By Any Other Name

Betsy? Is that you?

Chapter Seven:
Face planted into his pillow, one arm tucked under his nude body, the other draped over Brevyn’s equally naked waist, Sam wrestled his way out of a dream involving the Pope blessing soccer balls to mumble a barely coherent, “What?” (Writhe, page 54)

Do you know what’s odd?

(Anyone who just shouted “Chloe!” I appreciate your humor but no.)

I’m talking about the importance an author (ok, yes, I’m talking about me here) puts on the name of a character. It’s as if the character isn’t real and solid until he or she has the perfect name.

Admittedly, this may simply be a Chloe-thing that doesn’t apply to most authors, but I offer it here for your consideration.

If you’ll remember, while writing “Ravenscar” (the short story purchased by Dreamspinner Press last month) my main guy was carrying around the moniker “John Doe” until the last hour of the deadline for submissions.

If you’ll also remember, I was not happy about that. (Whining my butt off over it might be an appropriate phrasing of the situation.)

While I had my “Ravenscar” guy down to the nth degree of detail, John Doe simply didn’t exist as an entity separate from me until he was finally christened Ethan Holloway.

Before anybody starts to get uneasy, I do realize these characters are fictional. They do not truly exist outside of the imaginations of author and readers. I am not setting a place for them at my dinner table, nor have I started knitting them sweaters. Worrisome calls to the mental health professionals are not needed at this juncture.

Anyhow, back to the point…

Names of major characters are just as important to the authors of a novel as they are to the readers of the story. Just as the audience wouldn’t have reacted the same to Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” if Margaret Mitchell had named the chick Betsy, the author wouldn’t have related to Betsy the same way she did Scarlett.

It’s an odd relationship writers have with their characters. While authors seem to have the upper-hand in the relationship when it comes to names, it’s often the characters themselves who force what gets scribbled on their birth certificates.

“As God is my witness,” Scarlett O’Hara evokes against the painted Georgia sky, “I will not be called Betsy again!”

*lol*

Until tonight…

Chloe