What if Romeo had been called Baxter?

"Oh, Baxter." "Oh, Amelia Bedelia"

Despite Romeo’s claims to the contrary—all that business about roses—names are important. Juliette would have loved him the same, but for readers and viewers, “Baxter, oh, Baxter, where art thou, Baxter?” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

    

As a child, the Good Girls in my head had names like Aurora and Raina and Annie while the boys were Alistair and Alexander and John. Names I thought had integrity and strength. Bad Boys were Butch, Bill or Joe. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Others would have considered these fine, upstanding names. Whatever your personal preferences, names definitely leave a perception. When you name a character for strength, what names do you choose? Is it the same method for naming the evil or insincere personalities who populate your manuscripts?

Recently it was suggested that the names of two of my protagonists were outdated and readers might relate better if they underwent a name change. Hmm. I wonder. Is why I had trouble connecting with them myself? I usually choose names with care, but these two were such minor characters in the long ago, original version that I hadn’t bothered. I named her after someone I knew whose eyes I’d given her. I didn’t know she was a diva who would claw her way to center stage.

When choosing a name here are some points to ponder:

• Names can reflect nationality and culture. Would you have a Hindi character named Rajesh MacGyver? Possibly, but it better not be by accident. 
•  A strong name for readers from a different culture may not work for readers in mainstream USA.  I have known American men named Evelyn, Kaye, and Gayle. Uncommon in the US, but respectable British male names. Is your character carrying on the family name? Has a boy been named for Evelyn Waugh, his mother’s favorite British author? How will that affect him? 
• If a famous or infamous person shares that name, how will readers respond? What’s the first thing that comes to your mind at the name Lex Luther? Martin Luther? Luther Vandross? 
• When was the name popular? There are many sites to help you with this or you can check www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames  for popular names in the birth year of your character. I was always comfortable with my name even though there were three girls named Mary in my parochial school class. Today, Shanika, Mackenzie, or Flaherty are common. If you’re writing a book about a contemporary character should she be a Mary or a Flaherty? Popularity and age aren't the only considerations. 
• Be aware of nuances of meaning. Does your character personify his name? Does he grow into it as the story progresses? Is the name at complete odds with his actions? Does he like his name? 
• How does the name sound aloud? Is it rhythmical? Is it too similar to another character’s name? A reader may have difficulty differentiating between a Jack and a Jock in the same story, unless you plan for it. What kind of emotion does the name elicit? Think Amelia Bedelia.
• Watch for how the initials or nicknames would look. Did you ever consider the potential travel problems for Karen Kay Kline and her boyfriend Albert Qaeda?  

A well chosen name can help a reader connect to a character.  The character’s personality, strengths, flaws, even her relationship with her family should influence the decision. If the name doesn’t seem to fit or doesn’t resonate with beta readers, choose another. Now, back to 100,000 Baby Names by Bruce Lansky.

Mary Allen is taking a break from renaming full grown characters to celebrate July 4th by attending the big parade with her family and by reading her poetry at the Arts in the Park concert. Have a safe celebration, especially those in drought stricken and fire damaged areas. Remember, in Christ we are truly free.

Three Tips for Researching Your Novel

Last spring when my writing bud Nicole O’Dell asked me if I wanted to be part of a novella collection with her, my initial reaction was “of course!” Nicole is so prolific and accomplished I couldn’t imagine not writing with her. And if it also meant I could help a Valerie Comer, a debut author, get her first contract, then my enthusiasm for the project only went up.

Then they told me the topic for Rainbow's End.

Geo-caching? It sounds fun, but I’ve never tried it. Never been to the Ozarks either.

Still, I wanted to be part, so I put on my research hat. Here are some tips to help you when you find yourself in a similar position.

Soapy Writing

Wikimedia Commons

The same tricks that hook a soap opera audience are the same ones that can keep your reader turning the pages. What follows are some of the ways writers of soap operas get their audiences tuning in day after day.

• Secrets. Untold ones. Soap operas overflow with secrets. People find them out and tell them to others and the secret gets twisted and people who aren’t supposed to know them find out and then stuff happens. But there are also secrets that the audience doesn’t know yet and they tune in faithfully so they can find it out. Readers love secrets. 

• Open-ended possibilities. A character dies, but soap opera viewers know they could somehow rise again. Maybe it was a twin and not really the character themselves in the coffin. Or someone who had plastic surgery. Or a robot. Or…That type of wondering, leaving the viewer with the “I just gotta know if that guy really died” feeling, works for your novels, too. Create several scenarios for the outcome and leave the reader turning the pages wondering what might happen next. 

• Relationships with the characters. Because the audience loves the character or hates them, they develop an emotional attachment to them and want to know how they are doing, what’s happening to them each day, and whether or not their goals will be fulfilled. They cheer or boo for them and it’s a very real relationship. Forget to record a soap opera addict’s episodes and see what happens.   

• Curiosity. Humans are inquisitive, curious creatures. We want to find things out. The only way to learn what happens next is to watch. Create events in your stories to entice curiosity. Will he or won’t he? Is that rumor really true? What’s on the other side of the door? On the next page?

• Drama. We say we don’t like it but the fact is, we do. Our culture bears this out. We may not like it in our own life, but human nature does enjoy watching it outside our family circle. Our logical side likes think about what we’d do in that situation. Or judge the character for the choices they make. Give the reader an emotional ride with drama.

• Cliffhangers. Who shot JR? (Hey, Dallas is back!)

• Escape. Riches, jewels, designer clothes, mansions, fancy cars, exotic locations—we wonder what it’d be like to have them. Readers open books to escape. Give it to them. Soap Operas are a great escape for people because they last longer, and the viewer can escape every single day from their dull routine and fall into the fictional world of glamorous people. Are your stories providing a great escape?

• Reality. Even though readers want an escape, it has to be realistic. That’s where relate-able characters come in. If characters feel reachable, then viewers will become attached. Create characters readers can relate to as easily as they do their friends and neighbors. Make them touchable, relevant and accessible in their experiences of people they know. Create people they can identify with.

• Cure for loneliness. Some people watch soap operas because they perceive the characters as people they invite into their home each day. Are your protagonists and their friends the sort of people readers would enjoy inviting over for coffee or tea? On the other hand, are they people they'd like to fantasize about meeting? Will they want to open the book when they’ve been away to visit with them again and again?

• Feelings. Soap Operas create dramatic feelings as people grow to love the characters, develop relationships with them, and begin to have visceral reactions to the things they go through. Are you writing in such a way that the reader feels what the characters feel? Does your book leave readers feeling good? Wanting more? Wishing the story wasn’t over?

What are some books that have kept you turning the pages? I’d like to know so I can read them, too!

 Karla Akins is a pastor's wife, mother of five, grandma to five beautiful little girls and author of O Canada! Her Story and represented by Hartline Literary Agency. She lives in North Manchester with her husband, twin teenage boys with autism, and three rambunctious dogs. Her favorite color is purple, favorite hobby is book-hoarding, and favorite food group is cupcakes.

There is Nothing New Under the Sun

The wind was picking up. Watching the approaching gale from her seat in the cockpit, Anne was grateful that Carousel had reached shelter before the storm hit. But as the sailboat's bare mast bobbed and weaved with the others in the harbor, Anne prayed for the sailors who were still out on Lake Michigan.

Notice the opening sentence, which I borrowed from Chi Libris. Chi Libris is a group of well-known Christian novelists that include Angela Hunt and James Scott Bell. The group decided to publish a book of short stories with five shared elements: the same opening sentence, mistaken identity, pursuit at a noted landmark, an unusual form of transportation, and the same last line ("So that's exactly what she did.") The plots vary widely, however. In fact, the point of their collection, What the Wind Picked Up, is to show that the same basic idea can generate many diverse stories.

That's one reason you can't copyright ideas. The idea itself doesn't make the story. It's what you do with the idea that counts.

But there's an even more important reason why you can't copyright ideas. The founding fathers included copyright provisions in the Constitution to encourage creative works, not to inhibit them. As Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "there is nothing new under the sun." If ideas could be copyrighted, there would be nothing left to write about.

Here's one idea that is frequently found in literature. Two young people fall in love but are kept apart by their feuding families, and the consequences are tragic.

You could call Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet a case of mistaken identity in 16th Century Verona, Italy. The two protagonists fell in love before discovering who they had fallen in love with.

Move the setting to New York City in the 1950s, and you have West Side Story.

Then there is the apparently true story of the Hatfields and the McCoys in the Appalachian Mountains during the late 1800s. Their feud escalated after Johnse Hatfield began courting Roseanne McCoy, and Johnse's family had to rescue him from the angry McCoy men. Did Johnse escape on a horse or use some other form of transportation that we would consider unusual today?

Or travel back to even earlier times. Legend tells of two Native American lovers from rival tribes. When their chiefs forbade their marriage, the lovers swore that if they couldn't live together they would die together. Fleeing from their families, they embraced each other and jumped off the landmark now known as Lover's Leap in Illinois' Starved Rock State Park.

All of these stories use the same basic plot idea, and one (West Side Story) is still under copyright.

Now think of all the contemporary authors who have used that same plot idea. If you could copyright an idea, those stories wouldn't exist.

Let's look at another example.

Miss Read (pen name for Dora Saint) has written multiple books about everyday village life in England. While these books tend to have a main character, they center around an ensemble cast of ordinary, and mostly likeable, village residents.

Does that remind you of a series by a popular American authoress?

When I read Jan Karon's first Mitford book, I immediately thought of Miss Read and her Fairacre/Thrush Green books. It isn't that the writing style is similar--it isn't--or that the authors tell the same stories--they don't. But their books have a common theme.

I don't know if Jan Karon read Miss Read's books before writing her own. For the sake of my point, however, let's assume she did. And let's also assume Jan Karon knew she could use the same idea without violating copyright law.

So that's exactly what she did.

Kathryn Page Camp

The (True!) Joys of Having ADD with Member Blogger Dawn Crandall

Most people aren't very surprised when they find out I have ADD. 

It probably (and hopefully) answers most of their questions as to why I am the way I am. I'm a tad out-going, think differently than almost everyone else I know, I'm a little unfiltered, and a bit talkative.

And do you know what? I thank God everyday that He made me this way. Because of my having ADD, I get to do what I like to do more than anything else in the world. 

WRITE.

I started taking the medication for ADD when I was seventeen years old and a junior in high school. It's true, I needed it pretty badly. I would never would have made it into college, let alone graduate from college, without it. It's rather unfortunate that I didn't learn much in school (like grammar and punctuation--I apologize now for any mistakes you might find in my comma placements!), as I was just scraping by before my junior year, getting my only good grades in the classes or subjects that had anything to do with Art or Creative Writing. But I suppose God had a specific reason for that too. I was also seventeen when I became a Christian, which was the true reason I ended up going to college and majoring in Christian Education.

I stopped taking the medication about thirteen years later. You'd think the medication prescribed to help me pay attention would help me focus on writing a book, right? But alas, no. It did the very opposite. I hadn't thought much about writing at all during those years because I was so entirely focused on everything else. When I did finally stop taking the medication, I realized that it was what had been blocking so much of what any writer needs most! My ability to think outside of what was going on in front of me was literally shut off for all those years. All along, I'd remembered how I had once LOVED writing from as far back as I could remember. It was after reading books like Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier as a teenager I knew I wanted to create a book someday. 

For the last five and a half years I've been off the medication and spending my time developing my voice and my brand of writing. After figuring out how to hone my "day-dreaming" into actual stories that I wanted to write, it didn't take me very long to figure out that this was what I was made for. I wrote my book and got two agent offers within a week of sending my proposals. I've completed another now, and I am on my third. It's a long waiting game to find out what's going to eventually happen with these books, but I'm happy because I'm writing. And truthfully, I really have never been good at anything else... because drawing doesn't count.  

It's true, I'm a bit scatter-brained. In everyday life, I pretty much need to be told what to do and where to be. But I sure can focus on what interests me... and that is brain-storming plots and writing ultra-complex, involved love stories that teach a multitude of spiritual life-lessons, not only to my main character (which I write in first person point of view), but also the reader.

I'm very much like the kitten (and yes, I love kittens and jump at the chance to use them whenever possible) in this picture, who's, in essence saying, "Who cares what everyone else is looking at or paying attention to? I've already found what I love most... and it's this amazing, green jingle ball!"  

Writing books is my amazing, green jingle ball. There's nothing in the world I would rather be doing than paying attention to the plot of my current Work In Progress.  

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{About Dawn Crandall}

(Updated since 2012) Dawn Crandall is the author of The Hesitant Heiress (August 2014), The Bound Heart (November 2014) and The Captive Imposter (February 2015), all part of The Everstone Chronicles series from Whitaker House. A graduate of Taylor University with a degree in Christian Education, and a former bookseller at Barnes & Noble, Dawn didn’t begin writing until 2010 when her husband found out about her long-buried dream of writing a book. Without a doubt about someday becoming traditionally published, he encouraged her to quit working in order to focus on writing. It didn’t take her long to realize that writing books was what she was made to do. Dawn is represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary.

Apart from writing books, Dawn is also a first-time mom to a precious little boy (born March 2014) and also serves with her husband in a pre-marriage mentor program at their local church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Dawn is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, secretary for the Indiana ACFW Chapter (Hoosier Ink), and associate member of the Great Lakes ACFW Chapter.

The Everstone Chronicles is Dawn’s first series with Whitaker House. All three books composing the series were semifinalists in ACFW’s prestigious Genesis Writing Contest, the third book going on to become a finalist in 2013.