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jackFrom the first post there were four characters, J Clive, Johnson, the professor, and the narrator. In my mind Janice Clive knew about animals, Johnson was an explorer/hunter and good with the rifle, and the narrator possibly military, at any rate the calmest, the strategist if anyone was, and the one best able to break a raptor's neck.
I'm bad enough at thinking of names to start with, so I deliberately didn't name the narrator, which fed into the slightly other-worldly feel. And also gives people less to remember :) However, last week I had extracts from the professor's diary, and today I had to refer to the narrator, which gave me the problem, by what name?
I could make one up, but it might be confusing and I didn't want to. Any anonymous reference would be appropriate, but what? I could stick to generic references "the wrestler", "the fourth", but that wasn't very satisfying. I could hark back to Three Men in a Boat and use "J", which I liked a lot but was impossible as I already had Johnson and J. Clive and another J would be confusing and ridiculous. I could go with "I" but that would be confusing with the pronoun, or "JJ" or another letter, but none sounded right.
Then I realised I had the perfect out, if I could make the reference appear in one of the elisions. Neat, no?
When I was writing this post, I invented the military connection, which sort of fit, she might not have literally been one when she was alive, but if it comes up again, I think "colonel" fits.
I'm bad enough at thinking of names to start with, so I deliberately didn't name the narrator, which fed into the slightly other-worldly feel. And also gives people less to remember :) However, last week I had extracts from the professor's diary, and today I had to refer to the narrator, which gave me the problem, by what name?
I could make one up, but it might be confusing and I didn't want to. Any anonymous reference would be appropriate, but what? I could stick to generic references "the wrestler", "the fourth", but that wasn't very satisfying. I could hark back to Three Men in a Boat and use "J", which I liked a lot but was impossible as I already had Johnson and J. Clive and another J would be confusing and ridiculous. I could go with "I" but that would be confusing with the pronoun, or "JJ" or another letter, but none sounded right.
Then I realised I had the perfect out, if I could make the reference appear in one of the elisions. Neat, no?
When I was writing this post, I invented the military connection, which sort of fit, she might not have literally been one when she was alive, but if it comes up again, I think "colonel" fits.