Under the Apple Tree
Hi, Friends,
Ever being the lovely position of choosing a name for a baby? Remember the baby name books, the pencilled shortlist in the back? The debate... would this have a nice way of being shortened... Is it too quirky... too conventional...does it go well with the surname... do the initials spell a rude word? It can be very hard to get it right and please everyone! Authors can go through similar throes when they are choosing names for characters and places. (Okay, not quite the same as naming a gorgeous baby, but full of pitfalls and love, all the same.)
I am currently working hard on the edit of Books 2 and 3 of The Peace Weaver trilogy, as yet untitled. And that’s one of things that I’m chasing right now: titles, place names, character names... When I’m writing, if I’m stuck for a name I quite often put in a marker like ‘XYZ’, knowing that I will take the time in the editing to really search for the right one. That means I can go with the flow of the writing the first draft, but it leaves me a lot to do about names in the editing.
Of course, I’ve got a lot already in place from The Peace Weaver, that will carry through the whole trilogy, for example, the names of the heroines. ‘Wren’, a kind of ‘wizard’ in the story, is named for the bird most prized by the druids, and in Welsh it means both druid and wren. ‘Aldrith’, a true warrior princess, means ‘good war’ which is so right for her. It took days of research and thinking to find the right names, and it can make a lot of difference. Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, was originally named ‘Poppy’. While that’s a charming name, it is not right for the spikey, dramatic Scarlett, but you can see how Margaret Mitchell was associating the colour red with her heroine and was searching for the right tone. As a writer, you have to trust your gut. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t!
A name can say a great deal about a character, simply from the sound of it. For example, ‘Carys’, is a lovely name for the little girl in my trilogy, with a light rhythm and in Welsh it means ‘love.’ In contrast, ‘Gault’ is a good name for the tough warrior he is; a short punchy sound, and it means ‘boar’. I think rhythm and sound influence the choices we all make about names.
There can be other factors for an author. For example, in my children’s books, I try to choose something that is easy to read, like ‘James’ and ‘Sam’, the heroes of Hurtling Wiffie, and ‘Cob’ in The Boy Who Spoke Dragon. And we gave Victoria a nick name, ‘Plum’ in Princess Victoria’s War for the same reason. I usually avoid having more than one name beginning with the same letter. This hasn’t been possibly with the trilogy, because the cast is too big!
Where do writers look for their names? Everywhere and anywhere! Old place names can be a good source. We recently drove past a village called ‘Warleggan’ when we were in Cornwall; you can imagine Winston Graham’s thoughts when he came across that, and used it for the name of his villain in the Poldark series. It’s tempting to think that Tolkien might have come across Dunedin in New Zealand, and adapted to create the name ‘Dunedain’, a race of men in Lord of the Rings. I always get a warm feeling when I glimpse how another author might have done something like this.
Where you look for names can depend on the genre. For example, in Rowan, Leader of the Deer Kin, an animal story in the tradition of Watership Down, I made the decision that all the names had to be from plants as it was rooted in the natural world. That’s when I came across ‘Twayblade’, which was the perfect name for a tough, sly character in the book. As a result of the name, I gave him double prongs on his horns which makes him even more formidable. It’s not unusual for me to find that a name can give me a new dimension to a character.
The Peace Weaver trilogy is a Celtic fantasy, so I’m looking at Welsh, Irish and Anglo-Saxon for names, always checking their meaning or translating a phrase to create a name. For example, I took the Welsh words, ‘Caer’, a fort, and ‘Draig’, a dragon, to create the name of a stronghold, Caer Draig. I hope this approach gives the book some cultural depth and credibility.
Good luck with naming your babies, your pets and your home.Names are important!
PS. I am half-Welsh but sadly, do not speak the language so apologies for my mistakes.
PPS. The book is set in Wales, so using the language where I could is a mark of respect.
PPPS. Kids hate the name you gave them? Don’t take it to heart, they’ll have to be parents themselves to understand how hard you tried to get it right.
PPPPS You can always help them towards a cool nickname!
PPPPPS Or wait till they grow up and realise that now they are prime minister, the name you gave them is a doing better than ‘Snot Face’, the nickname of their teenage years!
The Work-Shy Layabout is one of the authors at Thumbnail Books (see if you can guess which one?) who has a great deal of useless advice to impart on the subject of getting away with doing as little as possible while enjoying the life of an independent writer. His views are not to be considered reliable financial, medical or spiritual advice.
How to make a Crumble
Part 3: Chasing Clues.
Hunting for clues is essential for a detective, and Anna Crumble is no different. My challenge as the writer, having devised the mystery and worked out how the culprit did the deed, is to work out what breadcrumbs have been left for Anna to discover.
I put clues into two kinds: character clues and evidence. Character clues are the details the detective can learn from the suspects. It’s important for the writer to share these clues between the suspects. While the culprit will have all the information, they’re going to be hiding it from the detective as much as they can. The others should have little pieces of the picture - a passing comment, an overheard secret or some important background knowledge. These can all be used to move the investigation towards possible answers. Remember to make an innocent suspect say something that points in the wrong direction, a classic ‘red herring’ so that the reader doesn’t figure it out too quickly.
Evidence is anything physical. I use these a lot in Anna Crumble, because they are concrete things. For my age group, abstract concepts are hard to follow so complex psychological motivations don’t work so well. But hiding a valuable object in plain sight, or taking an object to pieces so that it can moved somewhere else, are object based and easily understood.
With the mystery plot planned, as the writer, I need to figure out what physical evidence is available to be found, and what background information the suspects might know.
Fictional detectives have different skill sets. Sherlock Holmes is all about deduction, according to Doctor Watson (it’s really induction but no need to upset the good Doctor) - Holmes gathers all available evidence, rules out all impossible options and is left with an improbable solution that must be true. He’s also a walking encyclopaedia of crimes and cigar ash, just don’t ask him about how the solar system works. Anna Crumble’s closest predecessor is Miss Marple - Marple’s great skill is observing people and understanding human nature. Anna’s understanding of people isn’t so well developed - she finds adults mostly to be quite silly people - but she shares the keen awareness of how people think and feel, and how they show their feelings through their actions.
By the way, you start to notice that there’s a common conceit in mystery novels, that the nature of these breadcrumbs just happens to match the skill set of the detective, but this is necessary for an investigation to be possible at all. And I suppose, all the other kinds of clues were there as well, it’s just that the detective of that story didn’t worry about them. I wonder, has anyone ever given Marple a Holmes mystery to solve? Or seen how well Holmes would have done on The Orient Express?
Finally, with all these elements worked out, the hardest part of all is how to gradually reveal the mystery in the most satisfying way. The detective asks around the suspects to establish the facts of the case, then as important details arise, the detective follows the trail to the next person or the next place, and gathers more clues and evidence. It’s really important that the reader can follow the detective’s logic for why a clue from a suspect directs them to search a particular place. Detectives should never ‘just know’ to look in the old woodshed, just because the writer knows that’s where the crucial clue is hiding.
If you’ve done it right, the sweet spot for the story is for the reader to be able to solve the mystery just before the detective does - the page before the reveal is the cold standard here. Make it too obvious too soon, and the reader is waiting for the detective to catch up; make it too late and the reader may feel the mystery was unfair.
And whatever you do, don’t keep the crucial piece of evidence hidden from the reader! Everyone hates that, and in a mystery story, it’s very bad form!