POV character and nicknames

Hmm...I think in Mike's POV I'd still refer to her as Amy in narrative, but call her Tiny during Mike's dialogue, regardless of who's POV your in at the time. Of course, you'll need to firmly establish early on that Amy's nickname is Tiny.

Mike opened the door and worked hard not to laugh out loud. Amy was soaked to the skin and shivering.

"Let me guess, Tiny," Mike said, trying to keep a straight face. "You need a towel."

I don't know.

If the two POVs were Mike and Grandma Amy, would the Mike POV narrative still call her Amy? No, he'd call her grandma because that's who she is to him. If Amy is Tiny to Mike, then I don't have a problem with his POV calling her Tiny. Assuming, of course, that the nickname is well established.

I don't think it would pose much of a problem since you established her nickname early on. The only problem I could come up with would be if someone refers to her as Tiny in one of their scenes and then no one does again for a long time in the novel (and even that's a stretch, especially if it's a good nickname that sticks with the reader). Unless there are huge gaps between Amy and Mike's POV chapters/parts, IMO I don't think it would be hard to follow at all.

Sounds pretty safe to me. As long the nickname pops up here and there, enough so the reader doesn't say, "Hey. . . who's that again?" you're fine.

Charlie

scribbler1382 said:

Hmm...I think in Mike's POV I'd still refer to her as Amy in narrative, but call her Tiny during Mike's dialogue, regardless of who's POV your in at the time.

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I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. Whatever you do, be absolutely certain to hammer home right at the start that Amy and Tiny are the same person, and possibly remind the reader of this fact periodically.

However, I see calling Amy "Tiny" when Mike's the POV character as a subtle kind of way of geting deeper into Mike's thought process. We colour our descriptions of the outside world to show what the POV character is thinking or feeling, and we want the reader to see the world we create the way our POV character does. I think using "Tiny" might help with this process, but I could be way out. You could try writing it both ways and see which feels better.

Does everyone call her Tiny? Or just a select few?

In the book I'm co-writing, one of the POV characters calls two of the other characters by nicknames, Doc and Ram. We use them in dialogue and the regular narrative.

But Doc is another POV character, and he calls himself and Ram by their first names.

If Mike thinks of her as Tiny, my advice is call her Tiny. If it's just a nickname, but not one he uses all the time or really connects with her, use it more sparingly.

I don't think that there's a hard and fast rule for this one.

Establish the pattern as early as possible in your novel and you should have no problem.

I've had a similar problem with my novel, I tend to switch back and forth between calling characters by their first and last names and want to avoid confusing readers, what rules of thumb do you all use for the issue of sometimes calling people by their surnames? There are a couple of cops in my story, those are the characters where this is the most challenging for me.

I have this with parents. "Graham" in some chapters is "Daniel's father" in others (and Daniel calls him "Dad" in dialogue) and also goes by "Punch" in the POV of Sue, who doesn't know he's really Graham. (Names changed to protect the guilty). I just try to make it clear exactly who I'm talking about.