Tag: craft techniques

Revision: Structuring (and re-structuring) Chapters

After three days of revision work, I’ve finally nailed down the right structure for a critical chapter in my current work in progress. It took a tremendous amount of learning-on-the-job-style thinking to get it to where it needed to be, but I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve produced. Figure I’d capture some of my hindsight reflections here, because I think I learned a few important lessons.

Writing versus Revising

Step one is the first draft, always. Whether we’re talking poetry, flash fiction, short fiction, novellas, novels, there’s the moment when first there was nothing, and then there was something.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could get it right on the first try? Yeah, but we don’t. Nobody gets it right on the first draft. Revisions are unavoidable.

A few of the greats can get close to perfect on their first try. If you’ve read Stephen King’s memoir/craft book ON WRITING, you’ll remember that he only does a single pass on his first drafts to tidy them up. His revisions basically amount to copyedits. If you put yourself on the same skill level as Mr. King, I applaud you and am definitely curious to read some of your work. I, however, and I suspect the same is true for 99.9% of all writers, fall far short of that level of perfection on our first drafts.

Most of our first attempts need a lot of work before they’re doing what they need to do. You might be the type of writer who never looks back at what you’ve written until you type the words The End. Or, perhaps you pause to revise as you go. Regardless, everyone will have a first draft to deal with, and it will inevitably take multiple revision passes to get it right. The key is to see revision as an opportunity, not an ordeal. And, it helps to remember that this pass doesn’t have to be the last revision you do on your WIP.

First Draft

The chapter I just wrote is critical to the entire arc of my novel. It needs to pack a huge emotional punch. Readers should literally gasp as a metaplot is revealed. This is where readers get to see the engine under the hood of this beast, find out what’s really driving the characters to do all the awful things they’re doing to each other. The $h!t gets real, so to speak. My main character needs to be left winded and dizzy with the force of her revelation, and my readers need to as well.

But, I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I wrote the first draft of the chapter. I just new my main character needed to find out this big secret, and so that’s what I did. There are some craft elements that do share space in my brain as I’m writing through a first draft of a scene or chapter. For a peek at some of the things I am constantly considering, check out my post on Neuroscience that Hooks Readers. For the most part, though, it’s a pretty instinct-driven process.

It took an entire night’s sleep for me to realize there was a tremendous amount of bloat that needed to go. Too many “who cares” details and backstory slowing everything down. The chapter needed to be focused with laser beam intensity on revealing something new. On top of that, I’d left out important details that, if not added in, would create logic holes. Nothing dumps a reader out of a scene faster than a big “wait a minute” moment of skepticism.

First Revision

So yesterday, I went back to what I’d written, and I read through it with a few essential questions and reminders in my mind. What details were distracting my readers? What details needed to be added to keep readers as tightly connected to what was happening as possible? If something wasn’t helping to set the mood, contribute to foreshadowing, or build tension, it had to go.

It took me three solid hours to revise my first draft of chapter X and fix all the issues I’d identified. Three well-spent hours, if I do say so myself. I ended up with something much stronger than it had been.

That said, it took yet another night’s sleep to realize that I had an even bigger problem on my hands. I’d written a revelation chapter, and the revelation was huge. HUGE. It needed an appropriate build-up of tension and stress preceding it to have the TKO impact I was going for.

Unfortunately, I’d used only the first half of the chapter to generate tension, because I’d dropped the reveal in the middle of the narrative. The rest was all character reaction, or denouement. Whoops! That structure works for some chapters, but not for this one. This chapter needs to jack the tension and up the stakes right to the last possible moment. It needs to build readers’ anxiety and anticipation as much as possible.

Second Revision

This morning, I rewrote the second half of the chapter. I added more moments of interiority to help my readers see and feel the growing horror in my characters’ minds. I drew more attention to the meta-stakes, and I dropped the reveal where it would do the most emotional damage!

Yes!

Now I’m ready to move forward with this manuscript. I need to tweak the chapter that follows this one to make it a more effective reflection chapter. Emotionally charged, of course, but quiet in terms of plot. Readers will have a chance to catch their breath and process what they just found out. And, with the metaplot revealed and the stakes re-established, the characters have passed a point of no return. Now that the truth has been revealed, there can be no going back for anyone.

Isn’t writing fun?!

Craft Book Recommendations!

If you’re interested in craft books that discuss narrative structure intelligently and in a way that is directly useful, I have a couple of recommendations.

The first is MAKE A SCENE by Jordan E. Rosenfeld. I own this book. It is annotated cover to cover.

The second book I think all writers should own is REVISING FICTION by David Madden. It is (in my opinion) the best book in existence concerning revision work. A must-have reference. Sadly, it is out of print, so you’ll need to do a bit of searching to find a copy.

Well, that’s enough blogging for one day. Time to get back to revising. Thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you.

How much thought do you give to the structure of your chapters as you either write or revise the first draft? Any tips or tricks to share with the rest of us? Feel free to share in the comments!

March 10, 2019
Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir
Andy Weir’s The Martian was the hottest science fiction book to hit the shelves in 2014. There was a resurgence of interest in the novel when the film came out. I finally got around to reading it this summer. I’d heard many a great thing about it.

The Description from Goodreads

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

My Opinion of The Martian? Meh.

Disclosure: I did not finish this book.

I got halfway through The Martian, almost to the page, and it wasn’t grabbing me. The main character, the crew, the folks back on earth–I didn’t feel invested in any of them. So, I evaluated reasons why and moved on.

Reading half the book gave me enough of a picture for this review, I think.

Andy Weir’s writing is solid from a nuts and bolts perspective. Nothing wrong with his craft, per say. Had I read to the end, it’s possible my opinion might have changed. Maybe The Martian morphed into something spectacular five pages away from where I stopped. Lots of folks love this book. Love with a big fat capitol “L”.

As an individual reader (n=1 for the scientists), I reached a point where I thought to myself, “Eh, I kind of don’t care anymore.”

And that’s telling.

Where the Book Failed Me:

1) Lack of Tension

There are two things everyone seems to gush about with this book: the “voice” and the science, and there was plenty of both, but neither were enough to keep me going.

By the halfway point of The Martian, I was looking around going, “So, I have a clear picture of the problem, but has anyone scene the story? It should have showed up by now. Should we call somebody?”

I mean, yes, there was an inciting incident and (I guess) some rising action, but here’s the thing. Rising action is not always synonymous with rising tension. Their relationship is closely correlative but not causal.

Tension is what attacks our brains. Tension hooks us into a story and makes us want to know what happens next. In The Martian, the MC–Mark Watney–faces one problem after another after another as he fights to survive on Mars. And yet I wasn’t chewing my fingernails worrying about the consequences.

I think I first heard of the storytelling concept of “Yes-but, No-and” from Mary Robinette Kowal during a discussion on the podcast Writing Excuses. The idea goes like this.
1. A character faces an obstacle to achieving their goals. I’ll apply it to this book. Mark Watney’s goal is surviving long enough to get rescued. The challenge is… there were a bazillion to choose from in this book.
2. Does the character overcome the challenge? If Andy Weir’s goal was to build tension, then…
3. If the answer is yes, it should take the form of Yes-but now Mark’s created another, bigger problem. Note bigger in that description, not different.
4. If the answer is no, it should take the form of No-and now Mark’s chances of surviving are less than before.
Andy Weir throws challenge after challenge at his main character, but he does so in a consistent “Yes-and” pattern. See the difference? Yes-and manifests like this: Mark Watney faces a problem that will kill him. He solves it. A different problem pops up that also might kill him. He solves it. Repeat. They aren’t building off one another, amplifying in magnitude. For all the science in The Martian, the story was (for me) kind of boring.

Quick aside: even for me–a science-loving, science-teaching, science geek–there was just too much science. IMO: It would have been a stronger story had Andy Weir cut out about half the step-by-step scientific explanations and replaced them with moments of emotional vulnerability on the part of the characters.

2) Emotional Disconnect with the MC

I love me some action, but you’ve gotta connect me to the character on an emotional level, and do so as quickly as possible, if you want to hook me into the story. Weir didn’t do that.

Weir chose to deliver the main character, Mark Watney, through a filter. In the form of log entries. When you read the book (and remember, I only read half of it, so this might not be true of the entire novel), you’re not seeing Mark, not even hearing him speak, certainly not hearing his thoughts. You’re reading what the character wrote in NASA log entries. Sort of like a semi-personal, but semi-official journal. For me, that threw up a hazmat-suit kind of barrier between me and the guy on the other side of the fictitious keyboard.

Now, this might be where people want to jump in and say, “Yes, but you’re wrong because the character is so snarky, and he swears a lot, and he makes jokes and stuff.”

Okay… but, did you ever find yourself tapping into Mark Watney’s panic? The absolutely agonizing, muscle-seizing, grays-your-vision-around-the-edges pain of his initial injury? The heart-exploding relief at getting back to the HAB after the first time he drove out of sight of it. Of the hollowing crush of loneliness he was caught by? Rage? Frustration? True, Hulk-smash frustration?

Yeah, he swore a lot and wrote flippant comments and cracked an Aquaman joke. Maybe a strong “voice” isn’t enough. It’s got to be welded to emotional interiority of the character. What few emotions we saw were… flat. I didn’t believe them.

Andy Weir was using a literary device. I get that. The emotional distance I felt might have been intentional. Maybe we don’t see much interiority because Mark Watney thought everything he wrote down was eventually going to be read and analyzed. He was holding back his deepest inner self. Wouldn’t blame him. Makes perfect sense.

I guess I’m not the type of reader who enjoys staying somewhat removed of characters’ emotions. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who adored this book. Cheers to them, I say. For me, it missed the mark.

Biggest Takeaway?

Do not, fellow writers, trouble your minds with the worry, “What if this story I’m writing is no good?” Easier said than done, I know. This is, perhaps, the biggest darkest deepest shadow looming over all writers. But, I just read a book loved dearly by a LOT of people and I didn’t love it. You’re never going to please everyone, no matter how great a book you write.

Maybe there could have been a different strategy for writing The Martian that would have pulled me in more effectively. Not really for me to say, I suppose.

Let me reiterate, however, this was a DNF book for me, so… take my thoughts with a big grain of salt.

Curious about my other book reviews?

Click here to read my review of Mackenzie Lee’s YA historical romance, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by. As always, happy writing (and reading) to you.
August 7, 2018
My Interview for Arthur McCabe’s Website!

My Very First “Writer” Interview!!

Over on the website Interviews from the Void, I had the honor of chatting with Arthur McCabe about a whole bunch of interesting writing stuff. It’s a sign of how inept I am at professional marketing and blogging that I only just thought today of mentioning this on my own site.

In any case, Arthur and I talked about the neuroscience of engaging fiction, how evolving communication technologies are or aren’t changing readers brains, and how I use neuroscience both when I write for and teach science to teens. The questions were thoughtful and I revealed a lot about myself, I think, in the interview.

If you’re interested, check it out.

Interviews from the Void: Episode 24 – Katherine Karch

August 5, 2018
Neuroscience Hack #2-Writing That Hooks Readers

In my previous post, Writing that Hooks Readers-Neuroscience Hack #1, I discussed how elements of change affect our brains as we read. As promised, I”m back with the next installment of this multi-part exploration of the neuroscience behind writing that grabs our attention and pulls us in.

If you’ve ever watched an Olympic sporting event like the floor routine in gymnastics, you might have seen shots of athletes preparing to compete. They stand to the side, eyes closed, twisting their bodies around in odd ways. You know what they’re doing. They’re envisioning their routine, imagining the jumps, the turns, the tucks. The term for it is pre-visualization, and there’s plenty of data in the field of neuroscience to show that it improves performance in the live competition. The same things happening to those athlete’s brains occur inside readers’ minds when they read. Provided, that is, an author uses a few key tricks when they write.

Brain Hack #2: “Monkey See, Monkey Do” is a Truer Statement Than You Think

In 1996, a team of Italian scientists inserted electric probes into the premotor cortices of monkeys. They tracked neuron (nerve cell) activation in the animal’s brains when they reached for a toy or grasped a piece of food or brought a cup of water to their mouth to drink. Each time a monkey did something, the scientists noted which neurons fired during each activity.

Interestingly, they discovered that when a scientist reached for a toy or grasped a piece of food, the neurons in a watching monkey’s brain would fire in the same way as if the animal were the one performing the actions. The lead scientist said, “…we realized that the pattern of neuron activity associated with the observed action was a true representation in the brain of the act itself, regardless of who was performing it.” (G, Rizzolatti, et al. “Mirrors in the Mind.” Scientific American, 2006. pp. 54–61. Print.)

What does that mean? From a neuroscience, it means our brains simulate what we observe others do and experience. In the book The Storytelling Animal, author Johnathan Gottschall suggested that this phenomenon offers us a “safe” way to learn new skills. It also lets us assess possible consequences of specific actions without endangering ourselves.

To better understand this idea, you have to know about a couple of specific types of neurons.

Motor Neurons

These are the nerve cells that stimulate our muscles when we kick, jump, or swing a bat. They originate in a region in our brain called the motor cortex and end in our muscles.

Mirror Neurons

These are the neurons our Italian scientist friends saw firing in their monkeys. The science is far from conclusive on why these cells exist. However, many folks believe mirror neurons help us understand the intent of other people’s actions. They also help us learn new skills by imitation.

Whereas motor neurons fire when we kick, jump or swing a bat, mirror neurons fire when we watch (or read) someone else kick, jump, or swing a bat. If a person is hooked up to a fMRI brain scanner while watching a film of an X-games freestyle skier launching off a half-pipe doing some crazy, twisty, flip thingy, the mirror neurons in their motor cortex light up brightly. Inside their brains, it looks like they’re the ones coming off the half-pipe. Even if they’ve never been skiing!

Writers Can Use Mirror Neurons to Deepen Reader Engagement

Include strong action verbs that reference specific body parts in your writing to stimulate your readers’ mirror neurons. The key to this brain hack working, however, is the specificity of your descriptions.

“He did a flip off the diving board.”

– this sentence uses an auxiliary verb (did) versus an action verb (flipped). Flip, in this sentence is a noun, a thing, not an action than can be mirrored in our minds.

“He flipped himself backward off the diving board.”

– in this sentence, flipped is an action verb, which is a stronger choice. Reading about an action, at least in theory, can stimulate mirror neurons. Also, we know something about the direction of the action (backward) and a rudimentary setting (the diving board). However, the verb flip refers to the whole body rather than specific body parts, so it doesn’t stimulate mirror neurons all that much.

“Pumping his arms like pistons, he heaved his weight downward against the edge of the diving board, then rode its recoil high into the air, tucking his knees tight to his chest as he spun, and craned his neck back as he sought to find the water.”

– I went a bit over-the-top with this one, but I wanted to make a clear point. This sentence contains multiple action verbs (pumping, heaved, rode, tucked, spun, craned, sought, and find). Many of the verbs reference specific parts of the body (arms, knees, and neck). The last element embedded into this sentence that is absent in the prior two examples is a clear goal. The individual is seeking the water. It’s the most engaging of the three because it does the best job of stimulating your motor cortex via mirror neuron activation.

So there you have it! Neuroscience hack #2: Mirror Neurons. Next time you sit down to write a scene, or edit a scene for that matter, pay attention to your use of verbs. Your readers will be pulled in and feel as if they’re living the story.

More posts about a neuroscience hacks writers can use to make their writing more engaging will be coming soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you!

July 11, 2018
Writing That Hooks Readers – Neuroscience Hack #1
The final requirement for my Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University is to teach a graduate student seminar, and I’ve chosen a topic that merges my two great passions in life: biology and writing. More specifically, neuroscience and literature. I’m going to drop a little science on my fellow writers next week by teaching them three inescapable brain hacks they can employ to suck readers into their stories.

It occurred to me that these neuroscience hacks would make some cool blog posts. Today’s neuroscience hack is subtle but incredibly useful.

Brain Hack #1: The human brain evolved to monitor the immediate environment for signs of change.

It’s true! From an evolutionary standpoint, the brain is an organ with a singular purpose. To keep us alive. An essential part of “not dying” is noticing any kind of change to the current situation.

Change grabs our attention as we assess whether it is positive or negative. The brain then forms a “survival goal” based on the conclusion and takes steps to achieve that goal. It could be as simple as putting on a sweater when the temperature drops. Or eating food when blood glucose levels fall. Or running for cover when a strange shadow shifts position in the tall grasses of the African savannah.

Changes such as a hulking figure with a knife stepping from a shadowy alley come with potentially extreme consequences. Experiencing that situation firsthand could mean death. Thankfully, our brains developed workarounds that let us gain knowledge and experience safely.

We have the somewhat unique ability to learn by watching others deal with problems.

Forget it, babe. You’re hooked!

Whether the observed individual lives or dies, we gain knowledge that might keep us alive should we encounter a similar problem.

When we read fictional stories, we get to practice identifying changes and assessing their potential positives or negatives.

In 2007, researchers found that when people read stories, there is a significant increase in brain activity during narrative moments containing changes in characters, scene locations, or changes in characters’ goals.

Changes that Really Light Brains Up:
- Words that suggest the passage of time, such as later, soon, shortly, or immediately.
- Descriptions of spacial changes, such as characters moving from one room to another, or even moving from one side of a room to another.
- Descriptions of characters changing their interaction with objects (picking up or putting down objects, or opening or closing things like doors or windows).
- Showing characters starting a new, goal-oriented action with a clear intent. For example, initiating a conversation, preparing to jump over a puddle, or thrusting a sword during a fight.
Consider the following excerpt from Cressida Cowell’s middle grade novel How to Train Your Dragon:

The Dragon had crawled down into the depths of the ocean and gone into a Sleep Coma. Dragons can stay in this suspended state for eternity, half-dead, half-alive, buried under fathom after fathom of icy-cold seawater. Not a muscle of this particular Dragon had moved for six or seven centuries.

But the previous week, a Killer Whale who had chased some seals unexpectedly deep was surprised to notice a slight movement in the upper eyelid of the dragon’s right eye. An ancestral memory stirred in the whale’s brain and he swam away from there as fast as his fins could carry him. And, a week later, the sea around the Dragon Mountain—which had previously been teeming with crabs and lobsters and shoals and shoals of fish—was a great, underwater desert. Not a mollusk stirred, not a scallop shimmied.

Admit it, that’s some engaging writing. One of the reasons why it pulls you in so fast is because it contains so much change. Your brain locks onto the text as it tries to figure out whether those changes are good or bad. Cowell employs another interesting neuroscience hack in this excerpt, too, but that’s a topic for another post.

Regardless of the quality of the actual story being told (Twilight? The Da Vince Code? Fifty Shades of Gray?), certain tricks can grab readers by the brain and engage them. Change is one of them. Take a look at your writing and see if adding a few elements of change livens things up a bit.

Have you ever gotten so into a book you were reading that you lost track of time and literally forgot about the real world? What was the book, and what was it that sucked you in so effectively?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you!
June 21, 2018
Book Titles and Character Names: An IWSG Post

This month’s IWSG Question: What’s harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?

Before I get talking about book titles and character names, allow me a moment to give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Beverly Stowe McClure, Tyrean Martinson, and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor. Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop. And if you haven’t heard of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, you should take a moment jump over to their website and check them out. In addition to being a fantastic community of writer’s focused on supporting each other, the IWSG website has compiled a tremendous library of resources (articles, websites, opportunities).

Shout out finished, let’s get back to the question at hand.

Okay, confession, I don’t put a lot of thought into either of these two processes. I know, I know. That’s terrible of me. I agree with you.

A Rose By Any Other Name

A book’s title is critically important. It’s on the cover. Part of the “hook.” It helps a potential reader make that all-important snap-judgment decision to investigate further or pass over a book on the shelf for something better. I know that. But, I also recognize that an agent and/or an editor will be far more skilled at coming up with a title than I ever will be. If I pick a stinker of a title for a great story, and that story gets scooped up by an agent and sold to a publishing house with editors and marketers and publicists, someone, somewhere is going to notice the terrible title. Someone (with far more skill and expertise that I) will almost certainly come up with a knock-my-socks-off dazzling replacement that I would never have thought of.

And, I’m fine with that. Better than fine. I feel relieved in my certainty of it. The pressure is off for me. Heck, I might as well title everything “This title is temporary,” because if the story is good enough, someone will help me come up with something better.

Culture and History

I’ve read countless articles about the importance of picking the right name for characters in a story. In my first semester of grad school, I used an online name generator to name my characters. Then, my mentor at the time– Tracy Baptiste–sat me down and gave me a heart to heart on how careful I needed to be when naming my characters. Unfortunately, many of the names I’d chosen carried various Judeo-Christian legacies and meanings of which I was unaware. Oops. I was writing a secondary world fantasy in which the Abrahamic religions weren’t even a thing. Yet, I’d populated it with people bearing Abrahamic names like Jordan and Goodman. Didn’t work so well, even if the names sounded “nice.”

So, that’s a thing to consider. Does a particular name have historical meaning, context? Is it the product of a culture with distinct identifiers? Maybe that’s something you can use. A shortcut strategy for characterization. Is your MC a self-entitled rich snot? Well, you could do what Mackenzie Lee did in The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and name him Montague. Gail Carriger gives her high society ladies names like Sephronia and Primrose and Prudence. If you’re going for irony, you might call the shrinking violet in your story Maxwell Steele (a power name if ever I’ve heard one). Maybe you want your readers to sense the strength and moral conviction at the root of your leading heroine’s personality, so you name her Joan (as in Joan of Arc?).

There’s a danger in being too overt with this technique, though. Stephen King got a raft of criticism for naming his main character in The Green Mile John Coffey because the initials were J.C. ( as in Jesus Christ) and John Coffey was kind of a sacrificial Christ-like figure in the book. Now, King is huge. He’s well established in his career, so he basically told his critics to stop taking everything so seriously. One day, I hope to be in a similar position, but that might take a while.

Sounds like…

Sibilance is also an important consideration when choosing a name for a character. Lyricism can’t be underestimated. It’s what I tend to focus most on. Does the name have a pleasing sound? The flow of consonants and vowels, soft or hard stops embedded within a name, which syllable carries the emphasis all affect the emotional centers of the brain.

I’ll give you an example. Consider these two names: Daphne, and Korinn. Physically, who is the taller, more athletic character? Who is more emotionally sensitive? Can you tell what gender the two characters are? With Daphne, that’s a classically female name, but what about Korinn? I made it up. It’s gender ambiguous but carries psychologically masculine overtones because of the hard “K” sound, and the long (powerful) ō, which also carries the syllabic emphasis, that rolls into that “r” sound. R’s sound animalistic. The sounds of the two names are already impacting your pre-conceived ideas about the characters.

Persons as Places or Things

Nothing subtle happening here.

Truth? This technique tends to rub me the wrong way if it isn’t done in an ironic or comedic capacity. Naming characters after actual places, objects, professions, or locations is just… in-artful. Judge, Everest, Nile (which, by the way, is my middle name, so I’m allowed to throw stones here). Neveah? [Rolls eyes]. I was SO disappointed when that one took off and became popular.

So, yeah, people do it. They’re usually trying to evoke emotion or invoke some spiritual quality inherent in the place or object. I know I’m making an assumption, but I don’t think parents name their daughters Rose or Lily or Summer because they want them to grow up to be hard-core, kick-ass, rule-breaking feminist. Nor do I think parents choose to call their son Hank or Don or President because they’re hoping the boy ends up with a high EQ score and decides to become a stay-at-home dad. More likely, they’re trying to invoke a legacy of athleticism and authority and traditionally masculine power and social status. If that’s all you’re trying to do when you name your characters after things or places or professions, your readers may get annoyed by the blunt force trauma of such a clunky and transparent technique. If, however, you’re doing it to characterize the people in the story who gave the character that name, or to showcase the the character is all the things their name might suggest they are not, then I think you’ve made an interesting and nuanced choice.

Do Your Homework, Then Trust Your Instincts

I guess I put more thought into my character’s names than I first realized. It isn’t a conscious effort, though. It’s instinctive. Which, before going through a Creative Writing MFA program, maybe wasn’t the best approach. Now, however, I have a better understanding of the underlying principles behind why names have such impact on readers.

Thanks to the advice I got in my first semester at Lesley University, I make up names (mostly) from scratch whenever I write fantasy stories, just to make sure I’m not accidentally tapping into any cultural or historical baggage.

If I someday choose to write a story that takes place in this world, with all the factual human history that comes with it, I’ll probably research geography and culture before settling on names. I mean, Ashika is a beautiful, feminine name. The sound if it is lovely. But it’s of Sanskrit origin and is a typical girl’s name in India. Maybe not what I’d go with for a female character of Irish descent living in Canada unless I had a specific and legitimate reason for it that was clearly conveyed in the narrative.

And, of course, if a name I pick doesn’t ring true or has some hidden meaning of which I’m unaware? Well… that’s what editors are for, right?

How do you select names for your characters? How do you settle on a title for your stories? Do you research intensively, or do you let your instincts guide you?

June 6, 2018