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

[zoerayne]

I think it's very much the same thing that flambeau was talking about. The name used in a 3rd-person-limited POV story should be the one that the character would use for themselves. Whether that's a first name, last name, or nickname would depend on the character, but anything else feels wrong to me. I think that's because it creates an artificial "distance" between the reader and the POV character.

As hesychasm pointed out, Mulder's written as a last-name kind of guy, and I think that works because of his own hang-ups. Canon supports it.

On the other hand, Fraser I'm ambivalent about. Based on what we've seen with his pre-Chicago friends, I'm probably most comfortable with seeing "Ben" in a tight 3rd-person story, though "Fraser" doesn't *usually* throw me out of the story. (Having RayV address him as "Ben" or "Benton," though.... That bothers me.)

On the third hand [g], it does bother me when, in an HP story, the POV character is called by their last name. If it's Dumbledore's story, he's Albus. The same for any of the characters, despite the fact that we're used to seeing them referred to by their surnames in canon. How odd would it be to see Harry referred to as "Potter" in one of Rowling's books? It's the same thing, IMO.

Obviously, all of the above examples don't count usage by other characters in dialogue. And that reminds me of a rant by...someone (and I just went through 600 recent friends entries unsuccessfully looking for it) about the use of bizarre and non-canonical nicknames in dialogue in HP stories.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

God, now I'm going to be trying to remember where I saw that rant all evening. I read it just two days ago, too; might've gotten to it from wereadshite, somehow.

[zoerayne]

Glad I could make someone else bang their head in frustration over that one. [g] Share the pain, that's my philosophy.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Today on "digging through browser history":

http://isis.arithmancy.net/names.htm