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

Re: If I'm OK, the rest of you must be odd

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

And I also think it may be slightly different for guys, who grow up getting called by their last names more than girls do (in my experience) and so may relate more to the last name than girls do.

I think there's also some socialization for girls to think of their last name not as theirs, but as something temporary and belonging to someone else. I still think of my last name as belonging to my father, although in the past few years I've taken a lot of steps to claim it for myself in my own mind. (Part of that was not changing it when I got married - I was trying, partially, to say "No, I'm not changing my father's name for my husband's; I'm keeping something of my *own*.")

Whereas my husband, who hates his father, has never conceptualized his last name as "belonging" to his father in the same way. It was *his*, it was always his; there was never any cultural suggestion otherwise.

If more and more women don't change their names at marriage, I think you'll see more girls identifying with their last names in the next generation or so.