A black-eyed Susan by any other name

What if Ishmael had said, “Call me Leonard?” 

And what if Ishmael’s Captain hadn’t been named after the evil idol-worshipping ruler in the Book of Kings?

At the least it would have created a lot more work for Mr. Melville.  He’d have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do!

Instead, with his choice of those two powerful, meaning-laden names, he deftly planted the threads of the themes in MobyDick into the minds of his readers.

In Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver includes the history of her lead character Dellarobia’s name: 

Dellarobia was “…the given name her mother first sounded out for [her] birth certificate in a doped anesthetic haze, thinking it came from the Bible.  Later her mother remembered that was wrong; it wasn’t the Bible, she’d heard it at a craft demonstration at the Women’s Club.”

When Dellarobia learns that her name isn’t biblical after all, that she’s been named after a wreath made by gluing pine cones and acorns to a Styrofoam core, it presages for her a lackluster performance in life, her own letdown and her impending fall from grace.

By explanation of her character’s name, Kingsolver gives us an insight into Dellarobia’s roots, her self-perception, her outlook on life, her expectations for and disappointments in herself.

Makes you want to choose your characters’ names with care.  Why would you be casual about something so important?  That book of babies’ names is only a starting point. 

Kingsolver goes a step further:  Dellarobia is married to “Cub,” the son of “Bear.”  And she hasn’t married into a Native American family! 

Those nicknames alone tell a big story about father and son, yes?  With only that much information, their nicknames, we can surmise the father’s stature and disposition, the son’s status and maybe even the role of tradition in that hierarchy.

Imagine if father and son were “John” and “Russell.”  Just feels like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

Wouldn’t you love to ask Cormac McCarthy about the impact of names?  Why do you suppose he didn’t name the man and the boy in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel?  He might argue that names are so important that the wrong ones can be detractors. 

What if he had sent Fred and Fred Jr. onto The Road?  That’s a different story!


How important is your character’s name?  If she’s pivotal to your story, so is her name.  If not, just call her “the woman at the cash register” and everything will work out fine.  

Papa was right

Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Ernest Hemingway, father of Writer’s Melodrama!  He gave us all some anguish to latch onto, right? 

We are bleeding!  We are suffering!  We are writers!  Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen!

Hemingway inspired me when I was in 7^th grade and first read his short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”  That one stuck with me as a prototype for exterior action revealing interior life. 

And his style!  So direct, so clean, so free of the extraneous that I just knew I could do it.  Why, he’s just telling the story, I thought!  How hard can that be?

Good thing I didn’t find out until later how he met his demise…I might have been dissuaded!

As it was, I sat down and wrote.  My stuff at that time was full of teenage angst, but it didn’t have the surplus of adverbs and adjectives that some beginners pepper through their pages.

Papa remains a good model for rookie writers and a good one for apprentice editors as well.  

But maybe you have another favorite in mind.  Jeannette Walls comes to mind as someone who strips away the frills and seizes her readers with unflinching accounts of her wild early life. 

Frank McCourt, same thing.

But here’s the deal ~ you cannot let yourself be distracted by the story!  As writers we have to learn to look at the what and the how of it: 

Ø  What does Walls choose to show and what does she leave out? 

Ø  How is McCourt’s use of language riveting? 

Ø  How does Hemingway reveal his character’s inner life?

Put on your analyst’s cap and give your favorites a second read.  This is one of the best ways to quit bleeding and learn the craft.  


Matter of fact, for all his drama, Hemingway also said, “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write.  Let them think you were born that way.”