Tips For Tuesday - Names, part 3

So far, we’ve talked about making your character names distinctive and memorable. We’ve also discussed which characters should actually have a name versus just a generic label.

In this post, I want to talk about the actual names and how they appear on the page and how they might eventually sound on the screen should you be fortunate enough to sell your script and get it made.

Let’s talk about that first part first because this is one of those seemingly small things that writers don’t give much thought to but that actually can make a big difference in how a reader will respond to their script.

I’ll begin by giving you a recent example from a script I recently consulted on. It featured some pretty good writing and some great characters. But there was one big problem. Seven of those characters had a name that began with the letter “B”. Because of that, I found myself confused as to which character was which. Think about this: Bobby. Brian. Billy. Bradley. Buster. Ben. Bart. Imagine if you had to remember all those characters and which was which. Oh, and they’re all men.

About every five pages, I had to go back in the script to figure out who was who. That is not good! Like a shark, a reader has to keep moving forward.

Here’s my simple bit of advice to avoid this: don’t have two or more characters with names that begin with the same letter! I told you before that you want your character names to be distinctive. Well, if they begin with the same letter, you run the risk of making them that much more difficult to distinguish. Remember, you don’t want to confuse the reader or make their job harder than it is.

Think of it this way. There are twenty six letters in the alphabet. There shouldn’t be twenty six named characters with speaking parts in your script. Again, there are always exceptions. If so, you’ll have to give a few of them names that start with the same letter. And admittedly there aren’t many Xaviers or Zachs you can use. If you absolutely have to have characters with names beginning with the same letter, then make one name short and the other long. Have them sound different and look different on the page, the idea being to help the reader have some way to help distinghuish them in their mind.

A corollary to this is to avoid names that sound alike or look alike, even if they start with a different letter. Don’t have a Stan and Fran. Or a Tim and a Jim. Again, the potential for confusing the reader is too great and there are plenty of names out there to choose from. And, as I mentioned before, should your script sell and get made, you don’t want the names to SOUND the same.

This is a simple rule and, thankfully, there’s a simple fix. Go through your script and list the names. If you have more than one beginning with the same first letter, change one of them! As I told you in the first episode on this topic, there are plenty of places where you can find names. So make life easier for the next person who reads your script. It may just help move your script up the ladder.