Hmm.

[katallison]

OK, I'm still trying to write a Vividcon con report, with marked lack of success, but in the meantime -- I'm very curious about something I've come across a couple of times lately in LJ comments, and that is the issue of the name you use to refer to a character when you're writing a close-3rd-person-POV story about that character.

Ahem. Let me see if I can be clearer. Say I'm writing a story in 3rd person about Fraser, where he's the POV character. I always refer to him as "Fraser" because that's, y'know, what I call the guy. But I've seen a couple of people lately saying that in such situations the name used should be the one that the character himself uses when he thinks about himself, so the question is does he think of himself as Fraser, or Ben, or Benton, or whatever?

See, in my head this is kind of, sort of, related to the issue flambeau was talking about a while ago (here, to be specific), where you can't sneak in descriptive stuff by having the POV character musing about his own tautly muscled abs or emerald eyes or whatever, or on the other hand providing detailed descriptions of scenes he regularly moves through and is familiar with to the point of obliviousness. You have to maintain the authenticity/integrity of the character's own awareness. And one could argue, I guess, that using the name the character would use about himself inwardly is part of that authenticity-maintenance, except -- I dunno, I just have never thought of it that way. It feels strange to me, and I'd love to hear others' views.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a fascinating question. I've never written a character in the third person who wasn't normally referred to by his given name, so it's not one that's come up for me, but I'm inclined to agree that it should be the character's own name for himself.

Let me try to recast this in a context I'm more familiar with than "Due South." On the West Wing, President Josiah Bartlet (whom I've never written as a POV character) is usually referred to on the show either as "Mr. President," or "Bartlet." If I were to write something from his POV, though, I think I'd use the name that we've seen his wife call him, i.e., Jed. It might feel a little strange because we rarely see him being called that, but it would feel equally strange for him to be thinking of himself as 'Bartlet' or (ugh) 'the President'.

It's not a question with an easy answer, though, I think. And interestingly, this is one thing that writers of original fiction don't have to grapple with, for obvious reasons. It's fanfiction-specific.

-J