Summer Loving

by Marla Zarrow from the June 12, 2023 issue

Tagline: Ellen knows never to get involved with the summer folks who come to stay in her town...until Timothy comes along.

Observations: I made an assumption reading this story that turned out to be wrong, but it provided a Teaching Moment about names for the blog, so I'll take it! 

Since Ellen had tears in her eyes when she gazed at "Jake Ellery's seaside cabin" at the beginning of the story, I thought Jake Ellery was an ex for whom she still had feelings. 

When you give a character (Jake Ellery) a first and last name, you mark them as a person of importance in the story.

For instance...

The waitress took their order.

The reader will not think this waitress is important. They are the story equivalent of a movie extra--you know, like in the credits when someone is billed as Girl with Dog.

Now, I'm going to give the waitress a full name.

The waitress, Theresa Rodgers, took their order.

The reader will naturally expect this person to have a greater role in the story because the writer gave her a full name. 

You can give a character just a first name and not be assigning too much importance to him/her, if only because it can get awkward to keep using the phrase "the waitress" over and over. But give a character a full name and that character will be expected to have a greater role than movie extra.

This also applies to the amount of physical description you give to a character. The more description there is, the more important the person.

Photo by Ruth Hartnup via the Flickr Creative Commons License