NAMES

 

Character names can be a problem, particularly for a protagonist.

 

The one plus of a genre like a thriller, be it legal, spy or whatever, is that names can be ridiculous and still work.

Cormoran Strike? A ridiculous name, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s all part of the fun. Hannibal Lecter? Please, do me a favour, but who would change it?

So, enjoy yourself. Make it as dramatic as you want, or as simple as you want, but if you intend to write a series character, the more dramatic the better. I’ve just bought a couple of books by Matthew Richardson because I enjoyed The Scarlet Papers, and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the name of the protagonist: Solomon Vine. Too flowery to be true, but it won’t lessen my enjoyment of the books. It might even enhance it, particularly as he looks to be a series character. "Have you read the latest Solomon Vine?" is a much better conversation starter than trying to recall something nondescript. It’s the kind of name that will end up as a Netflix character, the series probably called simply Vine.

I like simple names, like Jack, Dan, Sam or Joe (which have been my main characters).

 

Names can be tricky though.

 

I have a habit of using rugby league players as my inspiration (anyone who knows me will know that rugby league is my obsession), and the book I’m currently writing has a main character called Harry Grant, following that same formula. I know I’m going to have to change it though, as I used Grant as the surname of the protagonist in my tenth, eleventh and twelfth books, but it will also help Australian readers stop wondering why the hooker for the Melbourne Storm has suddenly got himself a legal gig in the north of England.

I’ve wanted to use the name Jack Hughes, as I thought it was snappy, the real Jack Hughes being a former second-rower for Warrington, but I used Jack as the first name of my protagonist in my first five books. If you want it, it’s yours.

My take on using real names is that a parent spend months matching the first name to the second name, so I might as well use those hard-earned hours for myself.

I have just two pieces of advice in relation to names:

Firstly, try not to pick a name that can be part of another word, because it can cause problems if you change your mind. If you pick Tom, then decide to change it to Jack, and use the “Replace” function in Word to make sure you easily pick them all up, all you will have is that every “tomorrow” becomes “Jackorrow”, and a tomato salad is a Jackato salad, and you’re gambling on your spell-check picking it up.

Secondly, make a note of any variations.

A writer I used to share a publisher with had a major character with the name Madeleine. The book was slated to come out in late summer 2007, which was also the year Madeleine McCann was abducted. The book, of course, had been finished a long time her abduction, but it didn’t seem right to use it. The name was changed in the wake of her abduction, not long before publication, and a quick use of the Replace function sorted it out.

Unfortunately, there was a moment of despair in the book, where the character’s name was set out as syllables, as “Mad-e-leine!”. It wasn’t picked up by the Replace function, because of course it wasn’t spelled “Madeleine”, and I know it irked her that in her first book there was a character who appeared to shout what appeared to the reader to be a random name.

Now you’ve decided what to call them, what type of people do you want your characters to be?

 

Move on and find out.