#IWSG:Titles and Names

 by Rebecca M. Douglass

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Every month there's an optional question members can answer in their IWSG post. This month's question is:

 What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?

The awesome co-hosts for the June 6 posting of the IWSG are Beverly Stowe McClure, Tyrean Martinson, Tonja Drecker, and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor!

I love this question! Mostly, I love it because it tells me I'm not the only one who struggles with these things. In my first book, most of the names came easily--Big Al, Tom the Ninja Librarian (well, his name was a given since he was written for a real librarian), the children in the school. The title of that first book was easy, too.

I thought that was how it would always be.

Boy, was I wrong (I'm good at being wrong).

To answer the question, titles are harder, because I can cheat with character names--when I'm stuck, especially for minor characters, I use a random name generator, hitting the "generate name" button over and over until I piece together something I like. My own inventions aren't always so good. An early reader pointed out that in the first draft of Death By Ice Cream I had an unusual number of characters with alliterative names. That got fixed. And I have trouble with names that suggest different ethnicities (without being cliches). Too bad I didn't realize until too late that "Brian" is a really bad name for an author who types faster than she should. Spell-checker won't tell me when I've changed the poor boy to "Brain"! That was left to a reader (thanks, Deirdre!). Still, there are ways to get help naming those characters who resist an easy naming.

But book titles... I have never been happy with the title on my middle-grade fantasy, Halitor the Hero (just sort of a statement of who the book is about. Surely I could do better). And I ended up holding a poll on my blog to pick the title Death By Ice Cream. I also check each title against the listings on Amazon, because I don't want to be one of a dozen books with the same title.*  

I waffled about the title for my Tick Tock story, too. Should I use the whole adage, and call it "The Tide Waits for No Man"? Or was there a better option entirely? As with the "Death By..." series, I ended up appealing to others for help, and chose to go with "The Tide Waits." I realized after that it's a much better title, since it both evokes the adage and also suggests something lying in wait... much like the evil that drives the killers in these mysteries!


*On the other hand, I've made at least one sale of The Ninja Librarian to someone looking for the more widely-publicized Ninja Librarians--with an ess. I even got a good review from that person, which is how I know!

So tell us about your characters or titles--what was the best or worst you did?

Mysteries and the Minor Characters

By Rebecca M. Douglass, author of "The Tide Waits."

I thought today I might introduce a couple of the characters from "The Tide Waits," and talk a little about what went into writing them.

The story is set in an unspecified historical period, but when I first met the characters, they were a bit disconnected from the real world. So I ended up with Lira, a female bartender and general problem-solver for a small fishing village. I like writing strong female characters, so I went with the woman who came into my mind: a bartender who can toss unruly drunks out on their ears, then turn around and outwit the people who would destroy the peace of her village. There's an element of fantasy in the story, not because anything magical happens, but because Lira hasn't been burned as a witch!

The story is Lira's, but I wanted to set her off against characters who were unlike her, perhaps blunted by lives spent fishing. The one who wandered into my story was Huw, who fishes alone because he's too old to go out on the boats with the others. Imagine my surprise when Huw turned out to be far more important than he looked at first!

On reflection, I should have known. Minor characters in mysteries so often are more than they appear. Huw is no exception--so I found myself having to learn his history and personality, not just handing him a body and moving on.

Huw's an old man now, but one thing we learn quickly is that he wasn't always old--and he knows the sea and land around the village and the Goblin's Head inside and out, perhaps better than anyone else.

 

 Excerpt:

The incoming tide made it a tricky scramble around the base of Goblin’s Head, but not impossible.

Like most of the villagers, Huw had been atop the sea stack many times. But this time he didn’t mount the steep, half-scrambling route up the rock. He had climbed it enough times in his youth, like all the others who had helped to carve the path, whistling at the danger to prove their manhood. More than one had died for that proof. Climbing around the base on the rocks the Goblin had shed wasn’t a whole lot safer.

Death had visited Goblin’s Head once again. Huw reached the body that sprawled on the rock, and took in the rough homespun pants and coat before lifting the man’s shoulder to look at the face. He knew the man.

Decades of gutting fish and mourning those lost at sea had hardened the old fisherman. What he saw made him regret his breakfast, but experience won and the meal stayed put.

He moved from rock to rock with deliberate speed, not haste; to injure himself here would mean death as the incoming tide swept over the rocks. On this morning, he was safe until about a half hour after the sun rose—and that sun now lit the top of the Head.








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Rebecca M. Douglass