View From the Trenches: For Want of a Name
I’ve been reviewing short fiction for TangentOnline for about four months now. It’s lots of fun. I get to make a total ass of myself on a regular basis. I get to say things like “I would have enjoyed the story more except I saw the ending coming from the second page” only to discover the author has won some world fantasy award and, essentially, I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.
Still, from time to time I will chronicle technical issues of writing and story construction that I run across with great regularity. Today’s issue is lack of identity.
I’ve run across a number of stories recently in which the main character is never named. It’s a fairly spread among the magazines I’ve read with the exceptions of F&SF, Asimov’s and Analog. I don’t get over to SciFi.com often enough to comment although I would be surprised it Ellen let many through.
I don’t have a particular grind about it. It does add an air of “beginning writer” for me: here is a writer who hasn’t learned how to introduce their characters yet. Either that or they don’t understand that how important it is.
When you enter a group of strangers, what’s probably the first thing you’ll do to be comfortable?
Introduce yourself. In our culture, introductions are THE start of any relationship that isn’t based on avoidance.
But the dandelion root goes deeper. Most of the stories I’m reading are third person omniscient or third person intimate. In both cases, the main character will possess both a name and an identity even if the author hasn’t figured out how to give it to the reader. If the reader shares the authentic experience of the characterwe should know a fair amount about their self concept, including their name. To deny the reader access to that name and sense of self is to both suggest pathology and prevent the reader from developing a strong connection to the character.
Would you date someone who wouldn’t tell you their name, their history, or reveal at least some of their internal landscape? I hope not.
The simple lack of a name introduces a veil between the reader and the character. But it also seems to introduce a fatal distance between the writer and the character. Although I’m not sure I could separate cause from effect, the stories that I’ve read with unnamed main characters tended to be more static even when other aspects were handed well. There was less change between beginning and end; the characters were less sympathetic; the stories were more one dimensional, proceeding along a track without surprises; the narratives tended to be plot driven.
I will also note these stories were generally more internal. It follows. When a character interacts with a strong friend or strong opposing force, the character’s name is bound to leak out through dialog. Stories with unnamed main characters tended to avoid conflict and have little action.
I’m sure there are stories out there with a functional requirement for the main character to have no name and/or no identity. Corwin wakes up in an institute not knowing his name in Zelazny’s Amber series. (Maybe the readers of this blog can come up with more examples.)
But Corwin’s issues of identity are not an accident, some glass gem glued to the side of the crown as an after thought. It is–and should be–the dominant theme until resolved.
So. Unless you are writing the tale of a character’s quest for identity–their own or someone else’s–please give me a name.
Best regards,
Alan Lattimore
May 17th, 2004 at 1:56 pm
Here are some names for you to apply to future stories you may read with no character names. I think they are more or less interchangeable, and all will add greatly to the sense of characterization.
JeffV
Buckwaldo Mudthumper
Renaldo Rapunsel
Mary Hennypenny
Flapjack Magoo
Buttcheeks Halitosis
Emanuel Cant
Florida Rhymer
Irmalinda Pitkaginkel
Joseph Turnipseed
Rebecca Florescent
John Whipsnade
Laura Galinule
Lota Coupdose
Mandanger Ellipsis
Trufaldo Knickaragua
Beneficio Calendarado
Smiley Sheckles
Bubba Fatcheeks
May 17th, 2004 at 11:00 pm
Buckwaldo Mudthumper dwells on a planet that gets four feet of rain a year. The perpetual swamp outside his door threatens to float his inflatable yurt away. The door seals are shot, the reverse osmosis filter on his water tank should have been changed last year and his dehumidfier is choked with mold. When he scrubs away a blank spot in the mirror, he’s pretty sure that fuzzy patch high up on his cheek is moss.
At night he dreams of ice cream.
May 17th, 2004 at 11:54 pm
There are other good reasons for not using names. Horror writers often provide miniimal personalities for characters what are About to do Bad Things. It cuts down on the identification between the villain and the reader who, hopefully, will not also go out and Do Bad Things. But I’ll claim this is a rightful characterization of pathology.
Certainly, great works like Secret Life, which everyone should go buy and no one should be allowed to read until they’re old enough to run with scissors, rises above such petty concerns. It would be ruinous, completely against the mood created by the liquid presentation of images. Go, dear reader, and seek out Life.
But for the stories I’ve run across, the absence of name is matched by attenuated access to the characters. Don’t try this at home. This technique should only be used by trained professionals on our studio lot.
May 18th, 2004 at 9:35 am
I was mostly just teasing you, but I also, whenever anyone says, "don’t do this" when it comes to writing look a little askance. The real lesson is–don’t use any technique or approach if it’s not right for the kind of story you’re trying to tell. And be prepared to fall on your face using a particular technique or approach until you’ve gained some small mastery. I agree with you that there’s a lot of bad horror out there in which the characters are poorly developed, and in some of them the characters have no names. But the bigger question for me is–why do magazines even take crap like that?
I’m also not claiming it works in Secret Life, although I know why I chose not to name characters in some stories.
Actually, part of the above is what you were already saying.
JeffV
May 19th, 2004 at 6:04 am
I’d like to echo Jeff’s sentiments and add that, especially in first person, it may be awkward to try to sneak in a character’s name–much as it’s awkward to the point of cliche to have the character look in the mirror just so we can describe him.
But interesting observation!
Trent
May 20th, 2004 at 11:36 pm
Trent And Jeff -
Thanks to both of you. I hope the readers of this blog are paying attention because there’s a lot of weighted, carefully considered experience behind these gentlemen.
Trent -
I could easily see first person being tough to work a name into–especially in the short form–and I wouldn’t want an author to strain for something arbitrary. That was certainly my assumption when I started writing the article: 3rd person, give me a name; first person, probably not. But then I realized it might be easier than I thought, that you could pick a verbal conflict that reveals the name of "I."
That’s what I love about these discussions. I can’t participate without learning something. In the case of "Taking Names for the Purge," it was that I’m an asshole.
I was off in my conclusion of "give me a name or give me a search for identity." Jeff enlarges the answer and makes it more useful with his test: "does it serve the story?" I like that attitude. I’m a functionalist. Any wild shit goes as long as it serves the story.
After Jeff’s post I’ll have to go dink out some story in which I play games with the relationship between name and identity. I don’t like the idea of predestination, therefore I don’t like the idea that names either reveal or dictate personality. Of course, in the fictive world, they’re supposed to.
I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and reformulate what really bothered me about namelessness. Jeff is right. Merely assigning a name (can’t tell the players without a scorecard) isn’t going to suddenly make any of these stories more interesting or coherent. Possibly I’m looking at three results–no name; minimal sense of identity; rather generic character–where the cause is something else and I just lack the balls to come out and say the character wasn’t accessible to me as a reader.
I don’t know if its my place to come forward to say "and I think it’s because the writer doesn’t have good access to the characgter." If it was someone I really, really liked and respected, I might tell them in private. Where it’s clearly within my realm to comment about the text as it appears on the page, I don’t think its any of my stinking business how it got there.
Since I’m feeling my way through the dark on this, I’m certainly open to input.
As always, best regards,
Alan
May 21st, 2004 at 11:44 pm
"Emanuel Cant" is the fictitious name Getrude Vibrenstein attaches to the spam she sends offering numerous discount medicines purporting to improve sexual performance. She imagines the name is both witty and worldly as she sits in her home office, ordered from IKEA for just this purpose, and waits for her desktop to show that it has completed sending 1.2 million pieces of spam. It usually takes about an hour.
So far, she’s sold three orders this week. It won’t even cover the fees she paid for all of the addresses. She wonders if she should try "work at home" stuffing envelopes instead.
One of the orders is to a P. O. box right here in Roxbury, right up the road from where she lives. She wonders if it could be for her husband, now two months divorced.