by any other name (revised)

g'day gentle readers 

By any other name a rose would smell as a sweet - Shakespeare is both more verbose,

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet."

and wrong in one respect: character names; they come with baggage. Imagine if the bard had called Romeo some other Italian name, like Caligula. 

I've had this problem before. In book 2 "Face", Blade (derived from his home town Blades Point) was too kitsch so I moved him to Roden Crossing and he became Roden. Moving him became a plot line in its own right with endless repercussions. Then at the start of the work in progress book 3 "Arch". For various reasons (dealt with in earlier blogs - see "what the story needs" and "The writing comes first") a POV character named Lee became Ashford.

130,000 words - 25 chapters done.

As I approach the end of  "Arch" and review the earlier tomes in light of current invention I can see where changes need to be made. For example, I noted yesterday I need to upscale the size of the Arch from 75 feet to 2700 feet but I digress.

While I was inventing and adding new names, (for all the sleepers) I was again reviewed those I had. It struck me that I don't particular like Willard the name of the hero in book 1 "Break" who remains an important figure to the end of the trilogy. At the time of choosing, I was desperate to get on with the writing.

When you're at the start of what could be 600,000 words it is good to get a few thousand on the page - at times like that any name will do, just so you can keep writing - you know it can always be changed later.

One reason for my initial displeasure was the 1971 horror movie Willard. Hard to create a memorable character out of a name that is already memorable for a different reason - try giving your hero the name Romeo or Hitler or Jesus.

The other is that his short name Will is an annoyingly frequent real word. Since I write with a computer, the change will (there he is) be easy. A global search and replace will (and again) fix him up with a new name. (a careful one, of course - find whole words - case sensitive) but it won't fix his short name. Any sentence beginning with Will, will (strike three) be cobbled. "Will this do for example?" might become "Romeo this do for example?"

Track 7

But can I, me personally, do this. I have lived with his name as Willard for over ten years. (He was called Forrestar) Future readers will (there he is again) never know, they might come to know and love him as Fred or Purvis or Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III.(love that name Klaatu)

One advantage is, if I change his name now, I will have multiple revisions (in three vols) to get used to the  new one. (Any suggestions in keeping with my convention welcome - i.e. old English. Of my current characters, the names I like are: Kezia, Rowena and Hyatt - they sound science fictiony)
 

Of course the name change may not happen, it depends what works for me on the day which brings me to the prompt for this post about change.

A member of my writer's group said of my last post that I gave too much away. I think he means this bit:

The latest and biggest change has been a re-evaluation of the original plot. The AI made a mistake - bad data

the asteroid will miss

Methinks this maybe because in books 1 and  2 which he and the Blackwood Writers Group have already suffered through, the asteroid strike is the main plot driver. So as is fashionable these days - mea culpa - revealing all was not my intention. I was interested in blogging the process of writing the third book of a trilogy but I felt a little story background was necessary to make sense of the process. I admit, I got carried away - a bit.

However as the first part of this post shows, everything and I mean everything, the hero's name or the asteroid missing, is 

subject to change without notice.

The asteroid not striking does radically change the ending I had in mind but at this point of the story, this is what the characters (and hence the reader) believe, and that means their entire lives have been purposeless, (this is not a bad thing - story wise. It's the deep crisis point )


But I'm still about ten chapters from then end. If I get to there and it doesn't work I'll throw that idea an work in something else. It's probably harder to write this way but a lot more fun.

'ooroo

Easier done than said.

G'day dear reader

I have surprised and surpassed myself, getting half way through the first chapter in only a couple of days. For professionals my pace would be considered slow. All I can say is it suits me for the moment and as I get back into regular writing it will improve.  As it turned out starting was easier to do than talk about doing. My solution of where to start, was to invent a new enemy to confront my four principles (left at the end of Book 2) as they began their final journey. This  new character is watching them come across the border, in fact has been set to watch for them and knows their histories.  This gave me a great opportunity to fill in the story so far for readers who start with Book 3 "The Arch of Restoration" aka "Arch" 

I chose the name from a book of baby names. (I have  many but the one at left is the one used for this trilogy)  I opened it at random and looked for old English names. The original impetus for old  English came from researching my family tree, I came across a name I wanted to use.  Having started down that road I kept going, mainly for consistency. Character names are important, they come with baggage: gender, ethnicity, culture.  I wanted an homogeneous society.

The page I happened to open this time was in  the Girls section and the first old English name I came across was Lee. I then checked my spreadsheet  to ensure I hadn't already used it.  This is not an unbreakable rule (none are) but I like to keep my main characters distinct. Any 'Point Of View' (POV) character is major.  I found it used for my hero's mother's middle name. - not a problem so I added it to the sheet which records name rank and serial number (all the important details) of each character as I invent them.  

At this stage all Lee has is a first name and a title. The entry will grow with the character.Until now I have avoided using a personal pronoun for Lee. I got the name from the Girls page so I wrote her in as female. The next scene was also from a female POV and the one after that from the POV of two females in the same head. Too many female POV's for this old male to handle.  So I changed Lee to male and rewrote the scene. 

Interestingly the slice of spreadsheet above contains 4 major characters,  all sisters, two of which have been POV Characters - the baby book must not so randomly fall open at  'Girls - L' 

The story continues