Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The frustrating thing is that sometimes it is so easy and sometimes it is so hard. And right now it is so hard. I am working like mad on a book synopsis, a proposal, and all I need, all I need! is the name of the main character.

Sometimes the names just show up, like Prime Time's Charlotte McNally, there was no question but that Charlotte was her name. (Although, if I had to do it over, I'd bet I would change it, the McNally at least, it seems too cute now,  but that's another story.)

 

And, come to think about it, everybody in the Prime Time series had an instant name, they just arrived, fully formed, Franklin and Penny and even Josh Gelston, which was an amalgam of a strong first name and the last name of my first boyfriend. (Imagine my surprise when I got an email from someone named Josh Gelston, who was something like a caterer for a rock band, who wondered where I had found his name. In my imagination, is the answer!)

Anyway, Jane Ryland, let’s see. That one was SO hard! I had Jane Elizabeth, right off the bat. I worked and worked and worked and had 1 million last names for her, I cannot begin to tell you, and honestly on the way to New York, for a publishing conference I realized I had to come up with a last name for her.  And I said to myself: the next name I see out of the window of this train is going to be her name. And there it was, a massive billboard, I am not kidding, for Ryland Industries. Okay, I thought, got it! Everybody loved Jane Ryland. And then, in one of my first book events, someone ask me “why did you name your main character with the same last name as yours. I was completely baffled. And then I realized. No wonder it sounded familiar.

Anyway, as I said,  I am now trying to name characters in a synopsis in progress. (And I use the term "progress" loosely.) And I cannot come up with the main character name.

I am sitting here looking at the 2025 commencement program from the University of Massachusetts that has fifty million names in it. I have looked through the entire graduating class, thousands and thousands of names. And there is not one that I can find that I can use. Just randomly Ana Gretchen Chapman. Sara Elizabeth Chappelle . Haley Charles . Mia Charles. Desteny Ann Charon. Christina Chen. Catherine Grace Chu. Erica Clarkman. Katie Lynn Clifford. Bridget Breanne Coughlin. Riley Collins. 

Okay, Wait, Riley Collins? Briley? Or maybe Collin Briley. Or, no, Colleen Briley! Wait, I had a Briley in another book.  See the problem? AND a Colleen.

I know there are all those things like the Social Security list of names, and the missing money list, I always look at that. I always look at the credits at the end of TV show shows, they are always fascinating, and maybe why I have so many British sounding names in my books.  

There’s also the tendency to come up with the name with the same first letter. In a previous attempts at a synopsis, I had Annie, all good. Then another character Ava. Then Aiden. That’s just not gonna work. 

Sometimes I just open a random book and look at the names and see if those names remind me of any other names that might remind me of any other names. I really think the best way of finding a name is that it just comes to you at some point. 

You just have to let it appear as you write.

Jenn, your dubious main character has such an interesting name, where did that come from? And Rhys, you’re always having to be careful of history when you choose a name.  And people who write contemporary novels have different kinds of choices.

Reds and readers, tell me your thoughts about names! 

RHYS BOWEN: As Hank said I do have an extra challenge for names as I write historical characters. They have to be right for the time and place.  And in the case of the Royal Spyness novels they have to witty or amusing. So I adore using silly nicknames like Binky and Fig and Podge (some of which are stolen from John’s family members who still have silly nicknames.). My favorite name so far is Lady Wormwood, Fig’s mother. I still chuckle every time I use it.

Sometimes I find I’ve used the wrong name for a character and the story is  plodding along and one day the character says, “Why do you keep calling me Richard when my name is Robert?” And I say “oh sorry” and then the story leaps ahead. It’s true that I believe Elmore Leonard said Once you have the name you have the person. Get the name right and you know exactly who they are. I changed my Scottish inspector’s name in the upcoming From Sea to Skye about five times until I finally realized he was Melrose.

So the only advice I can give to Hank is not to try too hard. Let the name come to you. You’ll wake in the middle of one night and say “Oh of Course. She’s not Abby, she’s Maddy!"

HANK: That is absolutely what happens! 

LUCY BURDETTE: This is funny Hank, as I've just been finishing the murder mystery for the Key West library to be held in February.  The Key West Woman's Club is co-sponsoring the event with the Friends, so I wanted it to have a KWWC cookbook theme. I took several of the characters from the list of Woman's Club members who worked on previous editions of the cookbook, with names like Mrs. Lee Goddard, Mrs. Frank Bowser, Ruth Munder, etc. I lifted the victim from my own THE KEY LIME CRIME. So in answer to your question Hank, it depends on the project!

JENN McKINLAY: Such a great question, Hank! The main character from WITCHES OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN - Zoanne Zakias - was taken from a girl in my judo class when I was 10 years old! I knew even back then it was a cool name. Thanks, ZZ,  wherever you are! 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I have a terrible tendency to insert the names of friends and family members for incidental characters and then not being able to change them out later because they become those names during the course of writing the first manuscript!

 

My biggest bugaboo when it comes to character names is getting them right for the age of the character and the socio-economic class they were born into. There's potentially a wide gap between Nathanial and Jaxon, and there's fifty years of time between Billy and Braydon.

HALLIE EPHRON: For me, names evolve, and I OFTEN change the name of my protagonist once I figure out who she is by what she does. I try not to start with a name that will be difficult to isolate by the search-and-replace function. (No Sue’s or Ann’s - those letters turn up together in too many innocent words.) I can be changing names in the final edit. 

HANK: Oh, definitely. Me,too. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, I look at TV and movie credits, too, mostly British, and authors of books on my shelves, or people in the news. But one thing I always check is the most popular UK baby names for the years around my character’s age. Which doesn’t mean I can’t pull something out of left field, or have a character named after an older relative, although that would have to be mentioned. And sometimes names just click. A character in the current book is called Karo, short for Karoline with a K. No idea where that came from. Also Quill, whose last name is Quillen. No idea on that one, either!

HANK: That’s my very favorite, when the name just pops into your mind. It proves it's the right name! 

How about you, Reds and readers. Do you like your characters to have quirky names?  Do you think there are names that  instantly  fit a category, like Tiffany or Rex or Claire or Trixie or Emmaline or Betsy?  (Oh, Emmaline!) 

Do you prefer your characters to be Janes and Davids?

Do you notice diversity in names? Do you ever notice a trend in names? Once my pal Hannah and I came out with a book the same cycle–with the main character Lily. How does that happen? We did NOT know about the other’s naming.

Let’s talk about whatever strikes your fancy about names! (Oh, Fancy!) I mean, you've all done it when you named a child or a pet, right?

Nailing the victim...

 A long-delayed announcement: Melinda O, you are the winner of BOURDAIN: The Definitive Oral Biography! Please contact Celia at wakefieldpro at gmail!

HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this week we talked about villains – is a good villain anything like law-breakers in real life? Which got me thinking about VICTIMS. What makes a “good” victim in a crime story?

I ask this because just the other day I was watching a TV mystery episode and realized, with a sinking heart, which character was about to be killed off. I had to turn the thing off. Seriously. I liked that character SO much and it just, well, did not seem fair.

I did not want to keep hanging out in that world, even though I know full well it's ficton.

I know, ridiculous thing to get upset about, but there you are.

Which got me wondering: Have you ever realized that you have the WRONG VICTIM? That you thought you needed to kill them off but, in fact, it was a bad idea and you needed to rework your plot?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes! Precisely. I was writing TRUTH BE TOLD, and even though I am a devout pantser, I knew I had to kill a certain person, I knew it, it was absolutely necessary. The whole story revolved around that death. Turned out, um, it didn’t. More I cannot say.

(But like you, Hallie, this is one of the hilarities of our household. We will be watching something, and I’ll point to the screen and say: DEAD. Jonathan is always somewhere between amused and annoyed. I am so sorry, though, I cannot help it.)

RHYS BOWEN: I found out pretty early on that I can’t kill a child. When I was writing Evan’s Gate ( that actually got an Edgar nomination to my surprise) I had planned for two little girls to die the same way. I couldn’t do it. One died by accident and the other stayed alive.

I always know who is going to be killed as the WHY is at the center of the story.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I wrote about the death of a child - not by murder! - and was actually sobbing the whole time. So I agree with Rhys; no kids and no dogs or cats as victims!

Because I like writing about social issues and communities, I usually prefer victims whose loss will have a strong impact on the other characters.

One thing that drives me absolutely BONKERS when watching movies/series is when a victim’s whole existence and death serves to motivate the enraged and grief-stricken detective. 99 times out of 100, the decedent is a woman and the detective is a guy.

C’mon, screenwriters, there are ways for your male characters to access their emotions without fridging their girlfriends.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m thinking back on the last four or five books and seeing a pattern–I don’t necessarily like the victim. Which really is a little lame when you think of it–what kind of mystery is that? But it’s hard for me to let the good guys go…

Hank, that’s so funny. I’m usually completely clueless because I get caught up in the story, rather than figuring out whodunit.

JENN McKINLAY: Victims can be so sensitive! I once had a victim who refused to die and I had to rewrite the entire book and then he became a recurring character in the series. I’m glad he didn’t die because he really made the series so much better but at the time, I was like “Dude, you have to die! Cooperate!”

He didn’t.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've never thought I had the wrong victim, but there have been some that I really really really did NOT want to kill. But if had I changed the victim, I would have had no plot, so I just had to cry my way through it.

HALLIE: So how about you? Can you sense when a character you've gotten attached to is about to get bumped off? Does it make you keep reading (or watching), or is it your signal to bail?

A NYTimes rave for our own Julia Spencer-Fleming

HALLIE EPHRON: There's much excitement here at Jungle Red! 

Fireworks! 

Drum roll! 

We're delighted to report that MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY, Julia's brand new, hot off the presse book, has earned an absolutely glowing review from The New York Times's mystery maven, Sarah Weinman.

We're madly toasting Julia, and happily sharing the news. 

Here's what Ms. Weinman has to say: 

Over 10 books, Spencer-Fleming has examined the joys and ills of small-town life, the limits and tests of faith, and the many ways love can prevail. In AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY (Minotaur, 308 pp., $29), her first book in five years, the longtime Millers Kill, N.Y., police chief Russ Van Alstyne has just resigned. He and his wife, the Rev. Clare Fergusson, have settled in for a quiet holiday season with their 8-month-old son. That is, until a white supremacist group descends upon the town, inciting violence at the annual lighted tractor parade, and Russ gets word from Officer Hadley Knox, the newest member of the Millers Kill police department, that her former partner has vanished after a stint infiltrating local militia groups.

It doesn’t take long for Russ and Hadley to realize that the people they care about are in the cross hairs of malevolence, and that following the procedural playbook won’t keep them alive. Fleming, in her most masterly turn yet, mixes heart-stopping action with deep empathy for her characters.

Goodness! It doesn't get much better than that!

Brava Julia! Russ and Clare can bask.