Nomenclature

A reader of Writing Magic, who is also an English teacher and clearly a fellow writer, has sent me a letter in which she puzzles over two topics, the first about names. At the end of her questions she wonders if she should just "get over" herself and recognize that names don’t matter much.

Without revealing your name, Thanks! I’ll respond to your second question next week. To everyone else, I’m always looking for blog topics, so I’ll be grateful if you put them in your comments.

To my letter-writer, please don’t get over yourself! Names do matter. Picking them shouldn’t be a random act. Naturally, tastes vary. I don’t like names that are obvious, the way they are in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, with characters named Obstinate, Pliable, Goodwill, and so on. I even dislike semi-obvious names. I named a selfish fairy Vidia, rather than Invidia, as had been suggested to me. To my ear, Vidia sounds exactly right, a mean name, but Invidia lacks subtlety, and it's too long (see below).

I’ll never name a character Stormy because she’s moody. But I may name her Stormy if her sisters are Rain, and Skye. Then, if I’m going in a certain direction, I’ll name their parents Bob and Jane; in a different direction, Yearning and Insight. (Is Yearning the father and Insight the mother? Or vice versa?) Names are fun!

One way to get a name that has meaning without being obvious is to think what the character you’re naming is like. Suppose your character happens actually to be moody. Look up moody in the thesaurus and stare intently at the synonyms. Do you see anything that calls a name to mind? Melancholy - Melanie for a girl, Mel for a boy. Petulant - Petula. Also, I have no problem with neologistic names. (Kids, maybe you’d like to look neologistic up or see if your parents know it.) The synonym irascible (irritable) can become Rassie for a girl, Rass for a boy. It doesn’t trouble me if I’m the only one who gets it.

Nicknames can also take you where you want to go. That moody personality again - his name may be Michael, but his friends call him Mope, which may make him mopier.

I prefer names of one or two syllables, three the limit, unless I’m being funny, and then the more the funnier. Or unless there’s some other purpose for the long name. Even when I’m not going for humor, a character can have eight middle names, but the name for everyday use will be relatively short, and that goes for fantasy and science fiction. I hate names that I can recognize on the page, like Xlmaeiothipnm, but not pronounce.

Sometimes readers, even adults, get confused when two names are very similar. If the main character’s boyfriend is Brad and her brother is Bart, the reader may have to work unnecessarily hard to remember who is which. If you’re writing for children who've just learned to read, the experts suggest that all the character names start with a different letter.

Names should work for your story or book’s genre. If you’re writing historical fiction, you probably don’t want to name a girl Brianne or Aspen or a boy Denver or Brooklyn (all popular 2009 names, according to an online source). If you’re writing fantasy, the names Phil and Susan may seem out of place, unless they’re visiting from our world.

I have nothing against using the names of people I know. By chance, I happen to know three Mollys, but I won’t hesitate before naming a character Molly. However, if my friend has an unusual name, I may hesitate, and I may ask the person’s permission, especially if the character is going to torture squirrels. I did name a character after a relative who has an usual name. This relative gave me permission, and the character is not only good, but also my favorite in several books, and yet my relative has not been entirely pleased. So you never know.

Also, pay attention to the names of the people you meet. Write down the good ones (probably not right at that moment!), so you won’t forget.

Sometimes having a naming theme helps narrow down your choices. The book I’m working on now began by being based on Perrault’s version of "Puss ‘N Boots," although it’s moved away from that. Perrault was French, so I decided that all my names should be pronounceable in French. I know un peu French, so some of the names are Anglicized versions of actual French words. A few readers will catch on, but most won’t, and I don’t care. I get a chuckle out of it.

Which is the point. You get to pick. You are the final authority. Make yourself happy. Even if you don’t use a name you like, save it. It may come in handy in another story.

Life Support

The ending of the first draft of my mystery novel is glimmering in the near distance. It will need many drafts before I’m done, done, done. Still, I’m beginning to wonder what I want my next novel to be.

When I was a wannabe kids’ book writer I often heard editors at conferences say that we beginners should write from our hearts and not consider the marketplace. Excellent advice; excellent even though editors and acquisition committees always consider the marketplace. Writing is hard enough if we love our story. If we love only what the story may bring us (publication, readers, a way out of a boring job), hard becomes agony.

How does this calculation change - or does it change - when we’ve written and published a few books?

I have several unpublished picture books and one published one: Betsy Who Cried Wolf, which is less read than any other of my books, although it’s a book I love. A few years ago I had the chance to ask several editors at HarperCollins what I could do to keep Betsy alive. I thought they would say I should visit more lower elementary grades and talk up the book, which isn’t a bad thing to do anyway, but every single editor said, Write more picture books.

This is the truth I learned: Unless you write a To Kill A Mockingbird or A Catcher in the Rye, it’s important for your writing career (if you want a writing career) to have more than one book up your sleeve. You should be prolific because the reader who falls in love with your first book will want more of you. Those who read your second book first and love it will seek out your first book. And so on. I wish J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee had written more books.

This applies not merely to the number of books you write, but also to the kind. Children of picture-book age and their parents will want more picture books. Kids who are into fantasy will want more fantasy.

Regarding Betsy Who Cried Wolf, I decided to try to write another picture book, and I decided it should be a Betsy book, so I cast about for an idea. My sole motive was to write a new book to support the old one. This anecdote has a disappointingly happy ending from the moral point of view. I found an idea and wrote a bad draft, which critique buddies and my editor helped me improve and improve and improve until now I approve of it. The book, Betsy Red Hoodie, will be out next summer or fall. As with Betsy Who Cried Wolf, it will have delightful illustrations by Scott Nash, even more delightful, since the sheep now wear hats.

Still, my reason for writing Betsy Red Hoodie stank. And yet, I will try to write more Betsy books after this one. Maybe there is no moral here.

Back to deliberations over my next novel. One of the comments in my last post was a question about the sort of books Dave at Night and Ever are. You probably know that Ella Enchanted is my most read book (I don’t like to say best-selling, but that too). The closer a book I write is to Ella, the more readers flock to it. The outliers - like The Wish, which is a contemporary fantasy, and even Ever, which is an ancient Mesopotamian fantasy, and most of all, Dave at Night, a historical novel and not a fantasy - have to fend for themselves. (Writing Magic, nonfiction, is in an entirely different category and is finding its audience.)

If I could write a series about Ella, I wouldn’t have to deliberate. Lots of people, kids and adults, enjoy the comfort of a series, returning to beloved characters and finding out what new messes they’ve gotten into. I like series too. I’ve mentioned before that I adore Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

But although I’ve written three books in the Disney Fairies series, I’m not really a series writer. I don’t have a series arc in mind. I just make up new adventures each time. And usually I find writing a novel so arduous that when I’m done I don’t want to go near those characters ever again.

My mystery novel may also hover on the periphery. It’s fantasy, but there are no fairies and no romance. However, it’s been fascinating to write, which may be the real moral.

So these are my thoughts for my future: I have an idea for another book in the world of Dave at Night, a second historical novel. This one would be about Dave’s friend Alfie, who has to leave the orphanage because he has consumption (tuberculosis).

I would also like to write a novel about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, which affected my ancestors on my father’s side. Our clan moved to Turkey, but the expulsion reverberated so strongly through the generations that my family went on speaking Spanish for 500 years. Although the idea is historical, I will probably turn it into another fantasy in ancient Mesopotamia, and I won’t have to do extensive research.

Then I also have ideas connected to The Wish and The Two Princesses of Bamarre. In the end, I will probably go with the story that makes me the happiest to think about. Writing a picture book doesn’t take very long. It’s like a vacation in the south of France. Ooh la la! Charmant, but over before you know it. Writing a novel is an expedition. You need a string of camels to make it to your destination; best if each camel has a dozen humps filled with enthusiasm.

What does this mean for you? It’s simply information. Get to know the kind of writer you are, what you’re drawn to. If you like to skip around and try many things, that’s fine. It’s really great, actually. If you like to write only about robots that can manipulate humans through thought control, that’s great too. Just have fun, and save what you write!

Save Me

In a comment after my last post I was asked how I organize my work to keep from losing drafts as I go along. This is how I do it. There are probably a hundred other ways.

This is an important topic. Your storytelling is you. The way you tell and revise a story is as much you as the way you chew your food or walk or laugh, and your storytelling can last; the rest is fleeting.

I write exclusively on the computer, so I have no longhand drafts. When I begin a new project, I name a folder for it based on what I think the book is going to be about. For example, I just finished a book in the Disney Fairies series. The folder is called Mother Dove, although the story turned out not to be about her. I should rename it, but I haven’t and probably never will, which will mean that a few years from now, I’ll waste time hunting for it. So if you name your folder and the name stops applying, change it. Don’t be like me.

Before I write a book, I write notes. I keep a separate file (or document) of notes for each book. Be like me that way. Don’t let your notes for one book run into your notes for another. The notes file goes in the folder for the book. I’ve posted about my notes, so I’ll say here only that sometimes I copy a few sentences or a paragraph that I’m not happy with from my manuscript itself into my notes. Then I copy that section over and over, improving as I go. When I’m satisfied, I copy the revised version into my manuscript and overwrite the original, which is gone from my manuscript but preserved in my notes. Even better, the evolution is preserved, step by step. This will simplify the work of my and your future biographers. And it’s gratifying to have a record of what I went through.

When I start the manuscript itself, it becomes a file in the folder too. I name it and follow the name with a version number, obviously 1 initially. (The file name has nothing to do with the book’s title.) Whenever I change the direction of the story, I save the old version with its old version number and then save it again with a subsequent number. I wouldn’t have to do this if I were just going to keep writing forward, but I’m probably going to go back and revise some of what I’ve already written to support the new direction. If I don’t save the old version, I’ll lose it, and what if my new path turns out to be a dead end? When I make a really radical departure, like shifting POV, I rename the file entirely and number it 1 again, although I keep it in the same folder. The reason for the new name is for me to be able to spot where I took such a different tack.

The result is that I have many truncated versions of all my books. Fairest was a ridiculously hard book to write. A minute ago I counted, just to see: eighty-nine versions and five names before I finished the first draft.

After I’ve sent the manuscript to my editor and have gotten back her edits and her astonishingly long editorial letter (eighteen single-spaced pages for Fairest), I rename the file again. I usually call it edit at that point, edit1. I’m revising now for my editor, but also for me, so I may still veer off into unexplored territory.

Even with this elaborate method, I lose small revisions, but I don’t care about those. Nothing important is lost.

On the downside, gems from an earlier version that I want to use later can be hard to find. So I have another file called extra. When I delete something I like, I copy it into my extra file. The bit I like doesn’t have to be a whole scene, although it can be. It can also be a neat phrase, or anything I think I might need at some point. My extra file is shorter than a whole version, more manageable. Usually I remember a phrase or key word from the bit I want that I can search on. My extra file gives me a huge sense of security.

And speaking of security, you do back everything up, right? (Kids, if you don't know what it means to "back up," ask your parents.) Because there’s no point to an elaborate version system if you’re going to lose your precious work anyway. So save what you write!

Come again?

I’m reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (not for kids). Atwood writes with such skill that I’m plunged into awe. I wish I could do what she does. Her prose is poetic, yet nothing about its beauty is difficult. She raises no obstacles of ornateness, and she reminds me that story needs to come first, which comforts me: If I can tell my story straightforwardly, I’m okay.

Here are some prosaic, even mechanical things that I pay attention to when I write and when I revise. The point is to make my prose lively without shifting the focus away from my story.

I vary my sentence beginnings or at least don’t let three sentences in a row start in the same way. Two identical beginnings are acceptable (my rule). When I’m writing in first person I don’t let one sentence after another start with I. However, no rule applies all the time. Sometimes repeating a beginning sets up a beat that I like.

A critique buddy once remarked that I wasn’t avoiding the verb is, which made me self-conscious and worried. I hadn’t considered is before. Is isn’t interesting, but it is unavoidable. Now that my friend pointed out my profligate ising, I’ve been rearranging some sentences to bring more striking verbs into the act. Still, whenever I read is in a string of sentences by an author I like, I think, See, even she or he does it.

In my first submission of Writing Magic, my editor found twenty zillion appearances of the word stuff. I hadn’t noticed, maybe because I like the word, which feels friendly and informal - but I didn’t like it enough to want it to show up seven times on every page. In my latest manuscript for the Disney Fairies series, I wrote "Atop the tabletop." I didn’t mean to do that. Good thing my editor caught it.

I’m lucky to have editors who are sensitive to word repetition, but I cultivate my own sensitivity, too. Whenever I suspect that I’m overusing a word, I type it in a list above the title of my book. Just before I submit the manuscript, I do a word search on the list. If a word appears too often I consult the thesaurus for alternatives.

On the other hand, in Peter Pan, James M. Barrie repeatedly uses the phrase "of course." I adore Peter Pan and think Barrie a supple stylist. When I write my books about the fairies of Neverland, I connect them to Barrie by scattering "of course" with abandon.

On the other other hand, in a book about writing (I don’t remember which one), I read that extraordinary words shouldn’t appear more than once or twice in a whole book. For example, I like the word susurration, which means a whispering sound, because it’s onomatopoeic, which means it sounds like what it means. But I wouldn’t use susurration more than once in a book. The reader would notice. The word would draw attention to itself and away from the story.

(Susurration seems to be a noun without a verb form. Webster’s shows no susurrate. Susurrate appears in the OED as rare. How interesting!)

My sentences tend to be short. That’s how I write. That’s my style. See? However, when I remember, I write against type and connect independent clauses with a because or since or so, because I don’t want every sentence to be four words long. Even so, lyrical fifty-word sentences are unusual in my books.

In addition to length, I switch around my sentence structures. For example, I don’t like sentence after sentence consisting of two independent clauses connected by comma and. I prefer short sentences to that. I also dislike a series of this-comma-but-that sentences that, so I use however, though, although, or, better yet, recast the ideas entirely.

This is all a matter of taste. Some writers don’t care about any of these things. When I’m caught up in reading a story, I don’t care either, but when I’m starting a novel or returning to one and I’m not yet hypnotized, I do notice. I get annoyed. I may even ditch the book.

If you want to play around with your own repetition, examine something short that you’ve written. Look for your tics - the words you overuse, your sentence arrangements - and fiddle with them. As you continue to write your longer work, keep these ideas in mind. I don’t suggest you go back if you’re in the middle of a novel. In fact, I believe that would be a bad idea, not at all worth your time. When you finish and revise, however, look for your repetitions and ask your critique pals to look too. Have fun, and save your changes!