Monday, January 18, 2010

The Name Game



It’s a simple rule: don’t give a character in your book a name that is in any way similar to another character’s name. Why? Because it confuses readers. When you confuse your readers—when you make them stop and think about anything except your story—you jerk them out of the alternate universe you’re creating. And anything that jerks your reader back to reality is a Bad Thing.

I was reminded of this last night while reading a mystery/thriller by a long-published, NYT bestselling author (in other words, someone who really ought to know better). About a third of the way into the book, our author begins a scene by introducing his hero to two new characters, Parker and Paterson, in the company of another character named Barker whom we’ve met just once before. That’s right: Barker, Parker, and Paterson.

It gets worse. The love interest in this book is a woman named Madison. About half way through the book, the hero—followed by the bad guys—heads off to Madison, Wisconsin. A fairly big chunk of the book takes place in Madison and everybody keeps using the town’s name. I tried to give the author the benefit of the doubt; I mean, maybe—just maybe—he didn’t notice there was a wee bit of a problem with the name of his locale and his heroine’s name. But then at one point the hero is thinking about Madison, and our author helpfully ads, “The woman, not the town.”

Seriously.

Now, this isn’t enough of an irritant that I’m going to stop reading. I am actually enjoying this book; in fact, I’m having a hard time putting it down (not a problem I often have these days). But I have to wonder what was going on in our author’s head. There is nothing in this segment that requires the action to take place in Madison: any state capitol would do. So why didn’t our author have his hero go to Hartford or Tallahassee or—anywhere but Madison? Conversely, if our author really wanted the action to take place in Madison, then he could have changed the love interest’s name. But no. He obviously really liked the name Madison, and he really wanted the segment to take place in Madison, and so to hell with his readers.

And that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Don’t Go Down in the Basement. Then Again, Maybe…



We’ve all had those moments. We’re watching a thriller/horror movie. It’s dark. Evil people/spirits/creatures are aprowl. Our pretty young thing hears a noise down in the basement. Does she go for help? No. Does she run like hell? No. We’re screaming, “You idiot! Don’t go down in the basement!” But does she listen? No. She goes down in the basement.

Why do writers do this? Frequently it’s because they’re lazy. If our heroine calls the police and says, “I think there’s a prowler in my basement,” there goes our writer’s scary/gruesome scene. It’s a lot easier to get an unbelievably stupid character into trouble than a smart one.

That’s not to say that smart characters can’t make mistakes and get into trouble. Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they don’t have all the necessary information or if there’s something in their past that is driving them to make bad choices. Or maybe our character has a choice between a bad alternative and a worse alternative—say, she hears her baby crying down in the basement. Then she has my sympathy and respect when she goes rushing down into trouble. But those kinds of situations are a lot trickier to set up. They’re more work. (And even then some opinionated reader will probably criticize your character for making a poor decision.)

Yet I’m beginning to suspect that there are a lot of readers/viewers out there who don’t actually care if their hero—or at least their heroine—does the equivalent of going down in the basement over and over again. Consider, for instance, a certain megaselling series, which is sort of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer only without the kick-ass heroine (I always thought Buffy’s snap kicks and knife hand blocks were a big part of her appeal, but then, what do I know?). Rather than dispatching her enemies with Tae Kwon Do and a stake and a humorous quip, the heroine of this megaseller goes down in the basement over and over again, largely so that she can be rescued by her hero. I don’t think this is an example of lazy writing. This is deliberate. In a sense, it’s a retreat to an earlier age, where the damsel was in distress and the hero saved the day. And readers love it. One out of five books sold in the United States in the first quarter of this year were by this author.

One might actually deduce that its heroine’s propensity to go down in the basement is an important part of this series’ appeal. Is that true? I don’t know. If you’re a fan of this series, please don’t think I’m criticizing it, because I’m not. This author has obviously tapped into something huge here. I’m just trying to understand it.

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