Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental...

You know that disclaimer at the beginning of books and the end of movies that runs something along the lines of:

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Well, besides the fact that I understand why such a disclaimer exists, I now even more so do.  I just Google'd (as they say) the names of the characters in the novel I'm working on... and YES, all three of them are real guys somewhere in the world - or had been.  (One of them is deceased, appropraitely for this book.)  One is off by a single letter.

I went on to try the main character of What If It's a Trick Question?  Yep.  There's some guys out there with HIS name, too.

If only it were possible to come up with a character name that is not an actual person!

Actually, it is possible.  I've done it.  Well, I have at least done so in the sense of defying the 'almighty' Google.  The main character of my two-books-finished-and-one-other-started-Quadrilogy doesn't show up.   And neither do the main two guys from my novel Midnight Chaser... except in the boy's case to show up from one of my own posts.  Then again...these stand-alone moninkers are probably the result of my purposeful desire to create unheard of names.  For example, the boy's last name comes from a Danish word that's not used as a surname.  And the Quadrilogy character's surname is derived from a mis-spoken line of someone my best friend Laughter once knew.

I would prefer to always invent 'pure' characters, of course.  But I've learned that's not really feasible in the least.  I had such fun trouble finding the names of the guys in this new book that I can't imagine having to literally (pun noted) create some that didn't previously exist and then still have character approval/confirmation on them!  And besides, utterly invented names do not always sound plausible.

By the way, the 'disclaimer' in Peter Pan's NeverWorld, since it does in fact deal with some real places & events and Michael is partially based on a real person, reads:

References to real locales, people or historical events are used fictitiously. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of imagination and any resemblance to actual locales, events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

And yes, "are products of imagination" refers to/includes Sir J.M. Barrie as well, but of course.

There's an interesting origin story in its own right attached to the famous "purely coincidental" disclaimer, as told by Wikipedia.

Names Beyond the Book

Isn't it wonderful how sometimes a character becomes so ingrained into (pop) culture that its very name becomes a meaning or condition to describe a real life person? For instance: Scrooge. As in “Don’t be a Scrooge!” Other examples are Walter Mitty, Don Juan, Sherlock Holmes, Romeo and Simon Legree. Then there are the occasions where the character’s name is modified a bit to create a new word: Quixotic. Or adding a word in conjunction: A Mickey Mouse Operation.  And, of course, Peter Pan Syndrome.  Which, of course, brought on this post.

What author wouldn’t want their character immortalized beyond the scope of the page?

Then I realized something.

In every instance I can think of the moniker is used pejoratively.

You’re not supposed to like being called Quixotic (impractical, impulsive and rashly unpredictable).  If you’re a Walter Mitty you’re got your head in the clouds. “No sh**, Sherlock!” is said to someone who’s being an idiot at the moment.

Are there any used which do not “bad mouth” someone? Even “Romeo” has come to mean someone who is overly-sappy or lovey to the point of nausea.

It might not be so wonderful, then, for the author. Then again, it’s no less grand that the reach of a character’s popularity moves beyond mere story.

So now I’m torn between wanting it to happen to one of my creations and not.

A Few Things...

So that new The Thing movie?  That's the thing.  It's also (and still) called The Thing.  They're not sure what else to call it.  In that article I quoted in the last post Marc Abraham talks about the difficulty in naming the movie.  Call it The Thing Begins and someone will balk that it began with John Carpenter and how dare they call it as such.  The Thing Prequel?  Nah.  So, right now it's just called The Thing.  Again.  Although keeping that the title is somehow appealing, it smacks too much of a remake.  I have a suggestion.  After jokingly going for the obvious Another Thing, I realized a very viable solution.  Since the movie Carpenter used as a springboard had been The Thing from Another World, why not call this one: From Another World.  Yes, I realize the order isn't right to continue from/as the original title (meaning that the new film is a prequel) but it does work in the sense that the new film will be more so about the thing that came here a la the crashed ship and removing the lifeform inside only to have the same type of chaos ensue which, as we know, will lead directly into the Carpenter film.  So how about it?  From Another World.   Any takers?

Bart, Buttercup (who has not seen it) and I are going to watch it tomorrow night.  She's excited.  I am, too, since it's been a great while for me since I last saw it.

Meanwhile, I'm still tossing around ideas and researching for the new novel.  I now have all the character names.  Okay, okay, that's a lie.  I have all the main character names.  To be honest, I'm not exactly sure the supporting characters are going to have names.  I'll have to see if I can get away with it, but right now I'm thinking it could work even better to just have them observed by the principle players.  It seems as if what those around them are called would be of little interest to them.  So, if the principles don't know their names, why should we?  I'll see how it plays out and works best, of course.

Anyway, with the characters named, their personalities are starting to come through and they've started, just started, to help me understand their story.  I'll keep figuring, listening and poking up some research to find out what their spiritual (ha!) journey turns out to be.  Hmm.  That just gave me an idea.

Page 326

Waiting for something to load, I picked up my 'baby name book' which I have, of course, to consult for character names.  I opened a page at random and landed on the name Lindford, an Old English place name meaning "Linden tree ford" or "flax ford."  Yeah, okay, so what?  Well, I worked my way down the page, stopping to read about the name Linus and glad for the Peanuts mention, nodded at the not-so-suprising notion that Lionel means "young lion"... and then what do I see?  Llewellyn.  As in Llewellyn Davies, the "adopted family" of Sir J.M. Barrie.

I love "coincindences."

By the way, according to my book there's some discrepency over the meaning of Llewellyn.  Apparently it's "resembling a lion" but another school of thought akins it to "leader."  In either case, the name is of Welsh origin.

It's Gold, man!

I have to hand it to William Goldman. As I said in the last post, he has a brilliant book and screenplay, The Princess Bride. Many aspects of it impress me, but I’m going to focus on two of them.

First, the names. They’re terrible. They’re stupid. They’re simple.
And yet…I love each and every one.
Princess Buttercup. The Dread Pirate Roberts. Prince Humperdinck. Pit of Despair. The names of the towns are European money. But it all works. Beautifully. Maybe it has to do with the absurd child-like charm of it. Maybe it’s because the characters and locations transcend their ridiculous names by being so strong and memorable in a top notch (but simple!) story. It just goes to show that coming up with unique, extraordinary monikers is not always necessary. I find this both a relief and disheartening. Sometimes my character names have hidden meanings, are derived from ancient languages or some such tooled creation process. It’s nice to know that it is possible to “get away with” simplicity. But then it also makes me wonder why I labor. Probably because the techniques each work favorably in different situations.

I should also mention the Star Wars Saga of George Lucas. Ever think about some of the names in there? Death Star. Han Solo (he’s independent, kid!). Skywalker. The Mon Calamari (who are fish and squid-like). Lightsaber. It’s a little silly, no? But again, their strength is their straightforwardness, supported by an amazing tale. And then there is Charles Dickens, who somehow managed to have characters like Mr. McChoakumchild, a strict school master in Hard Times. Not so subtle. Conversely, I often found myself in the thick of Tolkien, trying to recall if some of the names I encountered are a character, town, building, sword or a river. The trick, I suppose, is figuring out when and where to use complexity and simplicity.

The other aspect of The Princess Bride I found masterful is how he interpreted his own story for the film adaptation. For those of you who don’t know, the book is an abridged version of a novel by S. Morgenstern. Morgenstern pontificates and details way too much about the history of the towns and such, satiring the excesses of European royalty. It’s too cumbersome. But the underlying story is fantastic. There’s just one thing. S. Morgenstern doesn’t really exist. Goldman made up the whole ordeal, using a not so uncommon literary device of pretending to have found a work or abridged it. Who cares if it’s been done before? Goldman does it to perfection. In the movie, you might recall, Fred Savage plays a sick child in bed being read to by his Grandfather (Peter Falk). The boy is not so happy with the “kissing parts” so Grandfather kindly skips ahead to adventure for him. This echoes William Goldman claiming that this or that part of S. Morgenstern’s script is too dense and not very interesting at a particular point, so he goes on to the better bits. What a concept! Completely the same and yet altogether different for the new medium of telling the tale. Bravo!

Not bad for asking each daughter what he should write about.
“A princess,” said one. “A bride,” said the other.
And so Goldman wrote: The Princess Bride. The rest is history.

Update: I've now read the book. Post is here.