What's in a Name?

I know I've mentioned it before, but I proofread for a friend of mine who is a court reporter. I'm in California, she's in Wyoming, but we send transcripts back and forth via email. The hearings are usually boring (though I have read the transcripts for a murder trial or two, and those were not boring). I read a transcript the other day, and when I came across the name of one of the witnesses, I had to stop and laugh. Then I had to mentally flog his parents because, wow, it wasn't nice what name they saddled him with. He's a deputy sheriff and his name is ... I swear I'm not making this up ... Boot Hill.

For those youngsters among us who have no idea who or what a Boot Hill is (this only occurs to because, I'm amazed to say, my own two adult daughters didn't know), Boot Hill was the name of the graveyard in every old western ever made. Wikipedia says: "Boot Hill is the name for any number of cemeteries, chiefly in the American West. During the 19th century it was a common name for the burial grounds of gunfighters, or those who "died with their boots on" (i.e., violently).

I'll just pause here and blow the smoke away from the barrel of my six-shooter.

I can't believe this poor guy, a deputy sheriff at that, goes through life with the name of Boot Hill. Where on earth was his mother when the birth certificate was filled out?! Think of the jokes he gets with every introduction. Nor could I believe that, as he was sworn in, there wasn't a single snicker in the courtroom -- at least none that my friend recorded. Only in Wyoming. And only in real life. Because, as an author, if I wrote westerns, and if I named a character Boot Hill in one of my books, my editor would make me change it. If I had an editor. "Contrived," she would scold, "contrived, contrived."

As I sit at my desk writing my latest novel I have a collage of my main characters before me. When I create characters for a new book, their names have to be just right. I experiment with different names, as if they were a taste to be explored, until I hit on exactly the right one. I always know when I have it wrong, and I always know when I get it right. I love the name of one of the main characters in the latest book I'm working on. I can say that because, honestly, I didn't give her the name. She gave it to me when she introduced herself. That's really how it happened.

I was in a writers' critique group a few years ago with a lovely young woman who was working on an edgy paranormal thriller. Her main character was -- much like the author -- a sharp, attractive young woman named . . . Mabel.

Clunk.

With as much finesse as I could manage, I did my best to get her to rename her character. (Forgive me if your name is Mabel; it's not that I don't like your name, it's that I didn't like your name for that character).I told her Mabel did NOT fit the character. That it conjured up a whole different persona than the one she was striving for. No matter how hard I tried I could not convince her.

So names really make a difference to me. But not until three books ago, when I wrote Lying on Sunday, did I spend much time searching for the right faces to go with the names. Now as I develop my character profiles I spend a day or two navigating through "headshot" sites until I find the perfect image that correlates to the one in my mind for each of my main characters. The benefits are that I feel I know them better than ever before, and it's easier to keep track of their physical attributes, so I don't give someone green eyes in Chapter 1 and brown eyes in Chapter 12. For me it's added another dimension to the discovery process. And after all, that's what a novel is all about -- for the reader and the writer: becoming acquainted with new people and learning as much of their stories as they're willing to share.

But that doesn't mean I have to paint a portrait for the reader. In fact, the more I write, the less inclined I am to give details about physical appearance that aren't necessary to the story. It may be far more important to know that my protagonist has a scar on her ring finger than that she has blond hair or dimples. Here's a perfect example of germane description from one of my very favorite books, Joy Jordan Lake's Blue Hole Back Home:

"I watched the new girl swing her leg out from under her red skirt -- a brown leg, darker at the knee than the thigh, and darker still more at the calf. And I watched the boys watching the brown, or maybe the shape -- I wouldn't know what boys see when they watch -- of first one leg then the other, and not a one of them . . . able to talk. Me, I had a spasm of wanting to stay put myself, of fear that tripped up my feet and made me wish desperately I could miss this one trip to the Blue Hole with our mangy pack and the new girl. Because I was beginning to think what a bad, what a truly remarkably bad idea this whole thing might be."

Trust me, it only gets better from there. If you haven't read, I highly recommend it.

As a writer, how much time do you spend naming your characters? Like me, do you ever feel you haven't quite got it right? What's your favorite example of the perfectly right name for a character in a novel you've read. Or a perfectly wrong name? I'll start. For a perfectly right name, it doesn't get any better than Uriah Heep in David Copperfield. For a perfectly wrong name, I'll stick with Boot Hill.

Change of Fortune

I was surprised to read the first few words of the opening sentence of Debbie's post on Wednesday: "I learned a new word ..." because that's exactly how I planned to begin this post. I learned a new word ... Great minds? Absolutely. I love Debbie's new word, prevenient, love its implications, especially as it pertains to grace. When I think of God's prevenient grace in my life, think of all the things he kept me from and kept me through, I'm overwhelmed. I mean that in the truest sense of the word. David asks in Psalm 8:4: "What is man that you are mindful of him?" I echo his question, but I tend to personalize it when I ask: Who am I, Lord,  that you are mindful of me? Casting Crowns answers that question in one of my favorite songs, Who Am I? It never fails to move me to tears.

So prevenient was Debbie's new word. Mine is peripety, defined as: A sudden change of fortune or reversal of circumstances. More to the point, it's the hinge on which the reversal turns. I love that word, love how it rolls off the tongue, like serendipity, which is one of the coolest words in our language. While peripety is new to me, I can imagine our own brilliant Dr. Latayne -- and she is brilliant -- using it in everyday conversation. In fact, she's written an excellent book on faith as the hinge that changes everything in the life of Sarah and Abraham: The Hinge of Your History: The Phases of Faith.

I came to know the word peripety through Beth Moore's Bible study on the biblical book of Esther. My daughter Deanne facilitates a women's Bible study at her church, which recently went through the series. Deanne loaned me the set of DVDs with the admonition, "Watch these." So like the dutiful mother I am, I began to watch them. After one or two sessions, I understood why Deanne felt so impressed to recommend them to me. I'm not sure I've ever gone through a Bible study more pertinent to the circumstances of my life than this series on Esther. Two lessons into it I started over again and told my husband we needed to go through it together. We are, and it's speaking to him as deeply as it's speaking to me.

Session six of the study, which covers Esther 6:6-11, is where peripety came into play. Since this post isn't meant to be a Bible study, I won't go into the details, but I highly recommend the series. Seriously.

Among the many areas where peripety applies to my life, I've thought a lot about how it applies to my writing. I've shared before about the long and difficult journey my path to publication took. Long. And Difficult. Twenty years worth. I stood before a brick wall with no doors or windows, no way over or around, when it came to publication. I know many of you can sympathize. And then one day I received a large postcard in the mail advertising the upcoming writers conference at Mount Hermon. I thought, Wow, I would love to go, but it's not possible. I was scheduled to be in Atlanta with my husband that week, to help with a missions conference he was participating in. Tickets bought and paid for, hotel booked. So maybe another time. That's what I told myself, and yet I couldn't throw the postcard away. I left it on the kitchen island, where it sat for several weeks, where I was drawn to it over and over again.

Then one evening Rick picked up the postcard, which I hadn't even mentioned to him, and said, "I think you should go to this." I said, "I'd love to, but it's the week we're to be in Atlanta." Without hesitation he said, "No, I think you should go. I'll take Mindy (our other daughter) to Atlanta." And so I went right in and registered. I can't tell you how excited I was, or how nervous. I applied for a spot in the first fiction writers' critique group with Gayle Roper and submitted my chapter to her online. There was room for only 12 writers, and this was less than 3 weeks before the conference. A long shot? Yes indeed. Surely all the spots had been filled. I couldn't believe it when I received an email from Gayle late one night saying I was accepted. Another writer named Kathleen Popa was in the group. Our friendship began even before we met at Mount Hermon as we read each other's chapters in advance of the conference and recognized a kindred spirit in one another.

While I was at the conference I met editors who liked my writing, whose encouragement gave new life to my hopes and dreams. While it was still 2 years before I received a contract, it was the event that caused a reversal in my circumstances, and that postcard was the hinge.

Peripety.

To this day I don't know why I received it, or how in the world I got on their mailing list. I just know the remarkable difference it made in my life. It was the first link in a chain of events through which I've been so blessed. I met an editor who took my book to committee ... who offered a contract ... which helped me sign with an agent ... who had the idea of bringing a group of literary authors together to blog ... which put Bonnie, Debbie, Katy, Latayne, Patti and me together, authors from different states, different countries in fact, most of whom didn't know each other ... out of which Novel Matters was born ... which forged a deep and important friendship between 6 women of like mind ... and brought you into my life.

Peripety,

Not only is it an important element in the lives we live, it's an important device in the fiction we write. And to maximize its impact the pivot point of the peripety should be a seemingly insignificant event, rather than a point of highest dramatic tension. Like me receiving that postcard. Which changed everything. As it says in the Esther study guide, "A peripeteia swiftly turns a routine sequence of events into a story worth telling" (attributed to Boyd A. Luter and Barry C. Davis, Focus on the Bible). And isn't that the goal of every novelist, to write a story worth telling?

The term peripety is generally linked to dramatic literature, such as works by Shakespeare, but by definition every good novel should have a "sudden change of fortune or reversal of circumstances," whether negative or positive. How might peripety be applied to: David Copperfield, The Great Gatsby, or Lord of the Rings? Where does the sudden change or reversal of circumstances occur, and what is the hinge that precipitates it? What are your ideas?