Characters referred to differently in changing POVs

[HareBrain]

I wonder what people think about the issue where a character is known to multiple POV characters, but by different names or titles? How should their narratives refer to him?

As an example, say there are three POV characters in a story set a few decades ago: Arthur Brown's daughter, his employee, and his friend. I would normally refer to him as "her father" or "her dad" in his daughter's POV, "Brown" or "Mr Brown" in his employee's and "Arthur" in his friend's. (Assuming I'm going for a tight, close-in third-person viewpoint.) This would seem to be to be most natural, but would the inconsistency be annoying?

A second example, and relevant to my WIP: two POV characters are introduced to another character by his surname, and on a formal basis, but one later becomes friends with him. It would feel more natural to me to have her sections refer to him by his first name after this point -- especially since this is the name she uses when speaking about him in dialogue -- but should consistency matter more than realism?

 

[Susan Boulton]

but should consistency matter more than realism?

Try and be as consistent as possible. Least I would, others might disagree. If you introduce a character as John Bloggs, then when using his POV you call him John, stick to calling him John when writing his dialogue and actions when using another POV. Though in speech if a new character calls him Mr Bloggs, Milord Bloggs, Wizard Bloggs etc, then that is ok, you have established John is Bloggs at an earlier point.

Sometimes you need to keep it clear for the reader.

 

[The Judge]

I'd agree with Sue, that you should aim for consistency, though checking back in my own WIPs I see I do vary things when going into very close POV, so that it's only a pronoun away from first person, as it were -- ie the writing effectively becomes inner monologue and therefore subject to the usual rules of dialogue. Anything less than that, ie more conventional third person, and I'd use the name used elsewhere.

As with most things, though, if the writing is good enough, the reader will gloss over things like this and accept it. Only if for some reason they are stalled or confused will the change be questioned.

 

[Malloriel]

Personally, if I know that a character of noble birth is named Percival Bottomtooth, that he is a high ranking wizard for the king, and a backgammon champion, then I'll probably be able to keep up when he's called Percival by friends, Lord Bottomtooth by peers, High Wizard Bottomtooth by the court, and Backgammon Percy by the underground gambling community.

I think that in a third person narrative, descriptions and the things you feed your readers should be consistent with the POV of the focus character. This, for me, holds true to things like what they call other characters. Take our Wizard Percy for example. If his wife is the focus character, I expect she'd think of him as Percy, whether in direct dialogue, or in noticing that Percy left his socks drying over the embers in the hearth. Skip to chapter seven where the POV character is the king, and I would anticipate seeing The High Wizard was late. House Bottomtooth was infamous for producing members with no sense of urgency, and the young Lord Percival was no exception. How he managed to surpass all in his class to become High Wizard was beyond the king's ability to fathom. I think it would jar me to be given a POV where some arbitrary rule existing beyond the character supersedes their own perspective, such as "the character of 'Percy' will always be referenced outside of dialogue as 'High Wizard, Lord Percival Bottomtooth, of Mercia'." OBVIOUSLY an outrageous title like that would be unlikely for you, but it's no less strange to me if the name is John Adams and friends who call him "Johnny" in dialogue seem to think of him as "Adams" in description.

The standards I usually see are "when the POV character is familiar with the Subject, the Subject is referred to by the first name, or a nick-name established somewhat early on in the reader's exposure to the concept of the Subject. If the Subject is unfamiliar, new to the POV character, or ancillary, the POV character will think of them by their last name, or title as applicable, which may be expressed in non-dialogue portions of the story."

My two cents, at least.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I agree, Mal. I like to give my readers some credit. The way the narrative refers to someone reflects the way the pov character thinks of them. I find the reader gets more out of the fact that character A always thinks of B by his or her surname, while C thinks of B by his or her first name. I think it's an effective, somewhat subtle way of guiding the reader into (and reminding the reader of) a character's opinion without slapping them across the face with it. It is also effective if you want to show a change of circumstance.

For example, in my WIP I have a ship called the Nightingale, but the crew call her the Gale. One of the main characters becomes a passenger near the start, and over the course of the book her pov chapters always refer to the Nightingale in the narrative. Then, as she slowly becomes accepted and starts to think of the ship as home I bring in the Gale in her internal thoughts. As time passes it becomes the Gale in the narrative, and then finally the Gale in every aspect of her pov, including speech.

I like the idea of doing stuff like like that rather than just have have the narrative say it baldly.

 

[Ursa major]

I have a character who is referred to by his nickname in his own POV and that of his ex-partner, but by his surname (with or without his rank) by others. However, as his nickname happens to be the first syllable of his surname, and early on, someone uses his surname when obviously talking to his ex-partner about him, I'm hoping this isn't going to be a problem for the reader.


(Then again, no-one has published the book, so it may be a problem for the gatekeepers in the industry.)

 

[STING]

I have a character who is referred to by his nickname in his own POV and that of his ex-partner, but by his surname (with or without his rank) by others.

Sorry I have a problem understanding this. If the character is referred to by his nickname or some other title in his own close-POV, doesn't it make it third person omniscience?

 

[HareBrain]

Good replies, all. My own instinct is to vary the name according to the nature of the POV, and I think Mal and Dubrech gave good reasons for doing so. But I can see the risk of confusion where this is done with many different characters.

Sorry I have a problem understanding this. If the character is referred to by his nickname or some other title in his own close-POV, doesn't it make it third person omniscience?

I'd say it's certainly unusual for a character to be referred to by nickname in his own close-third POV, as it implies he self-identifies with that nickname over his own given name. (I did actually once know someone who claimed to do that, and he was bonkers.)

But Ursa might be using a "medium-focus" POV, like Donaldson does with Thomas Covenant, who is always called Covenant in his own POV. Or his character might be loopy. Perhaps he'll explain.

 

[Ursa major]

I think we have to separate the real world from fiction. I doubt many people think of themselves in other than the first person singular, i.e. I remember that and I'm going to do that, and that's only when they're consciously adding a narrative to some part of their life, which I don't do very often, and I doubt many of you do either.

When someone types here, say:

* Ursa wonders whether ... whatever... *

this is done purely for effect and does not represent any (or more than a few people's) thought processes.

So when we're using any form of third person narrative, it doesn't represent reality. All those books with very close person POVs, where we're in the characters' heads, are using non-existent additions to the natural stream of thought. So would, for example, Arya, from A Game of Thrones, really think:

Arya glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have read her thoughts, but the septa was paying her no attention today.

I doubt it. It's a convention, one that lets the reader know who's thinking and observing the scene. In dialogue with many people speaking, we don't add ", Jon said and ", Margaret whispered to the speech in real life. We either know who's speaking or we don't, and we consider it in parallel to interpreting the words being spoken (including judging the import of the words based on who is saying them).

Given that all this speech and thought attribution in fiction is, well, fiction, we can't really say that someone can't think of themselves being referred to one way and the other (other than to say none of it really applies). What we can do is give an impression of how the POV characters might see themselves and others.

By the way, in the case of the character in my WiPs who uses his own nickname, this is how his friends*** refer to him all the time. (In fact, he's adopted this "nickname" to avoid the use of his full name, which has connotations he'd rather no-one held in mind when listening to what he's saying.)



** - Even the Royals .

*** - These are mostly absent from the book and, other than his ex, are not POV characters.

 

[STING]

Thanks, Ursa.

I think we have to separate the real world from fiction.

I thought fiction should read more true than real life and be made believable. (Am I quotiing you out of context?)

So when we're using any form of third person narrative, it doesn't represent reality. All those books with very close person POVs, where we're in the characters' heads, are using non-existent additions to the natural stream of thought.

Am at a loss to understand this.

Given that all this speech and thought attribution in fiction is, well, fiction, we can't really say that someone can't think of themselves being referred to one way and the other (other than to say none of it really applies).

If a character thinks of himself being referred to one way or the other....
it seems fine. It's different from referring to himself with a nickname.

(Am not an expert in POV...far from it...and please do point out if my interpretation of what you said is not right.)

 

[HareBrain]

Ursa, I agree that almost no one narrates their own life in third-person, and that we're therefore dealing with literary conventions. As a reader, I assume (I think) that how a character is called in his own close POV reflects how he identifies himself, and that this probably ought to be the name by which he would introduce himself to a complete stranger he had no interest in impressing, manipulating, concealing from, etc. If this were a nickname, in a close-third POV, I wouldn't think it wrong, but I might question why he isn't calling himself by his given first name. (On the other hand, I might not.)

 

[Ursa major]

I thought fiction should read more true than real life and be made believable.

So the saying goes. It's usually deployed when trying to convince aspiring writers not to confuse real events and real dialogue with anything a reader might be interested in reading.

Am at a loss to understand this.

In your earlier post, you seemed to be suggesting that where a POV character uses their own nickname in their narration, it somehow makes (or ought to make) the narration third person omniscient. (I can only assume that you did this because you couldn't envisage a character thinking of themselves using their nickname.) That isn't correct. "Omniscient" refers to a narrator outside of the narration who sees, hears and knows things the characters don't or can't. With close 3rd person (and 1st person) narrative, the text can only** bear witness to what the POV character thinks, senses and already knows.

What I was pointing out in the previous post was that real people don't tend to use the literary conventions of speech and action attribution in their heads. They don't use any variant of their own name, e.g. surname, given name, nickname, professional title, etc. These are only used to when we write, in order to let the reader understand that we've written.

So, my thinking went, if the attributions are not in any way realistic, why limit them? Why not allow a character to use whatever name for themselves they want? It is, in a sense, their choice***. The only responsibility we, as writers, have is to make sure the reader knows who the POVs are referring to.


By the way.... In the case of my character's nickname, not only is this a short form of his (non-English) surname, but it is, as it happens, identical in every way to a relatively common English surname. Until the readers see his full name spelt out, they don't know he (and his ex-partner) have been using his nickname.

If a character thinks of himself being referred to one way or the other....
it seems fine. It's different from referring to himself with a nickname.

But remember: any name a character uses for themselves in their own narration is almost certainly artificially added. To use the GRRM example, but putting myself in the scene:

Ursa glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have read his thoughts, but the septa was paying him no attention today.

If I was there, that is not how I'd be thinking of what was going on. The word, Ursa****, would not appear at all in my thoughts. But just as we change real dialogue to something readable, we do the same to our character's narratives, editing them to make them understandable for the reader's benefit.


** - Actually, the writer is "allowed" to start a scene with an omniscient viewpoint before moving close to the POV character's thoughts and viewpont. (Sometimes the end of a scene may also be from an omniscient point of view.) I try to avoid both, but that's my choice.

*** - And I think I explained why my character used his nickname rather than one of his formal identifiers (surname, given name, rank, etc.).

**** - You'll have to pretend Ursa is my real name.

 

[STING]

I see your point fully now.

By the way.... In the case of my character's nickname, not only is this a short form of his (non-English) surname, but it is, as it happens, identical in every way to a relatively common English surname. Until the readers see his full name spelt out, they don't know he (and his ex-partner) have been using his nickname.

This has removed all doubt in my mind about your use of nickname. As I see it, it shouldn't raise the hackles of the 'industry's gatekeepers.'

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.
--Paul Tillich
​

 

[chrispenycate]

I'd say it's certainly unusual for a character to be referred to by nickname in his own close-third POV, as it implies he self-identifies with that nickname over his own given name. (I did actually once know someone who claimed to do that, and he was bonkers.)

For a goodly hunk of my life (about twenty five years of it) practically everyone I knew called me "Snoopy". Most of my acquaintances didn't even know the name written in my passport, and it would take me a moment to recognise it, and respond. Is it considered bonkers when, when introduced to someone, you stick out your hand and say "Snoopy"?

In telephone conversations I still give people the option, and frequently meet old friends who have never known me as anything else.

So, after a fashion, I thought of myself as my nickname, unless around bank managers, policemen or customs officials; and I doubt whether I'm unique (in this, at least).

 

[Malloriel]

I don't see anything wrong with using a nick name in a character's personal view. I mean, if a character went around "thinking" of himself as Spike, and everyone called him Spike, but his name was really Chadwick Converse*, it's doubtful he'd think of himself as Chad every time we wanted to use his name to keep the narrative clean and understandable.


*I plan on using that name eventually. I politely request all admirers of its allure restrain themselves from the understandably irresistible urge to use it first.

 

[Ursa major]

You're only chance to claim that name, I suggest, is to write an entry in this month's seventy-five-word-challenge with Chadwick Converse as either the protagonist or the antagonist.

 

[Malloriel]

Why is that the only way to claim the name? I've bandied it about for nine or ten years now, making it my intellectual property if nothing else.

 

[Ursa major]

Sorry, Malloriel. I forgot to add the smilies.

Here they are: .

 

[Malloriel]

It's amazing what a wink and a smile can do to a statement.