Tuesday, July 04, 2006

The Name Game

Mes Amis

After changing the name of some of the protagonists in The Good Son at the behest of my circle of readers and my genius of an agent, I am beginning to realise how utterly irritating it can be finding the right name for some folks.

Case in point: I am working through the draft of a proposed second novel called (working title) Everything is Broken. I have a character called DI Wise. I give him the first name Ernie because it feels right.

25,000 words later it hits me: Ernie Wise??? Bring me fuckin' sunshine*...

I could partner him up with DS Eric Morecambe, I suppose...

Time to rethink it all once more...

Au revoir

Russel


* Considering I'm being repped now by Al "sunshine" Guthrie - as those in the know may refer to him - this comment is perhaps doubly ironic. Or not. Its at least a little coincidental.

4 comments:

Sandra Ruttan said...

Forget artistic liberties. Name your characters Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride, Alexander McCall Smith - pick the famous Scots, so that when people google those names, they find your book.

If it can't be perfect, it may as well be marketable.

Russel said...

Ahhhh, but I'm planning on becoming a cult* so I can't be marketable.

Although I could never create a character as depraved as the real Stuart MacBride...

*No, that wasn't a typo.

Sandra Ruttan said...

Oh, well, for a cult* you don't even need product to get people to give you all their money and wear bedsheets.

And the thing to do with Stuart MacBride? A short, chubby-cheeked balding guy with no beard.

* assuming that really wasn't a typo

Russel said...

But Sandra, inside the robotic body suit of Hairy Armour (tm) that is precisely what Stuart looks like!