Naming Those Characters – Think of Your Readers

Character names can be a challenge. I’ve been out of town visiting my mother in conjunction with the LA Times Festival of Books and we were talking about books, both reading (her) and writing (me).

One of the comments she made was about character names, saying she didn’t like it when authors used the same initial letters for several characters because she gets confused. I agreed and showed her my spreadsheet which helps me make sure I don’t get into a common fixation with a few letters of the...