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

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I agree about those rare "talking to myself" occasions, although I don't have the variable names thing going on. *g* I also think that the discussion isn't just about internal monologues and how anyone thinks of themself, but of the narrative parts that connect internal thoughts, and how close/intimate you want those parts to feel -- or how they feel to you. I'm tend not to use "MacLeod" when I'm writing Duncan's PoV, unless I want that bit of emotional distance to come across, but I will rarely use "Duncan" when I'm in someone else's head. I acknowledge that for some, the assumption would be that he identifies more with MacLeod than Duncan, but since most of his canonically intimate relationships have people using Duncan, primarily, then I tend to think that's indicative of a level of intimacy showing me how he self-identifies.

I guess, for me, it's that these kinds of distinctions give me a greater emotional palette to choose from, allowing me to display varying degrees of intimacy/distance, at the risk of throwing particular readers out of the mix, of course.