Naming fictional characters

The main character in Good Fridays is named Emily and she was born on Good Friday in 1923. Emily is one of those old-fashioned, feminine names that's been enjoying a new popularity in recent years. Emily's last name is Carmichael, the name of a road near a place where I used to work. I liked that the names Emily and Carmichael each had three syllables. It made the character sound strong, serious and complex. Emily's sweet and lovely cousin was her best friend and so her name was Rosemary. The first school I went to (as did Emily) was St. Mary's. There was a Sister Ursula and a Father McDonald in my life and in Emily's, too. To get ideas about names for the characters of the mother and daughter in Good Fridays, I determined how old they were going to be in the story and searched online for lists of the most popular baby girl names in the years they were born. I came up with several names that seem suitable and let them play around in my head until a name for each one surfaced. I knew Vicki's name should end with an "I" because of her self-centered and narcissistic nature. The name Sara was simple and straight-forward, just like the thirty-year old woman whose name it became in the book. Emily's first husband was named Oliver Wells and there's a good reason for his first name being what it is, but the explanation will give away too much of the story. Husband #2 was named Jack Curtis, a clean, fast name suitable for a star New York Yankees pitcher. Some of the last names I used in Good Fridays are from my own family. My grandfathers' first names were Stephen and Edward. Stephenson became Vicki's maiden name. Her married name is Edwards, as is Sara's. The Baltimore department store where Emily worked for so many years is actually a name from my mother's side of the family. So, choosing named for characters in a novel is extremely personal for me. Obituaries and church bulletins are also good sources for names. Sometimes it's better to use what's real than to make it up. For a writer, the world is full of ideas just there for the taking. I like to do some research on names for inspiration to find the perfect name to fit the character, and also have a little fun along the way. It all comes down to creativity, which is what writing fiction is all about -- just pulling things out of thin air for readers to enjoy. I want to thank my friend, Deb, for saying how much she liked the name Emily Carmichael, because that's what gave me the idea to share this part of the writing process with you in this post. More later...

Identifying with the characters

Good Fridays spans the life of Emily Carmichael Wells Curtis, who lived until 2009, when she was eighty-six years old. The character of Vicki Stephenson Edwards is sixty-four during the 2009 life-changing road trip she takes with her daughter, Sara Edwards, who is thirty. Three generations. Three different woman. Three unique personalities. Which woman do readers identify with? That depends on various factors. The comments I'm hearing from readers about the characters in Good Fridays are varied, as are the readers themselves. Age seems to have something to do with how a reader responds to a particular character's behavior. The issue of whether or not the reader is a mother seems to have an impact on how she feels about each of the three main characters in Good Fridays, as well as the type of relationship that reader has with the women in her immediate family. Some readers tell  me they can relate to the adversity each of these characters has gone through, and most certainly Emily, Vicki and Sara have each been victimized in very different ways. A book reviewer brought up the point that maybe in the story of Good Fridays, there is no villain, and that's an interesting observation. Sometimes the protagonist in a story is not a specific character, but maybe a circumstance. More next time...

Of course it had to be in Baltimore

Emily Carmichael lived in Baltimore and I spent the first forty years of my life living in Baltimore's suburbs, so she and I easily agreed on the location of my fifth (and her first) novel, Good Fridays. The city of Baltimore is as much a character as any person in this book. I wanted the reader to experience this unique place that is home to the Baltimore Orioles, serious rivals of the New York Yankees, for whom Emily's second husband was a star pitcher in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early part of the twentieth century, Baltimore's downtown shopping district along Howard Street boasted several major department stores that remained popular and profitable for decades, eventually opening chains of stores in suburban shopping centers and malls. Baltimore's thriving retail market, which would introduce Emily to the only career she had, offered a rare opportunity for a young woman without a college education to work her way up to management status. Yes, Emily's story had to be in Baltimore.

The conception of this novel

Good Fridays began with its title. It was March 30, 2002. I know this because whenever I begin a serious project (a book, a garden, a house) I select a spiral notebook, and I'd written the date and the title on the cornflower blue cover. Now I needed a story to go with the title. No one ever says Good Fridays, plural. What would that even mean? What could a bunch of Good Fridays have in common except that they're always two days before Easter and a day of Christian mourning? How could these days be the same yet different? Hmm...WHAT IF (and that's how most stories are born) different things happened on the Good Fridays in someone's life and those events added up to a significant story? The story should be told by an elderly person looking back over her life. I let these ideas "compost" in my brain for a few days and "Emily Carmichael" was born. She had a story she wanted me to tell. To be continued...

My latest novel, Good Fridays

I've created this blog to share the news that my fifth novel, Good Fridays, was recently published. It's available in print and ebook formats in bookstores and on the Internet. If you are a reader or a writer, I know you'll enjoy reading this blog because I'm going to share with you what goes into writing a book. I'm not an authority on reading or writing, but I am an expert on my own experience. I'll share with you where ideas come from, how they get put into words, how sentences, paragraphs and chapters become books, and how books get into the hands of readers to enjoy. Until my next post (and I promise it will be very soon), please visit my website www.dianemarquette.com for lots more information about the creative process of writing.