Names help bring the characters to life and they bring certain prejudices. One must be careful with them! If you have two characters from the same small place and one is called Bliradella tifanreta and the other is Jack, then you have a problem and should proceed with care. You might be able to pull it off, but it's a lot of work.
Keep track of characters that have names that begin with the same letter. In one of my novels, I have Jaden, Jonah, Jinx, and Jaytur. Things tend to get confusing rather quickly. Your reader will have trouble keeping these characters separate. I am (slowly) working on rename Jaden and Jaytur. This, for me, anyway, is a subconscious thing. I don't go out and say "Oh, I want four male characters in this novel with names beginning with J." No.
And a bit of advice: Did the parent of your character(s) have a crystal ball so they could see what would happen in their future? No? Then please do NOT give them names that match their paths in life. The poor parent probably had very little idea what their children would do and so would not have given them special names.
And that's an end to part one of our segment on character naming!
Never thought about getting similar names confused until you pointed it out--Too many names at once is also very confusing. I was recently reading a dictionary-sized fantasy novel that introduced four character names, and about five names of locations in the first chapter or so. I was immensely confused!
ReplyDelete