Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Characters with more than one name

This is topic Characters with more than one name in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by coralm (Member # 9274) on :

Ok, so here's my issue. I have a character that has more than one name. He's a person that has to pretend he's someone else and each persona has a different name. Not a huge deal at first. When he was acting like one person I'd use one name and the other way around when appropriate. The character is not the narrator (this is all first person), but it is the other main character of the story.

As the story progresses the distinction between the two becomes hazier, and the line isn't always so clear. He behaves erratically sometimes, passing between the two a few times in as many paragraphs. This causes confusion in several sections, I think. I really like using the two names to distinguish between the two personalities, but I think it might be annoying and possibly even difficult to understand.

Anyone have experience with a situation like this, or advice on what I should do? I do try to use 'he/him/his' a lot, but there are some places where that just doesn't work.

Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :

Different names for the same person reminds me of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." I remember having to backtrack regularly and re-read whole sections simply because I wasn't used to the Russian naming convention. Switching names can be very tricky and I think you need to do this early on in the story in order to avoid confusing the reader.

Does the narrator know these two different personalities are the same person? If so, to avoid confusion, when the individual switches to a different named persona the narrator should become aware of the shift and perhaps let the reader know through an internalization tag. The reader will know only as much as the narrator does.

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

I'm not really sure how to handle that. I happen to have read two books-both part of a series-where the main character has two to four identities. She seems to have two main ones but depending on what is needed will add more. It does get a little confusing. In fact she sometimes wonders who she really is.

Of these two books are different than yours in that its the MC who is First person who has all the ides. So she can describe going from one to the other. Every now and then there's a time skip-going to her place to sleep at end of one chapter, next chapter starts with her at work the next day- and she picks it up in a different persona with saying for sure who it is she is playing for a moment or three. But it helps that she has already established who the different personas are. So if she says she is Mary this morning, we know who Mary is.

That could be key establishing early on how many personas and who is who. So if your MC is Jack we know who that is but if he has to switch to General MacSmyth for a phone call we know who that is too. Or your MC could say "Oops, I forgot he has a new persona; Trigger, the trans-dressing night club singer with a fake horse's tail who robs cab drivers at gun point". Or your MC could say I couldn't figure out if he is playing Jimmy the flasher from the future or Greg the space surfer dude who rides solar flares.

Or if he has multiple personalities each one could have its own personality and way of speaking so you MC, at least, knows which personality is out.

I read a book where one of the people the MC worked with on cases would change personalities in the middle of a conversation and he had to quickly figure out which one was out. I think there was only two maybe three.

I can't recall for sure which one that last book was, maybe the Nightside by Simon R. Green but the first books I referenced are in the Laura Blackstone series by Mark Del Franco. "Skin Deep" and "Face Off" .

If you go to his web site http://markdelfranco.com be warned it's a little strange and the colors combined with how he does it almost give me a headache. I don't like going there. Once you figure it out though all the info you would want is there.

I hope all that makes sense and helps some.

Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :

Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde comes to mind.

You can make the two personalities have different accents or make one with a lisp or some other verbal property.

Posted by Wordcaster (Member # 9183) on :

I think you treat each personality with his own name. Of course this has to maintain knowledge through the narrative pov.

Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :

I think it's less a Rule than -- be consistent about how you handle it, so we know from how he's referred to which context we're in. If the persona is distinct enough, you may get away with it.

Other people, of course, have to refer to him by the name *they* know him by.

Posted by coralm (Member # 9274) on :

Yes, I should have clarified that point a little bit. The narrator knows both of his identities, so it is her impression of him as he acts differently that sets off the changing names. If that makes sense? She sees him as one or the other based on his behavior, although she doesn't actually think, "hey, he's acting like a jerk so he must be Joe right now." It's rather obvious by the situations they are in, until we get to the murky middle section I'm in now.

The two identities are quite distinct, at first. As I mentioned above, as the story moves on it becomes difficult to see where one ends and another begins. Those scenes are where I am having difficulty at the moment. The melding of the identities begins about halfway through, so maybe I'm worrying for nothing. By that point my readers might be used to seeing him in both lights and it will be easy for them to pick up on.

By the way, he doesn't have true multiple personalities or anything like that. He is more than a bit unstable, but it's a conscious choice he makes to be someone else, not the result of a mental issue.

Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :

I think it sounds interesting... I wouldn't worry too much about it. If the writing is good overall, I suspect the names/identity thing will take care of itself -- sounds like it already is, for that matter.

Posted by MAP (Member # 8631) on :

Have you thought about the narrator combining the names together when his personalities start merging?

Like they do in Hollywood with Brangelina.

[This message has been edited by MAP (edited January 10, 2011).]

Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :

MAP says, "Have you thought about the narrator combining the names together when his personalities start merging?"

And my instant response was -- no way! For whatever reason, the idea made me bristle. Could be my garbage-dump of a brain remembers seeing it done badly in some tale of yore, or maybe it feels like loss/replacement of identity to your character.

Posted by Natej11 (Member # 8547) on :

The main character of my current story has two names: the one he was given at birth and one that he's assumed. I use his birth name whenever it's his PoV, since that's the name he's familiar with and that's probably the name he'd use to identify himself. Then for the PoVs of everyone interacting with him I have them use the name they know him by.

This has the dual benefits of making it fairly obvious whose PoV you're in at any given time, as well as aiding in reinforcing the facade between the real person and the persona he's assumed.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

An example of this that certainly worked for me was how Tolkien introduced Strider, who we learned was actually named Aragorn, who later became King Elessar, and in the appendices turns out to have had several other names as well.

Posted by Osiris (Member # 9196) on :

I have two examples from a WIP story, one of which poses a question similar to your own.

It is a cyberpunk setting, in which a lot of action happens in a VR world. The protag uses his given name in the real world, but uses an avatar with another name in the VR world.

In this case, it is easy for the reader to know that they are the same person, because the name usage is tied to the setting. In the real world, he uses Name A, and in the VR world uses Name B.

In one scene of the story, the protag rescues a tourist who is in shock, and there is no time to waste in trying to figure out the tourist name. He is wearing an army coat with a name over the breast pocket, so the protag just refers to this character with that name.

Later, when things calm down and it is safe, the tourists tells the protag his first name (the name on the coat was his last name). They'd just gone through a harrowing experience together, which begins a certain bond of friendship between the two.

The question I have, then, is should the protag continue to refer to the tourist by his last name, or start using the first name? My inclination is to use the first name, but some may argue for clarity sake that the last name should be used.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Osiris, I submit that it would depend on the protagonist.

Would he believe the tourist told him his first name so that he would use it, and would he consider it polite to switch, or would he feel that it didn't matter?

Posted by Osiris (Member # 9196) on :

quote:
Would he believe the tourist told him his first name so that he would use it, and would he consider it polite to switch, or would he feel that it didn't matter?

Good point, he would definitely consider it polite to switch because of his cultural context. That does lead to another problem (or potentially a benefit) in that the stereotypical version of this character (a hacker of sorts) probably wouldn't care. Either readers will say 'cool, I expected him to be apathetic about it, but hes not a stereotype' or 'what the heck, this character is not believable'.

Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :

I have something similar in my SF Epic, where a new character comes along and thinks of the MC by his surname at first, while he's still the new guy's military assignment. It shortly becomes personal, and then he switches to thinking of his assignment by his first name, same as most folks would (this is a culture where it's perfectly natural for a peasant to address a king by first name). However, being rather prim and proper, when *speaking* he always calls his assignment "sir, or my lord, or your highness if he was being particularly dense". It's just how he talks and thinks, but it's a reasonable illustration of polite usage in the culture as well.

[This message has been edited by Reziac (edited January 11, 2011).]

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

Been meaning to throw a book I read recently onto the discussion---Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, Hampton Sides.

Non-fiction. The event, of course, is well-known, but the person who is, essentially, the Main Character, is introduced as a serial number, then through a series of different names as he takes them, and only after some three hundred pages does the name this person is known to history come into the narrative.