Naming My Characters

Most of my fiction begins with an image of a man or woman engaged in some act, caught in a freeze-frame of intent and purpose. I can see him or her, usually her, moving forward, the goal just out of view but I know it's there. This person's identity is only partly unknown. I don't have a name or full view of family and friends but I can see how she or he behaves. 

I spend time thinking about the names for my characters. Only once, after writing most of my first novel, in college, I had the bizarre idea that the main character's name was wrong for him, and decided to change it. The student who was typing my handwritten drafts was surprisingly upset. She said the story just didn't feel the same. And she was right. I took the lesson to heart. 

 

The name for any character may come as a sudden inspiration or after several minutes—or days—thinking about it. The name for my first series character, Chief of Police Joe Silva of the Mellingham series, reflects the Portuguese heritage of the area, as well as his approachability. Silva is a common Portuguese name in the towns and cities around Boston, and Joe, from Jose, underscores his basic amiability and implies all that he brings, from the Hebrew meaning "God will add." It also sounded very familiar, as typical of the Portuguese I encountered growing up.

 

In the second series, featuring Indian-American photographer Anita Ray, I wanted a name that could be both Indian and American, as well as having the lightness and cleanness of sound that most Indian names have. (This is just my bias.) I wanted the last name to also sound both Indian and American Irish, and gave considerable thought to both. When a friend casually remarked that another writer had once said her name was perfect for a character, I knew I was on the right track, and Anita Ray was born. Auntie Meena, who in India would be addressed as Meena Auntie, came easily after hearing a child call out.

 

The main character in Below the Tree Line, the beginning of a new series, had to express her Irish heritage but also her particular heritage of the female line, as a healer. The women in her family tree carried names that are mostly forgotten today—Justice, Charity, Faith—but I wanted one that expressed her character. Felicity O'Brien inherited the family farm, and practices her healing gift among friends. 

 

In a short story that first appeared in AHMM ("How Do You Know What You Want"), a social worker in child welfare delivers a teenager to a new foster family. It's a walk-on part but I knew who she was and her name just popped into my head. I didn't expect to deal with her again, but she has shown up in two more stories and is now the protagonist in a novel I'm working on. Ginny Means is forty, unmarried, and devoted to her work, but she has a secret that she carries uneasily, but someone else wants it exposed. In an online discussion I mentioned her and another participant said, "That's a good name for a social worker." 

 

When I struggle with naming a character, I think of Dickens, who was brilliant at this along with just about everything else in composing stories. Capturing the right name, one that doesn't feel "wrong" or "ill-suited" two months or two years later, takes time and effort. It doesn't have to be unusual or startling, like Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky or Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. But it should be like the name Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, able to tell you about the character on some level. The right name lifts the story and carries the personality.

 

That's where my thoughts are now as I ponder naming the minor characters in my current WIP, beginning with the various villains (and there are several) and the townspeople who encounter them.

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Useful Sites for Details of Setting

In an interview P.D. James once described consulting an accomplished climber on the details of scaling a particular cliff. She took careful notes, wrote up her description of the ascent, and showed it to her friend. He read it through carefully, nodding at each line, and then laughed out loud at the end. When she asked him what was so funny, he replied, “You’ve gotten all the details of the climb right but you let him make the climb in an hour or so. It’s an eight-hour climb!” Details matter.

Whenever I begin a new story I establish in my own mind, and often in my ongoing notes, the time of year, general weather considerations, and any other details I’m going to rely on to tell the story. This can be more complicated, or less so, depending on where the story is set.

When I’m writing about India, for example, I don’t worry about the length of day because my setting, in Kerala, is so close to the equator that the weather is hot or hotter, the sunrise and sunset are consistent throughout the year. Further, each one happens quickly. South India doesn’t have lingering, color exhilarating changes at twilight. South India does have, however, deciduous trees, and I have to make sure I refer to them dropping their leaves, for instance, at the appropriate time. For the most recent Anita Ray mystery, When Krishna Calls, all the trees mentioned are in full leaf if not in bloom.

When I’m writing about New England and other parts of the world, I like to have a reference for the relevant time changes. Several websites allow me to track sunrises, etc., for any part of the year. I use one that allows me to printout a calendar for a particular month that includes daily timings, such as sunrise, solar noon, moonrise, and length of day. I can choose to include other information if I want. http://www.sunrisesunset.com/USA/

I also like to use a real sequence of days, in order to get the weather right but also to avoid using the same kind of weather day in and day out, unless it bears on the story. There are lots of weather sites that allow a user to type in a zip code to get the weather for that location over a period of days or longer. https://www.wunderground.com/history/

In Come About for Murder and other Mellingham mysteries, the setting is sometimes established by noting what is in bloom. I want to avoid using the same plants again and again, so for this problem I consult one of the many online calendars for planting. I prefer the site for the National Gardening Association, which offers several useful pages of information. https://garden.org/apps/calendar/

Details matter in a mystery, and getting the setting right is just as important as getting right the effects of a particular poison or details of the uniform of a serviceman or woman.

For the Anita Ray mysteries and Mellingham mysteries, go here.

A Community of Writers and Readers

The world of crime fiction offers something special to readers and writers—a community of like-minded people and opportunities to get together and share books and discussion of the genre. The characters in our books seem just as real as the person sitting in the chair beside me, or the mailman who drops mail in the box every morning, and readers care about these characters sometimes just as much. During a conference in the 1990s a reader asked me about Chief Joe Silva’s family in the Mellingham series. That simple question led me to think harder about his family. The result was Last Call for Justice, which takes Joe back for a family reunion, where an old grudge surfaces and an old crime is solved.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Justice-Mellingham-Mystery/dp/0983600074

Anyone who knows me knows I love talking and writing about India. To date there are four novels in the Anita Ray series, beginning with Under the Eye of Kali. Readers can count on a lot of local color as well as references to Indian food, and one of the most fun things I did was write up a couple of recipes to give away at events. Some writers have bookmarks and business cards; I have recipe cards. And sometimes a member of a panel audience will suggest another Indian dish for me to try.

                 http://www.amazon.com/Under-Eye-Kali-Anita-Mystery/dp/0983600082

Last week, at the Marstons Mills Public Library, I had the pleasure of talking about crime fiction with two other writers to a small but attentive audience. Connie Johnson Hambley, Carolyn Marie Wilkins and I write very different crime novels, but we have similar experiences as writers. We ran out of time to answer all the questions the audience members wanted to ask, so here is an answer to one of the questions. Jill asked what British mysteries do I enjoy reading? I didn’t have enough time to answer, so this blog post is for Jill. Here’s a list of authors I hope to read this year—I have a stack of their books ready and waiting. Now, if I just had more time . . .

Over the coming year, I hope to read books by M.C. Beaton, Frances Brody, Anne Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Peter Lovesey, Charles Todd, Peter Robinson, Ashley Weaver, and Jacqueline Winspear. I also hope to fit in one or two books by Rhys Bowen, Peter Dickinson, Felix Francis, and Anne Perry. I’m sad that Ruth Rendell is no longer with us, but I haven’t yet read all of her books, so I still have some to look forward to.

These authors are only some of those whose books are lined up on a bureau in the upstairs hallway. I’m working my way through them slowly but surely. And if I go to my local library’s fall book sale, I’m sure to find more to add to the list. But these names should be enough to get you, Jill, and others started.

Why do I write crime fiction?

During a recent panel on crime fiction a member of the audience asked why we wrote crime fiction. She pointed out that all three of us on the panel disliked violence and yet we chose to write about it. Why were we writing crime fiction if we disliked violence so much? I’ve been asked this question a number of times, but never quite in this manner.

I sometimes think the answer it that crime fiction addresses the central concern of our times, but

this can't be accurate. Life in the current time is far less violent than during other periods in our history. Children can't be spanked, wives can't be beaten, animals can't be beaten, and entire minority communities can't be burned to the ground with impunity. In many cities and towns I can walk home from work on safe streets late at night. But yes, many of us still face violence in our working and private lives. But it's nothing like in previous decades and centuries. Perhaps, then, we write about crime because in fact we experience little of it and we want to explore the issues surrounding violence. I don't have the answer, but I do have a number of reasons for choosing to write in this genre, and here are some of them. I’m sure there are more.

First, crime fiction, either the traditional mystery or noir or thriller or spy story, has a steady, ever growing audience, and new books are sure to find at least some audience. There’s nothing wrong with writing to be read, and crime fiction is sure to be read. The audience is a community of readers who share interests, and their enthusiasms for their favorite authors can be an added bonus for the writer.

Second, anyone who wants to write fiction can explore several different genres or make up one. The traditional mystery can bring together Jane Austen and zombies, and Sherlock Holmes can retire and marry and carry on as he will. Anything is possible. If nothing else, crime fiction has enormous flexibility and an open-endedness that other genres can only envy.

Third, crime fiction offers a format, or formula if you prefer, that guides the writer from beginning to end, ensuring if nothing else that digressions are limited and the end will bear some relationship with the beginning. Not always true in non-genre fiction.

Fourth—and this is one reason that really matters to me—crime fiction challenges the writer to confront larger issues and grapple with them. In this genre, however broadly defined, characters must reveal themselves, and the writer’s views on crime and responsibility must make sense or the novel fails. Here is where we examine and explore issues that matter in the larger scheme of our lives. Do we really believe in justifiable homicide, or is every unnatural death a crime? Do we admit that sometimes our efforts at justice fall short, or do we admit that a system of justice created by flawed human beings will in turn be flawed? How do we feel about our current justice system? Where do we see weak spots? What is our responsibility as members of a civil society?

Each writer will begin a novel with a separate question in mind, and sometimes I won’t even recognize what the question is until I am well into the story. I discover that part of the novel just as I discover the story and the world of the characters. But I follow along to explore and learn. And then I put the characters into a position in which they must confront their own values and beliefs.

Fifth, and last, is one reason that cannot be ignored. Writing crime fiction is fun. This is the only time when the voice of reason will prevail. No writer will deny the pleasure to be derived from shaping the world according to her own values and then explaining it in a rational way.

The Anita Ray series takes me to India, where Anita confronts the ever-threatening conflict between tradition and modernity. She gets to go places and do things that I can only experience on the periphery. Her Auntie Meena is always fun. But in the next mystery, WhenKrishna Calls, Auntie Meena is almost done in.

Writing about sailing in the seventh Joe Silva/Mellingham mystery was almost (almost) as good as being out on the water. In Come About for Murder, Joe teaches his stepson to sail, and Philip loves it.

Those are my reasons for writing (and reading) crime fiction. What are yours?