrows to dealing with the emergency at hand. That is how things have been here; I’ve been in crisis mode for two months now, but life is settling into a new normal—as much as anything here will ever be.

Talking about the craft of writing is soothing, something with solid rules. When everything else is chaos, writing is there, offering safety and escape.

I have been spending a lot of time in hospitals and waiting rooms, reading. One particular novel I just finished was—how shall I say this? Good in many ways but supremely difficult to follow.

One of the least of its problems was the number of named characters. I understand how that happens. When laying down a manuscript’s first draft, I tend to give every walk-on a name, right down to the dog.

However, in the second draft, I try to shave my cast of thousands down to a reasonable level. If I miss a few that are just fluff, my writing group will point them out.

This brings up the question of the optimal number of main characters for a book. Some say only four, others fifteen. In my opinion, you should introduce however many characters it takes to tell the story but use common sense.

I have three rules for deciding who should be named and who should not.

First, is this character someone the reader should remember? Even if they offer information the protagonist and reader must know, it doesn’t necessarily mean they must be named. Walk-through characters provide clues to help our protagonist complete their quest, but we never see them again. They can show us something about the protagonist and give hints about their personality or past—but when they are gone, they are forgotten.

Second, does the person return later in the story, or are they part of the scenery of, say, a coffee shop or a store? They don’t need a name if they are only a component of world-building.

Third, we should only give names to characters who return more than once to advance the plot or show us something important about people or places.

• For example, perhaps a homeless woman who lives in the alley behind the protagonist’s apartment is seen three or four times over the course of the story. She is part of the scenery and might go by a name or not. As a way to show a compassionate side to our main character, they might take her coffee or sandwiches and worry when the weather is too cold or too hot. In return, the old lady might care about them and offer a bit of street gossip, which could be useful.

In my experience as a reader, the pacing an author is trying to establish comes to a halt when a character who is only included for the ambiance has too much time devoted to them.

When we are writing a scene that involves characters who are just set-dressing, we should ask these questions:

• Do these people help or hinder the protagonist in some crucial way?
• Do they provide essential background information we won’t get any other way?
• Is their presence a necessary part of world-building?

Novelists can learn a lot from screenwriters about writing good, concise scenes. An excellent book on crafting scenes is Story by Robert McKee.

We want the reader to stay focused on the protagonist(s) and their story. We can remove side characters from the scene if they have nothing to contribute. Walk-on characters can be identified in general terms by their dress or appearance. The reader will move on and forget about them.

But how do names play out in real life? I’ve mentioned this before, but in my family, “Robert” is a recurring name.

My father was named Robert, and my two brothers are both named Robert (with different middle names). My mother’s younger brother is also a Robert, so yes, Bob’s my uncle.

My younger brother’s son is named Robert, and so is his son. We have a Bob, a Little Bob, a Rob, a Bobby, a Robby, and a Quatro. Two Bobs are no longer with us, but the confusion continues with each new generation of Roberts in our family.

I took this absurdity to an extreme in Billy Ninefingers. In Waldeyn, the most common boy’s name is William, which is why Billy MacNess embraces the name his mercenaries give him after the injury – Billy Ninefingers. In that novel, anyone named William (and there are a lot of them) generally goes by their last name or their trade. Think Mason, Sawyer, etc., etc.

Other than Billy Ninefingers, where the overuse of one name was intentional and integral to the story, my rule is “NEVER name two characters so that the first and last letters of their names are the same.”

I try never to have two names that begin with the same letter. However, since there are only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, some repetition of first letters might occur.

How do we decide who should go and who should stay? And what is the optimal number of characters for a book?

There is no hard and fast rule. I feel an author should introduce however many characters it takes to tell the story but should also use common sense.

One final thing to consider is this: how will that name be pronounced when read aloud? You may not think this matters, but it does. Audiobooks are becoming more popular than ever. You want to write it so a narrator can easily read that name aloud.

And that brings up the problem of reading aloud. I read Tad Williams’ Memory Sorrow and Thorn series aloud to my youngest daughter when she was old enough to appreciate and understand it. I was too cheap to pay for cable television, and it kept her from being bored. I will just say that while his narrative is brilliant and engrossing, many of those names took some practice to say without stumbling.

Did I mention that names are also a component of world-building? Well, they are. Names offer an image of place and time.

This worked against me in one major way. While recording Tales from the Dreamtime, a novella consisting of three fairy tales, my narrator had trouble pronouncing the names of two characters. This happened because I had invented names that felt foreign and looked good on paper.

Despite my experience of reading fantasy books aloud to my children, it didn’t occur to me that the names were unpronounceable as they were written. We ironed that out, but that hiccup taught me to spell names the way they’re pronounced whenever possible.

In conclusion, don’t confuse your readers by giving unimportant walk-on characters names.

Never give two characters names that are nearly identical.

Consider making the spellings of names and places easily pronounceable because you might decide to have your novel made into an audiobook.

And whatever else you do, go forth and write! Create those worlds and wonderful people and tell those stories. Those of us in waiting rooms and sitting by hospital beds will be grateful that you did.