Keepiing track of characters: A writer's (and reader's) challenge

 HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this week, we talked about a doctor’s advice for keeping your memory sharp: read fiction!

I happen to be reading Chuck Hogan’s GANGLAND and I’d just been marveling at its intricate plot is and huge number of characters, most of them gangsters, each with two or more names (Nicholas “Nicky Pins” Passero. Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo, aka Big Tuna.) 

It’s a terrific book, and a nice change for me. The most gruesome parts are left to the imagination.

Hogan he blew me away years ago with PRINCE OF THIEVES (which was made into the movie THE TOWN) and, true to form, the characters in GANGLAND are brilliantly drawn.

I can only imagine what he must have had to do to keep those characters straight when he was writing them.

So that’s my question for today: Do you have a bookkeeping strategy for keeping your characters straight every time you put them on the page? And what about in a series where every book introduces a new character (or five) and reprises many from earlier books. What’s your trick?

LUCY BURDETTE: If I’m reading a book with too many characters, I tend to skim. Especially at night, when I am reading for entertainment, not work. At an event last week, someone asked me if I’d kept a character bible for the Key West mysteries.. Oh how I wish I had!

I envy those writers who keep track of physical and psychological attributes and plot points as they write along in their series. I wasn’t organized enough to do this, so now I rely heavily on the style sheets the publisher supplies along with copyedits. These list the characters, and some of their relationships–this is so helpful when I can’t remember someone’s name etc!

If all else fails, I use the search bar liberally.

RHYS BOWEN: I do not like books with too many characters. All those Russian novels with Alexander Ivanovitch sometimes called Sasha sometimes some other nickname. I confess I give up.

And I’ve had to give feedback on books that introduce a Bob s Bill and. Phil in the first page and expect me to remember them.

With one series of 20 books and one of 18 I should keep perfect bibles. But I don’t. Then I have to delve into back numbers to find out what someone’s maid was called. Oh, and use the style sheets, Lucy I thought of paying a grandchild to read all the books and create bibles for both series

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well in other people’s books, if I get confused about who is who, I just keep reading and figure it will become clear soon enough. If I start saying, who is that guy? too much, I just stop reading the book. The author has not done their job.

If the names are weird or otherworldly, or impossible to pronounce, I just decide how they sound, and say it mentally that way. And wonder why people just don’t give characters names you can say.

In my own books, gosh, I don’t have to keep track of anyone. I suppose that’s because the past six books I’ve written have been standalones. So I only have to keep track within the book, and I have to say that, so far, that has been no problem.

Sometimes I spell names differently within, Callaway or Calloway, Linney or Lonny, and then change it when I figure out what I’m doing. And in one book, Patience became Patricia in the manuscript, but luckily I caught it.

For my two series, I did not keep a Bible, though I know I should have. I remember Charlaine Harris saying she had hired someone to write her series Bible, and that turned out to be so fascinating that she published it as a book!

Maybe that is an incentive for you series writers!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I wish I had kept a bible from the very first book in my series, but of course it never occurred to me that there would be so many books and that I would have any trouble remembering my characters… Oops.

I do make a list of the characters for each new book, with some description, and usually there is a lot of crossing out and changing. I don’t want names that sound too alike, or are too hard to pronounce, and of course I have to check previous books to see if I’ve used a name before.

When we are• watching TV, especially a series, my husband always asks me how I can possibly remember the names of all the different characters. Practice, I say!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Well, I seem to be the exception to the rule, here, because I keep a name bible, and have since the 3rd book in my series. The hero’s sister was Janet, then Janice, the Janet again, and I decided I really didn’t want to go down that road any further…

I have a list of names used in all the books, divided into sections: In town, From away, Bad Guys, 1920s to 1950s, and The Honored Dead. Any names in use during the current work in progress are bolded. I have birthdates and ages of all my main characters, and a brief line of how they’re connected or what they do, Ex. Barbara LeBlanc, manager at the Algonquin Waters, dating pathologist Dan Scheeler.

I also have a list of street/road names and highways numbers and roughly where they begin and end, or the important places they lead to - I added those when I realized I was making up new state highways in every book and Millers Kill now had more roadways than New York City. I killed off most of them by never using them after the first three books.

I also - and this is important to avoid the Bill, Bob and Phil problem Rhys mentions - have an a-through-z chart for both first and last names. I don’t list the names themselves, but how many times I use a name beginning with that letter.

For some reason, I have a real tendency toward J and K names and I have to rein it back. That way, when considering a new character name, I can see I only have a few O names, for instance, so the heroine’s new dog becomes Oscar and the young former Marine’s friend in ONE WAS A SOLDIER is Olivia.

JENN McKINLAY: I should keep track of my characters' names, but other than my outline, I don't have a method. I remember hearing Barbara Michaels laugh at herself when her readers called her out for making Amelia Peabody tall in one book and less tall in following books. That resonated, especially when I can't remember a character's name from a previous book in a series or their height, hair, or eye color. Probably, I should work on this. LOL.

HALLIE: So what's your take on character names? Are you willing to stick with a book with a lot of characters and what makes you bail?