How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion

by Unknown

  What works for each of us is, of course, different. The more you write, the more you go through the process, the easier the juggling act becomes. Well, all right, not really easier, but rather you’ll develop a method that eventually will work for you.

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  David B. Coe

  We offer so much advice on this site, and I can see where some would find it overwhelming. Offering a way to keep track of it all and reduce it to useable information is great. As for starting out each day: One piece of advice my grad school advisor gave me for writing my dissertation was to finish each day in the middle of a sentence. That way, the first thing you write the following morning is the completion of that thought. In a way, it primes the pump and gets things moving. I use this periodically, when I find myself struggling in the mornings.

  A Rose By Any Other Name . . .

  A.J. Hartley

  I was fortunate enough to get a round of notes on my new YA adult novel from no less an author than R.L. Stine (of Goosebumps fame) and he pointed out that I had to rename one of my major characters. Her name was Isabella, often simply "Bella," which, he pointed out, was the same as the heroine of the ubiquitous Twilight series. I had realized the coincidence before, but a better name hadn’t leaped to mind so I left it as it was. But Mr. Stine was (unsurprisingly) clearly right. I had time to change it, and doing a quick find/replace in my Word document was no sweat. All I needed was a new name.

  This is where things got tough. The problem was that I had finished the first draft of the book almost five months earlier and had been tinkering with it ever since. I now knew this girl and her name was Bella. I tried inserting alternatives and they wouldn’t work or didn’t fit. The search for a replacement—which took several agonizing days and produced only a provisional solution—made me acutely aware of how difficult naming characters can be. Today I offer a few things to bear in mind as you dish out monikers.

  Things to be aware of:

  1. Real or made up? If you make up a name (i.e. if you invent a new word, or invent a name from a regular word like Neil Gaiman’s Door) remember the way we respond to real people who have odd names. And if you do start making up words, ensure that it fits the world of your story, that the pronunciation is clear and that the word feels right without unfortunate associations or echoes (see below).

  2. Associations. If you choose a conventional name, test it out on your friends to see what associations it generates. I wanted to call my new character Angelina, but since I see a real Angelina looking at me from every supermarket tabloid (not to mention Angelina Ballerina) I decided I didn’t want to battle whatever baggage that name might evoke for a reader.

  3. Ethnicity. Few names can be found in all cultures, so choose what fits your real or imaginary world. I wanted to call my African-American girl Danika (partly because I liked its abbreviations, Danny/Danni or Dan), but my wife (a pediatrician who knows these things) pointed out that the name has northern European roots and is rare outside Caucasian families. And right now it’s particularly associated with a race car driver, which wasn’t the right association either.

  4. Meaning. The web is jammed with sites offering baby names, and these are an obvious resource when you are assigning names. Most give a short explanation of what the name means, and such information can help determine whether it’s right for your character. Some of these definitions are a bit shaky, however, so once you’ve identified a name you like, look it up in some more reliable source.

  5. The irrelevance of point #4 (!) Appealing though it is to have a character name with a cool meaning, remember how little we think of people we know in terms of what their names actually mean—even if we know. Unless you find a way to explain it in the narrative (which has to be handled carefully), the meaning may not be much of a factor in determining the impact of the name in your story.

  6. Feel. More likely to shape the impact is the feel of the name: what it sounds like when spoken aloud, whether it’s driven by hard consonants or broad, open vowels, how many syllables it has, or whether it ends with something tight and closing (like a "t") or flippant—even trivial—(like a "y" or "i"). What does the name weigh? Is it light like Pippin (note the child-like repetition of the vowel) or simple and earthy like Sam (with the tell-tale honorific "wise" tacked to the end?) Does it have an onomatopoeic quality, like Grond (Tolkien’s orkish battering ram) which is the sound of its iron head against the doors of Minas Tirith?

  7. Appearance. How does it look on the page? The appearance of a word is slightly different from its sound and can have implications for feel, too. If you make up a name full of Ks and apostrophes, ask if it is ever going to feel familiar—like a real name—to a reader, no matter how many times they read it.

  8. In Combination. How does it combine with other names, particularly a surname or title, but also with other names in the book? All of these concerns about feel come back into play when the name is paired with another proper noun, both of which might be good alone, but dreadful together.

  9. Sound. An extension of that: is it different enough from the other names in your book that it won’t get confusing for your reader? I once had a book where it seemed like every minor character’s name began with H. Maybe I’d been thumbing through the phone book and got stuck there. It was very confusing. I also had two characters who were together a lot and both had names beginning with D. I had to change one so they didn’t sound like a nightclub act.

  10. How does it abbreviate? Only in the highest fantasy do four syllable names not get contracted by the people who are supposed to be their friends. Plan this out.

  11. Friend Factor. Is it—or might someone think it is—close enough to the name of someone you actually know that a reader might think they recognize them from reality? If so, change it. You don’t want your sense of a real person to dictate your character (for you or your readers), and you certainly don’t want to face a lawsuit over perceived defamation of character.

  I’m over-thinking, right? Well, maybe. But readers recognize these things at least subconsciously, and the name has to feel right if you are going to write the character well. Sometimes it’s good to wait, let the character emerge in the writing before giving her a name. If I give a character a name arbitrarily right out of the gate I find she will be shaped by the name I picked, and that’s a pretty random way to write a story. One dodge I use is to assign the character a generic tag like XXXX until I have written enough to know what the character feels like. A simple find/replace search can then be made.

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  Faith Hunter

  A.J., you said, "If I give a character a name arbitrarily right out of the gate I find she will be shaped by the name I picked, and that’s a pretty random way to write a story."

  I had that exact problem with Jane Yellowrock. I had no name to start out with, wanting some cool AmIn Cherokee chick name, that meant war-woman, and ending with a real surname like Man Killer or SixManKiller. So I named her Jane Doe. Random. But then my hind brain came up with a story to match and Jane was born. I like the random creativity that my mind applied to the name. But next time I’ll go back to the XXXX method, which is my more common method of character not-naming-until-I-find-the-right-one.

  Ordinary People

  Misty Massey

  "I wonder if it’s possible to write a ripping good yarn with a hero or heroine who is ordinary in every way."

  A reader emailed this question a few days ago. It’s a good question. Why do novels tend to be about unusually skilled people in extraordinary circumstances? Why do they have tortured pasts? Why are they always better-than-average looking? What about middle-aged Jim Johnson, the married car salesman who lives on the corner? Why can’t he be a fantasy hero?

  When I read a book, I want to be transported. I want to enter a world I can’t possibly find by driving my SUV across town. I want to share the experiences of people I could never, ever be. Heroes who discover they can perform magic, or are related to a fabled line of marti
al artists, or cause the weather to change just by staring at clouds long enough. Those people are interesting. I want to be near them. I want to be along for the ride as they learn what they’re capable of, and overcome the dilemmas facing them. I want to root for them, and I want to turn the last page with a satisfied sigh that once again, the good guys succeeded in the face of overwhelming odds.

  Does this mean I want to read stories about characters who are so magnificent they can do it all? Naah. That’s boring. An invincible hero is certainly nice to have around, but after he’s saved the busload of orphans from falling over the cliff and stopped the asteroid from smashing the town, I’ll probably wander off to find something else to do. He can’t be beaten, so why should I bother paying attention? That’s where that tortured past thing comes into play. We’re all slaves to the mistakes of our pasts, and a book’s characters shouldn’t be any different. An unbeatable character is dull, but a hero who’s afraid of snakes is fascinating. What if he has to wade through a snake pit to save his friend from certain death? Will he? The sword-warrior who can’t sleep because she has nightmares about the father who beat her will have to make a decision when he turns out to be the evil duke she’s been hired to guard. We want to read about their worries and triumphs, because in a way, they are ours as well.

  I just finished reading a very good book called World’s End, by Mark Chadbourn. The main characters are ordinary people, living lives not unlike any of ours, when they are swept into the events that drive the story. Church is grieving a lost love, Ruth is worrying that she might lose her job. But when the ancient gods of Celtic myth start chasing them through the countryside, they have to become more than they are. They have to become heroes.

  So there’s your answer. Even when a story begins with someone going about his boring old life, he has to change, to transform into someone who can solve the mystery, find the magic, save the world. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a story anyone would want to read.

  And if they’re good-looking, too . . . well that just makes it more fun to imagine while I’m writing. :-)

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  David B. Coe

  ". . . they have to become more than they are. They have to become heroes."

  Yes, that’s my favorite kind of story. One of the things that made The Hobbit so effective the first time I read it so many, many years ago, was the fact that Bilbo was utterly ordinary. Not particularly brave, not strong, small and quick, but no more so than any other hobbit. But as the story unfolds and he’s forced into his adventure, he has to become more than he was, more than his neighbors back in the Shire would like him to be. I love that.

  Neil Gaiman excels at this kind of character—check out Neverwhere or Ananzi Boys or even American Gods. He handles the ordinary hero beautifully.

  Faith Hunter

  "Ordinary" gets my vote (says the girl currently writing about a skin-walker and a stone-mage/battle-mage.) Okay, I lied a little. When I write mystery/thrillers, I like ordinary people forced to evolve strengths by the conflict of the plotline. When I write fantasy, I like the odd, quirky, got-a-few-tricks-in-his/her-bag character. And I’m not even a Gemini!

  C.E. Murphy

  Everybody’s extraordinary in some way. My dad likes looking at orchestra performers and then imagining them on the street, just walking along in regular clothes, and you’d never know that that guy was a trombone virtuoso, or whatever. So I think most people have something in them that they’re extraordinarily good at. Those things are frequently the basis for character’s careers.

  Margrit in the Negotiator trilogy, for example, is a Very Good Lawyer. But Margrit’s also very grounded in the real world. Her ambitions and goals are very concrete, unlike Joanne in the Walker Papers, who essentially wants a quiet, unambitious life working on cars, because it’s what she loves. So when Margrit’s pulled into the extraordinary world of the Old Races, she behaves very differently than when Jo discovers she’s a shaman. They’re both heroes, but they come into it in completely different ways.

  The Importance of Wanting in Fiction

  Edmund R. Schubert

  This may sound odd, but after years of editing, I have found that frequently, if I find your story to be wanting, it is because I find your main character wants for nothing.

  Let me elaborate. Having the advantage of reading a lot of awful, bad, mediocre, and not-quite-right stories on a regular basis is always educational; there is much to be learned from fiction that’s less than stellar. It’s the number one reason why I tell people that if they get a chance to read slush for any magazine, volunteer without hesitation. The education will be well worth the time you invest.

  Now, the really bad stuff is as obvious as the really good stuff, and doesn’t require much thought. It’s the stuff in between—especially at the upper-end of the not-quite-right spectrum—that I study and learn from. It was close, but not quite right: Why? It was interesting and well-written, but not compelling. Again: why? The reasons for near-misses can often be hard to nail down, but when you do, it’s like finding a small treasure.

  One of the things that has become more and more clear to me lately is the power of Vonnegut’s third rule of writing (you can Google "Vonnegut’s Eight Rules of Writing" if you want to see his complete list, which I highly recommend). You may have heard of this third rule before, but if you haven’t it reads thus: "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." It sounds silly, but then, that was always one of Vonnegut’s special skills; making important things sound silly (and vice versa).

  The only thing I’ll disagree with Vonnegut about is that I think this should be Rule #1, not #3. Wanting something is the most powerful thing an author can give to a character. And it’s usually most effective when it is something simple. It’s extremely difficult to relate to someone who wants to save the world: how many of us have ever been in, or ever expect to be in, that situation? But two people who are in love and want to be together? You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t been in that position at some point in their life.

  That makes not just the situation relatable, but renders the characters relatable, too. When the main character wants something, we usually start wondering how they’re going to get it, and rooting for them to succeed. Often the rooting is unconscious, but it happens just the same. Which means you’ve hooked your reader into siding with your character. It takes more than that to get readers to like the character, but frankly I consider hooking readers to be more important.

  Two characters who want something—to be together, for instance—is a simple premise, but one that is behind some of the most beloved stories of all time. Take, for instance, one of my own favorite movies (and a great book, too): The Princess Bride. What is that story about? At its core you’ll find nothing more than a man and a woman who fall in love and want to be together. Everything else is details. Kidnapping, torture, revenge; giants and screaming eels and Rodents of Unusual Size; the albino, his cart, and the holocaust cloak: they’re all rich, fun details, but they’re still just details. The story is about two people who want to be together.

  Having your characters want something is, for a number of reasons, also an effective tool for constructing a story. First, it makes it easy to identify your antagonists. Antagonists don’t have to be mean, horrible people. In fact, mean, horrible people are boring. But a nice, well-intentioned character who wants the exact opposite of what your main character wants? Now you’ve got a believable antagonist you can work with, who can do some real damage without being reduced to a cliché.

  Second, knowing what your main character wants is useful because it makes it clear what the ending has to be. Not "ought" to be, or "might" be; what it has to be. Make the character’s wants or needs as difficult to attain as you like (the more difficult, the better), and the number and severity of the obstacles will go a long way toward determining the length of your story. But once the character gets what they want, the story is over. Period. There might
be an epilogue to tie up a few loose ends, but for all intents and purposes your story is over.

  Third, knowing where your story ends is one of the most valuable things a writer can have because it gives you a target to aim at. The difference between knowing your ending and not knowing your ending is the difference between getting in your car and driving from New York to California, vs. simply getting in your car and driving. You might visit some interesting places if you simply drive around, but how do you know when you’ve arrived if there’s no destination?