Character Exercise 1 - What's in a Name?

The names you choose for your characters should suggest certain traits, social and ethnic background, location, even things that have yet to occur in your story. The names you choose have a strong and subtle influence on how your readers will respond to your characters. In each case, you are sending a message to the reader about who the character is, where he or she came from, and where he or she is headed. A name can send a message as powerful as a title.

Step 1:
Name the following characters, keeping in mind that you can plant, within a name, a clue to his or her role in your fiction.

• A petty, white-collar thief who robs his boss over seven years
• An envious, bitter woman who makes her sister miserable by systematically trying to undercut her pleasure and self-confidence
• A sweet young man too shy to speak to an attractive woman he sees every day at work
• The owner of a fast food restaurant who comes on to his young female employees
• A grandmother who just won the lottery

Step 2:
Carefully chosen details can reveal character in fascinating and different ways. Sometimes details tell something about the character described and also something different about the character making the observation. In other cases a character reveals more about himself than he suspects. For example, there is a vivid character in The Great Gatsby called Meyer Wolfsheim who calls Nick Carraway’s attention to his cuff buttons and then boasts, “Finest specimens of human molars.” Clearly, Wolfshein means to impress his listener, but instead of charming Nick (or the reader), this detail has the opposite effect.

Write the name of each of the above characters on a sheet of paper. Underneath, fill in the following sentence at least five times:

(Name) is the kind of person who_______________________________________.

For example: Meyer Wolfsheim is the kind of person who boasts of wearing human molars for cuff links.

When you've written your characters' names and their sentences, post them on your blog. Make sure you label your post, "Character Exercise 1 - What's in a Name?"