Characters without names

JuliePgh · Mar 6, 2005

I have a scene in which my heroine is attacked. She doesn't know the attackers and has no reason to hear their names. The scene is only a few paragraphs long, but I need to differentiat between attacker 1 and attacker 2. How do I refer to them? Do I take two attributes, like tall and short and say things like, "the short one..." or "the tall one...?" That seems cumbersome. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Denis Castellan · Mar 6, 2005

I'm re-reading Dean Koontz's Cold Fire.

In a chapter, the hero meets two dangerous guys and he describes them to show that they are the kind of people you'd prefer not to meet at night. Here's an excerpt of the description :

« One of them wore his hair pulled back and knotted in a redoubled pony-tail--the passé style that kids now called a "dork knob." »

After that, he just calls him Dork Knob. I found that it worked pretty well. Hope it'll help

azbikergirl · Mar 6, 2005

Differentiating them by characterizing attributes could work well, such as the one with whiskey breath, the snaggle-toothed one, the one with the dead eyes, etc.

WVWriterGirl · Mar 6, 2005

I'm listening to an audio book right now (can't remember the name of the book, but it's by Catherine Coulter) in which two kidnappers are referred to as "Bo" and "Fatso". The reason one has a "real" name is because "Fatso" used it when addressing him. I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to, in the midst of the attack, Attacker one says something like, "Get her, Bob!" That way, you could identify one as "Bob" and the other by some identifying feature.

Hope it helps,

WVWG

JuliePgh · Mar 6, 2005

One attacker does refer to the other attacker by name half way through the scene, but at that point, I'm not sure it's wise to start using the real name since another name has already been "assigned."

reph · Mar 6, 2005

The female character might think of them using descriptions like "the one who spoke to me first" and "the other one" or "his friend" – or "the one with the knife." Just examples.

tjwriter · Mar 7, 2005

I recently did a scene in my novel where my main character was attacked by five unknown men. I phrased the one who spoke to her as the "lead man" or something similar. These guys boxed her in an alley so two of them became "the men behind her" and the other two were "the two behind the leader." She never knew their names so at no point did they become more detailed to her. She only learned there to be a price on her head, and these men were sent to "collect" on her by the main villain.

The way I approached it was to keep it short and sweet, with identifiers that were neither long nor complex.

As far as switching names during the attack, as long as it is identified who is calling the other described person by a personal name, it shouldn't confuse the reader.

PattiTheWicked · Mar 7, 2005

Character Names

JuliePgh said:
I have a scene in which my heroine is attacked. She doesn't know the attackers and has no reason to hear their names. The scene is only a few paragraphs long, but I need to differentiat between attacker 1 and attacker 2. How do I refer to them? Do I take two attributes, like tall and short and say things like, "the short one..." or "the tall one...?" That seems cumbersome. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Allow the character who's interacting with them to name one, and have one attacker name the other.

"The heavy-set one moved towards her, and she caught a whiff of his breath, sour and rotten, like week-old carp. "Get away from me," she hissed, her hand drifting slowly to the knife tucked in her waistband.

Fish Breath smiled, showing a broad expanse of brown teeth and crusted gums. "Looky here, Earl. We got us a live one."

katiemac · Mar 7, 2005

Allow the character who's interacting with them to name one, and have one attacker name the other.

This is something I'd actual recommend against, for believability (is that a word?) in your story's context. Most attackers, if they're already unknown, wouldn't and shouldn't give away their own names in the event they'll be tracked later by police and things. Of course, if you're attackers are supposed to be stupid, that might be a different thing.

maestrowork · Mar 7, 2005

I think using the character's attributes is a good way to go.

Fish breath, Mohawk, the Asian, etc.

JanaLanier · Mar 7, 2005

In Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane, the kidnapped character calls his abductors Big Wolf and Greasy Wolf. (He calls himself the Boy Taken by Wolves.)

Alphabeter · Mar 7, 2005

If she's disoriented, you might try something like this:

Cindy Lou was on her back. One seemed so huge he blocked out the whole street. Another held her down. She tried to remember anything specific about them but her only focus was on avoiding more pain. She would not cry until even their smells were gone.

No names, little description. They came, they went.

Placeholders (my official term) rarely get more than "fat guy; Mark steals car from" or "blonde with bad dye job; drops card in front of shop". A bit of description and what is their little purpose in that world.

Don't worry about them unless they start wanting their own chapter. Then either kill them or move them into a deluxe apartment on the East Side. (My semi-apologies to Wheezie.)

:Sun:

James D. Macdonald · Mar 7, 2005

Sometimes I use description (Moustache; Brown Coat). Sometimes I use nonce-names (Mutt; Jeff). Sometimes I identify them by their armament (Revolver, Switchblade).

I captialize the terms as if they were the fellows' names.

Denis Castellan · Mar 7, 2005

James D. Macdonald said:
I captialize the terms as if they were the fellows' names.

Yes, I should have stressed that out too in my "Dork Knob" post. Capitalization is important when "common-naming" a character.

maestrowork · Mar 7, 2005

I think it also depends on the genre, writing style, and POV. In some genre, it's probably NOT a good thing to call your characters "Mohawk and Pocket-Knife."

Edited: to add the "NOT"

johnnycannuk · Mar 8, 2005

Yeah, I go with Uncle Jim...in a recent story I refered to two charaters at "The Boss" and "Thin Lizzy" - "The Boss" was a fat, Sidney Greenstreet-inspired film noir lizzard and "Thin Lizzy" was his scrawny henchman.

The hardest part was fitting the new nick names in the right place during POV descritpion.

Mike

James D. Macdonald · Mar 8, 2005

Please, keep POV firmly in mind when giving characters' their names.

Also ... you may need to do some fancy writing to get the information across that you need to have in the readers' minds. That's where the art comes in.

Suggestion: Read books by your favorite authors, with an eye toward how they do it. There's nothing wrong with copying the masters. Don't read novels as a reader -- read them as a writer, looking for solutions to technical problems in storytelling.

Characters without names

JuliePgh

Denis Castellan

Excuse my French...

azbikergirl

I really do look like this.

WVWriterGirl

Inked Mom

JuliePgh

reph

Fig of authority

tjwriter

Emerging Anew

PattiTheWicked

Unleashing Hell.

katiemac

Five by Five

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

JanaLanier

Snarling Cur

Alphabeter

Player of the Letters

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle