The Character Formerly Known As…
Quite right too. Amelia hasn’t existed as a character in the book for weeks, ever since I decided she was more of a Doreen (*). I had duly gone through the manuscript and changed all instances of Amelia to Doreen – except for this one occasion, which I had managed to miss.
(*) names have been changed to protect innocent characters.So today, I decided the TuesdayTip would look at the perils of and pitfalls of changing a character’s name .
First of all, why change a character’s name?
There are a lot of reasons why an author may change a character’s moniker midway through writing.
First there are the global changes.
- Amelia now being known as Doreen, because the name suits her better, is one example.
- Replacing the placeholder name with a final name. I’ve already written about how using an underscore for a placeholder name can make it easy to find and replace Diligent_Mother with Billie and Deadbeat_dad with Laurence TuesdayTips#31.
Then there are specific changes to a scene or event.
- For example you may decide that actually, it was Mahendra who witnessed the stabbing, not Shirley. So you will need to rewrite not only that scene, but all other references to that scene later in the book.
- Another example is the need to ‘balance’ a scene. My DCI Warren Jones novels often have a briefing scene, where all the series’ regular characters are discussing their progress so far and what is going to happen next. It’s not uncommon to read back through a draft and realise that some characters are uncharacteristically quiet or others seem to be doing all the talking. Not only does this mean certain characters are too domineering or risk disappearing, it might not quite fit the team dynamics that have developed over the books. So, unlike in real-life, I have the power to take words out of one character’s mouth, and place them in another’s.
What are the pitfalls?
There are a few things to look out for when changing the name.
Treat Find and Replace with great care. The temptation is to just change all instances of Sam to Alex in one go. There is a certain satisfaction to seeing Word report ‘All done. We made 231 replacements.‘.
But social media is full of hilarious mishaps from blindly trusting Word to do this.
For example changing Tom to Alex can mean a character’s sAlexach suddenly rumbles…
Remember – verify all changes one at a time using Find Next. It won’t take long.
Then there are possessive apostrophes.
Typically we add apostrophe s (‘s) to the end of a name to denote the possessive.
Eg Warren’s car. Or Warren’s house.
But, in UK English, names ending with a letter S don’t have ‘s added to the end, rather just an apostrophe.
For example, the possessive of Jones is Jones’ not Jones’s.
So it would be Warren Jones’ car. Or Warren Jones’ house.
In the US, they just add ‘s to everything. (Tip: If you are with a publisher, check their style guide to see what they prefer. See Tip#73 for more information Style Guides.)
One way to dodge this issue entirely is to only substitute names with a replacement with the same ending as the original eg Sam to Alex – neither ends in an S. Jones to Davies – both end in an S. This way, your original apostrophe usage will remain correct.
Finally, don’t forget those pesky pronouns. When substituting a character, don’t forget to take into account if the gender or preferred pronoun for the new character differs from that of the original. It is very easy to forget this. For example if I give one of Moray Ruskin’s lines of dialogue (He/Him) to Karen Hardwick (She/Her), then I need to keep my ‘she said/he said’ etc consistent through the scene, otherwise it is jarring and confusing for the reader.
Can you think of any other issues that may arise from changing a character’s name? Have you any amusing examples? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
