What's In A Name

Let's talk about characters for a moment, shall we? Almost every story has them. They're crucial. Without characters, there really isn't much to propel the plot. Even stories that are "character-driven" have a plot of some kind, a story that is happening. So yes, characters are important.

But what about character names?

Oftentimes writers will assign names to characters without really evaluating whether or not the assigned name is the very best name. I know I've done it. I'm writing a story and a character pops up out of nowhere and I look around at books or magazines or whatever is close by to try to come up with a name for this impromptu character, a name that (hopefully) fits. And sometimes, well, I don't give any of the characters names. As Ben Loory (a writer who never gives his characters names) once said, names just get in the way.

Looking back at the stories I published last year, the majority of them consisted of characters without any names. And was anything lacking in those stories because I had not given those characters names? Some will argue yes. In fact, I remember when I published "Incomplete" last year a commenter said something to the effect that he/she related better to stories when the characters are given names. It was such an odd, asinine comment that it has stuck with me ever since. I mean, even if those characters in "Incomplete" -- the boy, the father and mother -- had names, would that have improved the story? If anything I think the story would have less of an effect on readers. Without names, the characters (in my opinion at least) become all that more intimate because, maybe, we see ourselves in them.

Don't get me wrong -- naming characters can be a good thing. Sometimes a character's first and last name can help describe that character instantly. I could run through a hundred of examples, but let's stick with some simple ones: Angela and Jane from American Beauty.

In the film Angela is played by Mena Suvari, a blonde cheerleader who becomes Lester Burnham's fantasy girl. He falls in love with this "angel" who just happens to be friends with his daughter (Thora Birch), a "plain jane" who wears dark clothing and doesn't think herself pretty.

See? This happens all the time. Some writers put a lot of thought into naming their characters, while others ... not so much. Of course, sometimes writers put way too much thought into naming their characters where the conceit becomes much too obvious. Like John Coffey in The Green Mile. I mean, come on, really? I love the book (and the movie), but giving your Christ figure the initials JC is a little bit much, wouldn't you say?

For me, I let the story dictate whether or not the characters need names. If I'm writing a novel, then yes, those characters will have names. A short story? Most times. A flash fiction piece or hint fiction piece? Most likely not. When you're dealing with an economy of words, why waste them on giving your character a first and last name? And if no last name, does the character really need a first name too? So what if his name is Chuck or George or Baron? Does that bring anything special to the story? If not, then why include it in the first place?

Look, I'm not knocking stories where characters have names. Like I said, I do it sometimes. But the mindset where the characters in a story must have names so that they will be more relateable ... that's just stupid. Or no -- that's just a reader's opinion. It's impossible to please every reader, so it's not even worth trying to do it. Someone is always going to complain.

Character names can be distracting, too. I remember reading this book where there were only three main characters and each of their names started with C. The names were all different, of course, but having each name start with the same letter became a distraction. And sometimes the character name in question might be the name of someone we know, and depending on how we feel about that person at that particular moment in time, our mood toward that character could change. But again, it's impossible to please all the readers all of the time

So "Multiplicity" then. I'm sure it's not the first time a story has been written with every character given the same name. But I was thinking one day how writers try to keep their characters' names as separate as possible, and how in real life you can't control a person's name, and how in school there are many kids with the same first name, just as it happens in the workplace, and I thought what if a character named XXX ran into a bunch of other characters named XXX. Thus "Multiplicity" was born. My main goal, of course, was to get to a scene where all these different characters with the same name would be fighting. It would be great fun to screw with the reader's head. So I came up with the basic botched-robbery storyline, a storyline that wouldn't be nearly as interesting and fun if each of those characters were given different names. In fact, if each character was given a different name then the story would just be boring. But it's the fact that each character is named Jeff, and the reader has to work harder than usual to keep those Jeffs straight, that gives the story (again, in my opinion at least) its true effectiveness.

Baby Shoes, Who Cares?

Last week I received an interesting and well thought out e-mail from Simon Thalmann regarding Hemingway's six-word story. In fact, the e-mail was so interesting and well thought out that, with Simon's permission, I'm going to reprint a good chunk of it here:

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn" piece by Hemingway lately in light of one of your recent posts, and while it struck me as intriguing when I first heard the story as an undergrad I can't help but wonder now, as a father myself some years later: Do you think the piece would be worth anything had it not been Hemingway who wrote it?

Again, while initially the short may seem tragic, a simple second look show it's actually quite, well, boring, for lack of a better word. For truly, what does the fact that a pair of baby shoes haven't been worn really say? It doesn't say anything. Anything inferred says more about the reader than the story. For instance, my wife and I are headed to a "Mom to Mom" sale tomorrow where people sell all their baby stuff. I imagine quite a bit of it will have signs saying "Never worn." Does that mean all their babies were killed or stillborn or that there was some tragedy to speak of that kept their babies feet uncovered? Absolutely not. It just means they were never worn.

Incidentally, I'm not sure how it was in Hemingway's day but now new parents are deluged with gifts at the birth of a child, and shoes -- especially if you get multiple pair -- are practically worthless. You may try a pair on the baby to see how they look once or twice, but the fact is they grow so fast and the shoes are such a hassle to deal with and serve no purpose that I imagine the majority of baby shoes could actually be considered "Never worn."

Additionally, if "Never used" were always taken to imply tragedy, the classified section would be the most depressing part of the newspaper.

All this is to say I hope Hemingway really didn't consider this his best work. "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Green Hills of Africa," and his short stories at least count for something.

Simon brings up a lot of good points. I'd addressed them quickly in my reply via e-mail, but want to go more in-depth here.

For starters, no, I do not believe the six-word story would be so highly regarded if it had been written by anybody other than Hemingway (or a writer of Hemingway's stature). Sure, if some lesser known writer had come up with the story, it probably would circulate around writers' circles, but it wouldn't be held is such high esteem (and SMITH Magazine wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is). But this happens all the time. Take The Road, for instance. I can't imagine that book not only being one of Oprah's picks but also winning the Pulitzer Prize if it had been written by anyone else but Cormac McCarthy. The man has gotten to the point in his career where he can pretty much write anything and people will think it's a masterpiece.

As I've mentioned here before, the greatest strength of Hint Fiction is also its greatest weakness, in which the effectiveness of the story replies heavily on a reader's own life experience. So yes, Hemingway's story could be taken many different ways, not all of them so dark. In fact, when I student taught I used this story to teach inference, and one of the students suggested that maybe the baby had been born without legs. Well ... not the most likely reason, but plausible.

Still, I think it's simply human nature to view things negatively, so when someone sees that story, they instantly think stillborn and death.

Finally, we need to keep in mind that there is no written account anywhere that says Hemingway is in fact the true author of that story. It's all legend, just as the fact he claimed it was his greatest work is legend. But say he did write the story, and he did claim it was his greatest work. I'd have to side with him. Because back in Hemingway's day, nothing like a six-word story had been done before. Sure, people had written novels and short stories, but a six-word story? If he did indeed write it (and I'm inclined to believe he did), then he was in fact the very first person to do so. So yeah, considering that it was such a new and innovative way of storytelling, I'd have to agree that it could be considered his greatest work.

But of course that's just me. Simon, like I said, raised some really good points. What do you think?

The Wonderful World Of Advertisements

So what was the point of yesterday's post besides a nice blast from the past? To give you an idea of how advertising have changed over the past twenty years. It's different, yet in a way it's the same. As our culture has evolved, so has the way companies try to sell us stuff we don't really need.

I'll be honest -- very few ads work on me today. When I was a kid and would see a new toy advertised on TV (like something from Nerf), you better believe I wanted that toy. Those ads made those toy seem so much fun. But then when you did get that particular toy, you realized it wasn't quite what you thought it was going to be.

I think it's when we're children that we start to become immune to advertisements.

They bombard us constantly. On TV, at the movies, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, on the websites we visit. We see them so much that we just start to ignore them without really thinking.

Sometimes I just don't understand the reason for certain ads. Like the Iron Man sequel opening this weekend. The studio is spending millions and millions on TV spots and billboards and ads in magazines and TV, not to mention banner ads on websites (and how many people really click on banner ads? I can't think of a single banner ad I've ever clicked on). And my question is ... why? It's friggin' Iron Man! The movie's going to be huge. Why not put the trailer online and let the bloggers do all your advertising for you?

I was thinking the other day how if The Matrix was released today, it wouldn't be as popular as it was then (forget the fact it was groundbreaking when it came out, helped changed film making forever, etc). But if it did come out today, the studio would ram it down everyone's throat. Like Iron Man and every other big budget movie out there, they want to make sure people know it exists, so they give us a marketing overload.

But do you remember when The Matrix came out in 1999? How there wasn't that much advertising for it? (And if there was, I don't remember it; all I remember is maybe one TV spot and that's it; you didn't have three or four different trailers making the rounds.) I went into the movie not really knowing what it was about, and holy shit was I blown away within the first couple minutes. I don't want to sound cheesy, but the movie was a life-changing experience. And so of course I couldn't stop talking about it once I left the theater. Many other people couldn't either. It was a movie that you told everyone about.

Word of mouth is a great thing. And now with the Internet, there is what is known as viral marketing. It's what really pushed the concept of Hint Fiction out there to the masses. If it wasn't for the Internet and people mentioning it on blogs, who then in turn mentioned it on blogs, it never would have become as big as it did. And, hopefully, it will continue to grow.

Some books do very well by word of mouth promotion. Hell, look at Paul Harding's Tinkers, which was published by a small independent publisher and managed to win the Pulitzer Prize. The story of the book's stop-and-go process is fascinating. There was no huge marketing campaign for that novel. No ads taken out in the New York Times and USA Today.

As this previous post showed, it doesn't take that much to make a book a bestseller. Yes, it takes money, of course, but if a publisher pays a lot for a book (say, six figures) then you better believe that publisher is going to do everything it can to earn back on its investment. That's just good business sense. So they advertise everywhere, print thousands and thousands of copies, and ensure that it reaches the bestseller list.

But just because a book reaches the bestseller list, does it mean it's successful?

I remember talking to my agent once about a certain novel which had earned its author a huge advance, and my agent said something like "Yeah, but that book tanked." I said, "It was a New York Times bestseller though." He said, "But that doesn't mean anything."

And he's right. If a publisher pays one million dollars for a novel, just imagine how many copies that novel will have to sell to earn out. It's almost impossible unless the author is someone like James Patterson or Stephen King. (Speaking of which, do authors of that magnitude really need all the marketing campaign they get? Just like Iron Man, we know they have books coming out, and when they come out we'll buy them, so why not push some of that marketing budget toward a book by a lesser known author who could use the boost?) And so that book that the publisher paid one million clams for hits the bestseller list for a week or two. Okay, that's nice for the author (they can forever be known as a bestselling author, have it engraved on their tombstone if they wish), but that just means a few thousand copies were sold in a week's time. As the weeks progress and the sales go down, just how well has that book done now? And then you have books that stay on the bestseller lists for weeks and weeks, sometimes even months, sometimes even years, and it's thanks to those books that help publishers stay afloat.

It's impossible to predict how well a book will or will not do. You just can't predict it no matter how hard you try.

The advance for the anthology wasn't very large, so Norton will not be doing the same amount of publicity as they would for a book that they paid much more for. Which is expected and purely smart business sense. And which places a good bit of that promotion on my shoulders (and the contributors' shoulders if they're kind enough). But like I said, that's expected. A lot of writers have to do their own promotion nowadays. I am working with a publicity at the publisher to set up two events -- one in New York City, another in Los Angeles -- but the publisher will not be paying for my travel expenses. And again, that's fine. I think it's important to really get this anthology started off on the right foot. And again, it's expected that I do a large chunk of the work.

After the book has been written, the writer stops being an artist and is forced to become a businessman (or businesswoman, if you prefer). Some writers refuse. They think that all they need to do is just write and the publisher will do the rest. Those writers, my dear friends, are delusional. Back in the day, maybe some of those writers could get away with that, but not today. Not with the way publishing is changing.

As the release date for this anthology approaches and I'm e-mailed every couple weeks by my editor and her assistant about certain issues, I'm beginning to realize I've stepped into a different level of publishing. Before it was all about writing a novel and some stories and trying to place them, and then when they were published saying "Hey, look at this, isn't it cool?" And while I do still work on novels and publish the occasional short story, I'm starting to realize I need to prioritize what it is I write. A flash fiction piece or short story that might get published online or in a literary journal, or concentrate more on a new novel, which, if it sells, will help pay some bills and, hopefully, start a career?

This isn't to say I'm going to stop writing flash fiction and short stories. I hope to still knock a few out every once in a while, but my primary focus should be on career positioning -- looking ahead at a specific goal and doing everything I can to reach it. Suddenly I've become a dual-minded writer: one half artist, one half businessman (which, to be fair, I think I've always had some business sense -- any writer must have that to get anywhere -- but now it's become much more important). And while I of course always want to write what I want to write, I also have to take into consideration the simple questions: who will buy this (my audience), and why?

This post has run much longer than I intended, so if you've stayed with me this far, I thank you. I could probably go on and on, but let's wrap things up, shall we?

So back to advertisements. They're everywhere. We as a society has mostly become immune to them. But sometimes they work. So I ask you: what advertisements do you find most appealing? If you were -- oh I don't know -- an editor of an anthology, just what kind of stuff do you think would get potential buyers' attention?

Describing A Description

Yesterday on Twitter I mentioned (sarcastically, of course) how I love when writers have their protagonists look at themselves in a mirror so the reader can get a description of what that particular character looks like. Lazy storytelling or convenient storytelling? Either way, I know I've been guilty of it. But then I wondered how does one go about describing a protagonist when the book is seen only through that protagonist's point of view? Oftentimes in books that deal with multiple POVs you might find a secondary character seeing the protag for the first time, and then there goes your description. But even that seems like lazy and convenient storytelling.

And then I wondered does the reader really even need to know what the protagonist looks like? Maybe. If it's crucial to the plot, I guess so. Thinking over all the books I've read, very rarely am I given an exact description of a protagonist. And if I am given one, oftentimes that description is muddled with my preconceived notion of what the character already looks like.

I'm not talking about characters in short stories. Very rarely are we given a description of the main character in stories, and when we do it's for a good reason ... or at least it should be a good reason.

So what, exactly, is the best way to describe your protagonist without seeming lazy?

Or, better yet, is it possible to pull off lazy techniques if they're done well?

This last question puts me in mind of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil. One of the legends of the film is Welles -- being the crazy genius that he was -- asked a producer to give him the very worst script available to prove that he could make a great film from an awful script. And while Touch of Evil may not be the greatest film ever made, it certainly has its moments all thanks to Welles.

So I wonder even if you have your protagonist look at himself or herself in the mirror so the reader can get a description of what they look like -- if you pull it off masterly so that the reader barely even notices, is it still considered lazy storytelling?

Hints & Misconceptions

I haven't had a chance yet to count the number of entries so far to the Hint Fiction contest, but there are a lot and more coming every hour as the deadline approaches. Remember, the contest ends this Friday at midnight here on the good ol' east coast, so make sure you get those submissions in! Yesterday Ben White did another great blog post about very very very short stories, which played off my last blog post, which played off Ben's last blog post, which ... well, you know how it goes. Anyway, here's some of what he has to say:

A story implies motion. It’s not just description. Something needs to change.

With regards to the twitter-sized fiction that I read on a daily basis, this means that the reader should be able to at least infer some change taking place, either before, during, or after the actual words of the piece itself. After all, this isn’t a summary or a synopsis. We’re talking about an iceberg here: the tip is showing above the water, but we know the vast majority of all that ice is underneath the surface.

Thankfully Ben and I see eye to eye on these extremely short stories. We've talked many times about their strengths and weaknesses. We've read our fair share of them that it's gotten to the point we can pretty much dissect one at once and decide whether or not it holds promise.

But the thing to remember with stories so short, so much more is left up to the reader's imagination and life experience to fill in the blanks. Say you write a story of 25 words or fewer about Pearl Harbor (why Pearl Harbor, I don't know, it just popped in my head for some reason; stay with me!). And for some reason a reader doesn't know much about Pearl Harbor -- doesn't know anything at all -- and attempts to read the story but just doesn't "get" it. Does that mean the story itself fails when another reader more familiar with Pearl Harbor understands what the story is about and hence "gets" it?

In the anthology, there are a few stories that deal with literary allusions. If a reader isn't familiar with a particular literary allusion, then that story will not have the same effect as it hopefully will on a reader who is in fact familiar.

Back when I was reading for the anthology, a writer submitted a very good story but I ended up passing on it because the story itself dealt too much with a recent current event. It was a story that, in a year or more, would not have the same effect on readers than it would have right there and then.

If Hint Fiction is in fact the tip of an iceberg as Ben says, then the question arises just how much of that tip needs to show. One of the biggest misconceptions of Hint Fiction (besides the fact people think it's easy) is that Hint Fiction is not supposed to make sense. That the stories should leave the reader completely baffled and scratching his or her head.

That's incorrect, of course. I hate always returning to Hemingway's six-word story, but it's the granddaddy of Hint Fiction so I feel compelled to mention it again and again:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Yes, we're not given a complete story here, only a hint, but the hint is enough to paint a pretty solid and effective picture. Mostly because readers are familiar with the idea of stillborn babies (or babies dying young).

The very first Hint Fiction story I ever wrote was a derivative knock off of Hemingway's. I simply changed the words around to "For sale: Trojan condom, never used" which by itself doesn't do much. But then I gave it a title:

AFTER THE PROM

For sale: Trojan condom, never used.

Those six words then took on a whole different meaning and a backstory was formed, all thanks to the addition of a title. Again, a tip of the iceberg is showing (which, in this context, could have a perverted meaning). Not too much, but not too little (again, get your minds out of the gutter!). As Goldilocks would say, "Just right." (I mean it!)

Sometimes writers don't give enough of a hint:

Jim turns on his computer. He stares at the screen, and screams.

Okay, so ... what exactly is happening here? Something, obviously, but there's not enough for a reader to fill in the blanks. Maybe with a helpful title, but even with the best title ever I can't imagine the story will improve much. Like Ben said before, a story implies motion. Yes, Jim is in motion -- turning on his computer, staring at the screen, screaming -- but without the reader knowing why Jim is doing those things, the story lacks substance and, most importantly, emotion.