Character Confusion

 

My current work in progress has three shipwrecked sailors as secondary characters. They enter the story a little over halfway through and are gone within four chapters.

I researched the types of jobs that sailors do on ocean freighters and decided to make the characters a third mate, an assistant cook, and a deckhand. So far, so good.

Then I had to come up with names. Normally, I go through my name lists (first names popular in that time period and last names gathered from a number of sources) until I come across something that just sounds right. Using that process, I decided on Davis Blakeman for the third mate, Elliot Campbell for the cook, and Pete Quilly for the deckhand.

But when I wrote the chapters, I was getting them confused. And if I’m confused, readers certainly will be. So how do I make each individual sailor stand out from the crowd?

My protagonist may think of them by their roles, so sometimes I refer to them as the third mate, the cook, or the deckhand. But that gets tiring if I do it all the time. And a twelve-year-old living in 1925 would refer to them as Mr. Blakeman, Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Quilly. But keeping those names straight was where the confusion came in.

For a second or two I thought about getting cutesy and calling them Mr. Boss, Mr. Chef, and Mr. Workman, but that was way too corny. So I came up with a more subtle way to remember them and changed two of the names. Elliot Campbell still worked, but the third mate became Matthew Tate and the deckhand became Henry Duke.

Here is how my protagonist remembers them:

Putting her hand in front of her mouth, Jessie stifled a giggle. Did they realize their last names all started with the same letter as their job? Then she grinned. And Tate rhymed with mate. She wouldn’t have any trouble remembering him.

There are other subtleties here, too, which readers might pick up on their own but which don’t hurt anything if they go unnoticed. The cook’s last name is a popular brand of soup, and the deckhand’s first name starts with the same letter as “hand.” But those are just bonuses.

The important thing is that I no longer have to stop and think which sailor I’m talking about when Jessie uses their last names.

And that’s a win for readers, too.