How on earth can an author forget their character's names?

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rei_sawakami
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Re: How on earth can an author forget their character's name

Post by rei_sawakami »

It's something I do all the time (not that I'm proud of it.)

But I usually develop my characters starting with their personality and so the name comes last. Needless to say, I need to check back to earlier chapters to see what than darn name was...
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Rodel Barnachea
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Post by Rodel Barnachea »

That is so funny, haha. I think it is only inexcusable if the book has been formally published and that you spent your money to read it.
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Post by Rodel Barnachea »

rei_sawakami wrote: 18 Jan 2014, 17:34 It's something I do all the time (not that I'm proud of it.)

But I usually develop my characters starting with their personality and so the name comes last. Needless to say, I need to check back to earlier chapters to see what than darn name was...
I think this is why editing and proofreading is very important.
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Post by Rodel Barnachea »

TrishaAnn92 wrote: 04 Dec 2013, 10:16 It definitely drives me nuts especially when I am getting into a book and then it's a name change and I'm like huh? and then I have to go back and reread what I just read to make sense of it with the characters name used throughout the rest of the book for it to make sense. It's a real turnoff for me when reading a good book.
Woah, I actually haven't experienced this. Maybe I need to read more books? Anyway, I agree that it could be a huge turn-off.
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Post by Bigwig1973 »

I've run into this issue a couple times but I figured it was just me. Maybe it's an inside writers joke or something I can't comprehend. In reality, War and Peace was a terrible read for me because I am not familiar with the Russian use of names and there were over 500 characters in the novel. (Or something ridiculous like that (I've actually a Trivial Pursuit question) A friend tried to explain the Russian thing to me - something like all females have the same middle name or something, so do all males and apparently this seems to function like a "nickname" or perhaps cues the reader in to the relationship the two characters have. Like "Newhart" "My name is Larry. This is my brother Daryl, and this is my other brother Daryl." In the real world, this is not so difficult because we have solid visual cues to help us differentiate between people with the same name and it's common sense, "Mom" is the same person as "Mrs. Johnson" who is the same person as "My dear" who is the same person as "Betty" who is the same person as "Bea" but in writing it comes across as hard to read. Funny, actually. But I have probably only run into an actual name issue once or twice and I don't recall where it was.
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Post by emidio125 »

It's almost unbelievable that an author may forget his characters name. It is very shameful.
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Post by Lhammamy »

WOW!! I've never encountered this before, but It seems miserably hilarious!! I can't imagine such a thing!! Both the writer and the editor are here to be blamed. Maybe the writer really decided to change his character's name later on, but forgot he should remove the old one.
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Post by hmayotte »

I haven't seen anything like this before either. It would probably be very confusing to encounter. I agree that both the writer and editor should be blamed.
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Post by Sarah Langley »

I have to admit that I totally forget some of my characters names in my book because there are so many that come in and out of the story. And some are dead when the book begins and are only mentioned by name in remembrance like 4 times in the whole book. But I also memorize where I first mentioned them and scroll back while writing to find what it was so I don’t goof up.
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Post by Black Jewel »

Sometimes, it can happen when multiple stories are being written/planned out at once. Or if the author has so many characters in their head that they slip up, get them mixed up... etc. I have to keep a list of my characters when I'm writing just so I don't do something like that and accidentally goof up. lol.
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Post by Sohana Hasan »

booklvr62 wrote: 11 May 2013, 12:34 Ok, this is a pet peeve of mine,on top of getting history wrong in an historical,but this just happened to me again the other day while reading.Suddenly a character's name was changed from Fletcher to Witcher,and I thought "Whaaaaat,who the heck is Witcher"! I find this especially inexcusable when it happens in a trilogy or series!

BTW,the books that I recall this happening in, have not yet occured in self-published books,so no editor is not the problem.

Does this drive other readers BONKERS like it does me,LOL?
WOW! An author of an edited book accidentally changed a character's name halfway through a book? And neither the author nor the editor noticed? I'm equally fascinated and horrified by the complete disregard for--you know--this thing called proofreading.
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Post by Mason Garrod »

Probably the same way we can be hearing and thinking of something different and end up writing it by mistake. It's not that they don't know their characters, just that they got their wires crossed and it wasn't fixed in editing
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Post by Brittany Tatman »

Very easily, actually.

But that's what editing's for. If a published book has an error like that, it's not a memory problem. The book had to go through several pairs of eyes, if it went through the proper channels for being published, which means multiple people missed that one error. If you have a big cast of characters, somewhere along the way, yeah, you're going to forget that John had the long black hair and Michael had the curly red hair, unless you do a Pinterest board or something. Words on a page are hard to keep track of sometimes. But that's no excuse for a supposedly polished work to show an error like that, though.
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