In this month’s “Ask the Coach” article, I’m responding to a writer about character naming, who says:
“If I have many characters of a certain group, Ninjas for example, too many to name individually in the story, though they have some dialogue, what do I call them? I’m using (Ninja) for all of them, even though there are many. Their faces are covered so can’t see each 1 anyway.”
I dug around for some extra links and resources for the article, including some nifty tips about naming characters from other writers, including John August, which should be useful for writers of all sorts, not just screenwriters.
In the main article, my answer included some tips about ways and reasons to differentiate even minor characters to make the script more interesting and clearer for readers and for potential actors.
One other opportunity to keep in mind here is that by naming them creatively, rather than keeping your characters in the background and/or generic, they may begin to differentiate themselves in your writing and storytelling too, stepping forward into the story a little more than they otherwise might.
I’d love to answer them for you in my column.
In the third and final session of my interview series with Enneagram and story development expert Jeff Lyons (recordings no longer available), we talked about “Bridging the Gap from Motivation to Structure With the Enneagram.” Today’s post is a recap of what we discussed.
