The Confabulator Cafe

Blog

  • What’s the Big Idea? (Week Ending September 22)

    When people imagine writers working on their craft, some may have an outdated image of the writer hunched over a typewriter, staring longingly out the office window, waiting for inspiration. That just doesn’t happen anymore.

    Some writers may take a languid approach to the craft, but they are few and far between. Most of our writers at the Confabulator Cafe are working hard to get some writing done between the other constraints of their lives: a job, family, exercise, and mundane chores like laundry and grocery shopping.

    So, it probably comes as no surprise that our writers are always trying to find time to write. When they do have time, they don’t have time to stare out a window. They write. Sometimes on three or four things at a time. That’s a lot of creative energy.

    Thankfully, creativity appears to be a renewable resource that — despite what comes out of Hollywood — doesn’t seem to run out. At least, that’s what we hope.

    This week, we’ve asked the writers at the Cafe to discuss what they are currently working on and give their advice on how to refill the gas tank of creativity. We’ve asked them if they ever worry about running out of ideas, and what they do to keep that from happening.

    We hope you enjoy their comments. Please feel free to leave your own each day, and come back all week to read more writing advice from our contributors.

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management

  • Are the names of your characters important/significant?

    As the ever-famous Bard once wrote: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Which can be true, to a point, but writers can be crafty sometimes. Sometimes we aim for symbolism or deeper meaning. Sometimes a rose is just a rose. We asked the Confabulators this week about how much thought they put into their character names.

    Paul Swearingen

    Some of the names of my characters, like “Arianna”, for example, are just ones that I’ve always liked. On the other hand “Arianna’s” sister “Lindi” is both a tribute to a former student who lost her life due to complications from diabetes when she was in her late 40’s and an echo of the name (“Lindsay”) of the daughter of another student, who managed to get herself written into one of my Nanowrimo books because of some funny remarks she made to me the night before Nanowrimo was to start. Her little brother (“Jaz”), whom I included in the story just because has a completely different name than my made-up one. When I told him I had used “Jaz” for his name, he informed me that he preferred the name “Jake” (he was seven at the time). So he got written into the current work-in-progress as “Jake”. He’d probably be horrified if I told him that “Jake” turned out to be an incorrigible brat, though.

    Ashley M. Poland

    Not always, and in fact, pretty rarely. If I’m going to change a name, then I’ll look for something that has a thematic meaning — or if I’m inventing a character from scratch, I might look for something that fits the story. For instance, in a book I’m working on now I was using randomly generated names, which came before the story even had a plot. By the 75K word mark, I realized that not only did I dislike my main character’s name, but it didn’t reflect what I had decided about her heritage. So I changed it (and her brother’s).

    Christie Holland

    Character names are both the most significant part of your story and the least. On one hand, it’s an opportunity to give your readers insight into the personality of a character, whether they choose to go by the name they were given or not, as well as into their home life. A parent who names their son “John” is going to be much different from the one that names their son “Lucifer.” I always try to add a little bit of meaning to a name, but at the end of the day, a name is just a name. As long as it fits your character, it doesn’t really matter.

    Kevin Wohler

    In my early years, I tried very hard to give my main characters names that 1) made them memorable, and 2) described them to a certain degree. I ended up with with characters with names like “Jade,” “Knox” and “Jazz.” This was — in a word — inadvisable. Nowadays, I give my characters ordinary names, only getting creative when I have to come up with superhero handles.

    Jason Arnett

    I can honestly say that ever since I read the uncut edition of Stranger in a Strange Land I have considered the names of my characters. Sometimes I worry about the meaning of the name, more often I don’t. What I consider more than anything else is how the names flow with one another. Being honest, I want the dialogue to read well and the names to be linked with each other like Sam and Diane, Buck  and Wilma, Flash and Dale, the Lone Ranger and Tonto. I do look up the meanings of the names but only after I’ve established that they work together.

    Ted Boone

    I try to have names that resonate. I also try to only use each letter of the alphabet once for first names: makes them easier to remember/organize.

    Sara Lundberg

    I am terrible at coming up with names, even simple ones, and it’s probably because I want them all to be significant somehow. I always look up the meaning of a name before using it in a story to be sure that it fits the character. Every now and then a character will announce his or her name and I’m stuck using it even if it doesn’t have significance, although even then it usually turns out that there’s some kind of significance I wasn’t consciously aware of. And sometimes a name is only significant to me.

  • Easy: Keep the Cast Small

    Ha!

    Ahem.

    Okay, so, I’m not the person to ask about managing large casts of characters — I’m shit with large casts of characters. Frankly, I get exhausted reading about a large cast of characters.

    I might give you six or eight named characters who influence the story, but really, the story is only about two or three of them. Or, one or two sets of them; I love writing about relationships and interaction, be it between brothers or enemies.

    (more…)

  • Shaking the Tree

    If you know all the visual cues you’ll understand this. If not, sorry. Image attribution.

    Can you name the original X-Men? Do you know who the first members of the Uncanny X-Men (the second team) were and how many are still in the group? All right, how about the Reavers? Or the New Mutants? What about Generation X?

    My point being that as a reader, anyone who followed the far-ranging cast of characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s taken by Chris Claremont in the late 70s and expanded beyond any scope or definition of Reason into the 90s had to have an inclination toward keeping literally hundreds of mutants straight. Fortunately there were visual cues. Unfortunately, not every artist interpreted those visual cues the same way.

    But there was a lesson there for young Jason as he aspired to his own dreams of writing. (Sorry, the Claremont pretentiousness sometimes slips over the levee. <cringe>) The lesson was that for a reader to enjoy a story with an enormous cast, the author had to have a kind of shorthand that immediately cued the reader. Sometimes it’s the way a character talks, or a catchword or phrase. Or maybe it’s patois that’s stylistically disguised as “accent” ala having an English character say “Eh, wot?” That’s all in the writing.

    (more…)

  • Information Design. For Dummies?

    This week’s Confabulator Cafe topic is how to avoid confusing your reader when using a large cast of characters.

    So it’s about managing complexity.

    In other words, information design.

    Information design is one of those meta-meta [0] terms that can make your brain bleed. It’s like water to a fish— all around you, but you barely notice. It’s similar to the concept of linguistic framing.

    (more…)

  • Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice…

    Justice League
    Even in the Justice League, there are secondary characters who need to tell their stories. Artwork by Ed Benes. © 2007 DC Comics, all rights reserved.

    Writing a story involving multiple characters is never easy. Heck, it’s hard enough writing a story about one main character, knowing there are going to be secondary characters moving in and out of their story. But the bar gets raised when — to the writer’s surprise — several supposed secondary characters begin to cry out for attention.

    This is what I call the “Justice League Effect.”

    In the comic book world, there are two types of superhero comics: solo titles and team books. Some characters (think Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) are big enough to anchor one or more solo titles. But other characters never have enough fan support to manage it.

    (more…)

  • 5 Ways to Avoid Character Confusion

    When I’m writing I can picture all the characters from my story interacting. In my mind they are fully realized individuals with their own strengths and personalities. They entertain me with their uniqueness, their specific way of speaking and their wacky fashion statements. It’s easy to forget that a reader coming to my work fresh might not perceive the characters as I do! Readers will need to be shown all the things that make a character unique before that character comes to life for them.

    Continually putting myself in my reader’s shoes and trying to view the story as someone else helps me keep from getting lost in my own imagination or taking my characters for granted.

    (more…)

  • Crowd Noise

    Don’t let them all talk at once.

    Writing a story with a large cast of characters can be tricky. My books tend to have a large cast, and with each progression in the series, the cast gets bigger.

    Book three, especially, has become a little out of hand, but that’s a major plot point, so whittling down the number of people/creatures would erase the entire point. I’ve had to make peace with the fact that it might get a little overwhelming for the reader in the first few chapters, simply because it must become overwhelming to my main character. The plot sort of revolves around it.

    But that’s not the normal way I go about handling a large cast. In previous books, and even in a few short stories I’ve written, I’ve had to use a few tricks to keep everyone in line.

    (more…)

  • Keep the Cast Small, With an Ax if Necessary

    Nobody ever told me I was supposed to have a large cast of characters! This is actually something I have a bit of trouble with managing. In short works I tend to limit my characters to a central protagonist and a few sidekicks. I mean… side characters. Depending on the length of the piece, my story might not actually have more than two characters. Sometimes more characters are mentioned in passing, but not always.

    Even in my novel, I tried to limit the number of important characters my viewpoint character interacts with. I’ve found that writing in first person really allows me to get inside my protagonist’s head and allow her opinions and views of the other characters to color how they are presented to the audience.  She has very distinctive opinions about different characters, and I hope that those opinions allow them to become more memorable. (more…)

  • What’s in a Name That Starts with J?

    I admire the way writers like Tolkien and George R.R. Martin juggle enormous casts of characters. Martin has an entire appendix dedicated to all of the different houses, for crap’s sake. How in the world do they keep track of them all? Extensive note-taking, I’m sure. They are obviously masters of their craft.

    I have never had as much luck managing that many characters, but I’ve found a few tricks help me keep everyone straight.

    As shallow as it sounds, names are probably one of the most basic ways to avoid character confusion. I learned early on that names that sound the same or to have too many names that start with the same letter make it hard to tell everyone apart. I also tend to use simple names, even in my fantasy writing, to make them easier to remember. (more…)