What’s in a (Character) Name?
by William Womack, April 10th, 2008I get some of my best ideas from my twice-monthly critique group meetings. Last night, I was commenting on the manuscript presented by one of our members and noted that the main character remained unnamed for the first 45 pages. The author responded, “why do you need to know that?” It’s a damn good question, and took me a moment to answer.
When I read, I want to relate to the characters. That’s doubly true for the main character, and triply so if the story is told in the first person (as this one was). Successful first person writing quickly forges an intimate bond between reader and narrator. Early in a story, I like to have some idea of the main character’s physicality, even if it’s sketchy. Gender is important, age helps me understand their outlook on life, economic circumstances provide a filter through which they’ll see the world. Equally important is how the world sees the character, and name is one of those bedrock identifiers. It needn’t be a full first-middle-last; a nickname will suffice—any handle I can get helps. It’s a grain of sand around which the author can begin building the pearl of a character that will hopefully shine by the novel’s end.
I’m curious what you think. Do you read for story, overlooking such details, or is the description (and yes, name) of a main character one of those top-of-the-list items for you as well?
I think I read mostly for story. I’m not bothered about having a detailed description of the characters - it’s nice to know hair colour and so on, but those can be dropped into the first chapter or so without needing a specific paragraph of description. And that sort of detail isn’t really essential unless it’s relevant to the story.
I do like to know names though. The only book I can think of which works successfully without knowing the protagonist’s name is ‘Rebecca’. I recently read Cormac McCarthy’s ‘On the Road’ and though it made an odd sort of sense that the father and son weren’t named, it did get on my nerves after a while.
My own characters often get names before I know anything else about them, particularly if writing contemporary fiction as certain names mean certain things to me (influencing character traits, for instance). Not always though! I’m writing something at the moment which is in the first person, and I have no idea of the character’s name!
I agree that there are times when it isn’t necessary to reveal much about a character. I’m readying Lydia Millet’s “How the Dead Dream” right now, and her main character goes only by “T”. Technically, I guess that’s a name, albeit as short as you can get. It’s too early for me to comment on whether that device (or the rest of the book) works, though. I still feel this type of non-description is the exception rather than the rule.
I’m not really fussed by the character having a name or not, it works, or not, depending on the writer. “Fight Club” made a great asset of not mentioning the main characters name, and still would have succeeded as a story with a different ending. I never noticed the lack of a characters name. This also worked to great effect in “Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance; an inquiry into values” Both are stories about a character having two aspects to their self. I do the same in my current novel, for similar reasons.
In fact, this technique is used often for stories that revolve heavily around identity- check out “Soul mountain” by Xao Xingjian where the main characters are condensed in to He, I and She (and a few other indefinite addresses. It’s a stunning and challenging book everyone should read, especially if you want to write).
The question really is, can you do this without having a pretty good reason? This question of course applies to whether you should use names or not, too.
I don’t name every tree I write about, and perhaps, sometimes I should worry less about naming characters- after all, I only do it from convention? Time to try new things = )