My current writing project, The Case of Schadel H. Kueper, has three female protagonists. I don't want my future readers to become confused when they read it, but I also don't want to use the names of my main characters too many times. Is there anyway I can prevent that from happening? Any advice is greatly appreciated! ^_^
I usually tend to set up context clues when the characters are a lot of the same gender, like them doing something that fits their personality like one of your characters twirling their hair or something. You can do a lot of changing in-between the names and the pronouns as well if that helps. And if you really wanted to you could have a nickname perhaps or one of them is also called by their surname but that might get a little messy. The best you can do is just try to get around it and make it the least confusing for your readers, and if it is, just try to do the best that you can with it.
Pronouns! This is actually quite a fun one to get around since it means thinking creatively and staying focused on one character at a time, which can be hard when you have several characters who are constantly interacting with each other.
Names are important. Monosyllabic names are great because they blend into the text easier, so you can use them more liberally. Little Women by Louisa Alcott is a great example of this. Her main characters are four sisters who routinely interact with each other, so I'd recommend browsing a few chapters to see how she manages it.
Another thing is that names tend to fade into the background once they become familiar. The exception to this is when you place the name at the beginning of a sentence or a clause where it gains a bit of extra emphasis just from being first in line, so to use this to your advantage try using a lot of different sentence structures and bury the names in the text.
You probably already know this one but I'll mention it anyway. It might be tempting to start referring to the characters by descriptive nouns rather than their names, e.g. referring to a character as 'the thief,' 'the sneaking rascal,' 'the short girl,' e.c.t all in one scene. This usually makes it harder to relate to the character. These can however be used if you want to make a point of their nature, like 'the oldest of the girls knew it was a stupid idea, but the younger ones were too excited to listen.'
Lastly, remember that pronouns are only a small aspect of your text. Although a critical eye will pick out the abundance of namedrops, a natural reader can glance over them much easier. The Maze Runner by Jamie Dashner is one example of this. He starts with an all male cast and doesn't shy away from overusing the names, but the premise and mystery of the first few chapters is enough to keep the readers attention until they acclimatise to the stylistic quirks.
Thanks for the advice, @Kaos and @Tenyo! ^_^ I'll put it to good use while writing my book (and it's definitely a great excuse to read Little Women again)!
Oh, pronouns! I feel you. Nothing like writing a same-sex couple to make you hate pronouns. One of my best writing buddies has a novel that's military sci-fi, and she has a similar issue because the majority of the characters are male, particularly the two protagonists.
One thing I noticed recently, when I was reading a book by Brandon Sanderson, is he actually gets around this by using names a lot. A lot more than I realized, especially in action scenes. I never noticed, because they slip right in, and it always keeps things clear so you're breezing right through the scenes. Over-use of names is dangerous territory, so I think a good rule of thumb is to use them when two characters are doing lots of things in a short space (eg fight scene), and avoid them when one character is doing a lot of introspection or activity by themselves.
Something I've picked up from mentioned military sci-fi friend is occasionally referring to the other character as, well, the other. "The other man" comes up a lot. Sometimes you can use a descriptor, like I've occasionally had my character affectionately think of the other as "his secretary." If they don't know each other well, you can use descriptors, eg "the Frenchman," "the janitor," "the blonde." If they DO know each other well, those terms have to feel natural and friendly, or else you're adding narrative distance.
My vote is that you can safely use names more than you realize. Definitely read how other authors have gotten around the issue and you can absorb their tricks!
There's also dialogue. If your characters are strong enough, you won't need tags to indicate that X character is talking because your readers will have picked up on the character's unique syntax. Dialogue also typically alternates between characters, so you can save the tags (and name/pronoun usage) for cases where there's a change in pattern of the conversation (i.e. one character interrupts another).
Characters may also refer to each other explicitly in their own dialogue, especially if there's a group and a response is desired from a specific. Just think about how you talk in a group versus one-on-one and incorporate those differences into the dialogue.
To give an example of what I mean, see if you can figure out how many characters are talking in this:
Spoiler! :
“I remember my sister saying something about being exposed to whatever it is you’re scared of being the best way to get less scared of it.”
“Yeah… I don’t think that will work with the Captain. I mean, he’s been exposed to women his entire life, and he’s still terrified of us.”
“Yeah. That’s a good point.”
“Maybe we can show him we’re not threatening from a distance?”
“Like, how?”
“Oooh! We can give him gifts!”
“I dunno. That sounds kinda weird to me. Like, who randomly gives gifts to people?”
“I used to give gifts to my teachers all the time.”
“But he isn’t our teacher.”
“Isn’t he kinda? I mean, he is teaching us how to fight better.”
“I guess...”
“I dunno. I don’t want to come across as creepy.”
“I know! We can leave notes with the gifts explaining how happy we are that he’s teaching us how to be better soldiers!”
“That might work.”
“But what sort of gifts do we give him? I haven’t seen an apple in years, and that’s what you’re supposed to give teachers, right?”
“We could bake him a cake?”
“Oooh! And we can write our message with the icing! I like this plan!”
“But how are we going to bake a cake?”
“Well, first we’d need to get the ingredients…”
“I still have the flour I stole from the guys last prank war.”
“I know where some eggs and sugar are. We’ll need to borrow a jeep though.”
“Why do we need a jeep?”
“Well, my sister hid some sugar in one of the old bases, before we had to abandon it.”
“That sounds kinda dangerous…”
“Where else are we going to get sugar, though?”
“Yeah… I guess you have a point.”
“So who’s going on the sugar run? Jensen of course since she knows where it is, but someone’s got to drive the jeep.”
“I can drive!”
“Really?”
“Since when?”
“Andersmith’s been teaching me.”
“Really?”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Is he teaching anyone else?”
“Just Palomo, I think. And it’ll really speed things up if while I’m getting the sugar, someone else gets the eggs and readies the kitchen!”
“That might be tricky. You know how Cookie gets about unauthorized personnel in her kitchen.”
“So we’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t find out.”
“It’ll be just like planning an actual operation!”
Spoiler! :
If you figured four, you're right!
If you figured a different number, let me know because my ego spans multiverses and is overdue for a deflation.
Thanks for the advice, @Megrim and @Kyllorac! ^_^ It seems like using names more often is a safer bet than I thought it would be; I'll also make sure to use some descriptors and make each of them unique - which shouldn't be too hard. They've already started to show their individual traits when I'm writing them (which I'm very relieved about). I didn't figure out there was four people, but that's just because I don't know their characters well enough. If I did, I bet I would have been able to! ^_^
When having something similar like gender, it's best to focus on what makes them different. Gender is just one thing and the situation with genders can be solved by using names fairly well. Here are some things that you can do to combat this.
-Set up your characters before having them meet. In my experience when dealing with a lot of the same genders in a short time, I try to have at least one major scene with each one separately before I have them interact. This sets the beginning of characters and different personalities.
-Speech differences Dialogue is one of the best ways to convey different personalities very quickly. Each of your characters will have those different personalities, so the dialogue should represent those. Some might have formal, drawn-out dialogue, while others might not want to speak as much. Also, things like "uh", "like", "oh", and even "also" are habitual words that many people add to the beginning of their sentences. For me personally, I typically say "yeah" or "oh yeah" when I start conversations XD
-Mannerisms What you have accompanying dialogue is also just as important here to separate characters. Things like teeth gritting, smiles, shrugs, crossing arms, pacing. Habits and body language helps a TON.
-Clothing/appearances This one is situational and isn't as strong as the ones above in my opinion, but having your characters have different appearances and clothing helps. Also, things like magic capabilities (if that's available) or professions (like cooking or smithing) can also help separate them.
Basically, just focus on what makes them different when you have something that's similar like gender
(Also, as a note that I didn't include up there were different perspectives. Writing a scene in multiple character's perspectives is a difficult thing to pull off, but done well you can effectively show each character's thoughts about the others and what they notice about the other characters.)
Gender:
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