I had coffee with a friend of mine last week. She’s also a big reader—now almost exclusively on the Kindle.
She’s currently reading a novel for our book club. “Let me tell you,” she said with a frown, “I’m having a real problem with this book.”
I perked up. This is a friend that doesn’t even have a problem with obscure Russian literature…so if commercial fiction was stumping her, I was all ears.
“This writer has 7 or 8 different names that start with the letter m. And there are absolutely no textual reminders of the characters’ identities. I can’t tell who the heck they are or how they relate to each other. And some of the characters have real names and nicknames.”
She was pretty agitated about it by now and was waving her arms around and sloshing her coffee.
“And on top of it all, I can’t just flip back and figure out who these people are! With a paperback, I’d spend half a minute just flipping back until I got a clue who the character is. With a Kindle, it’s just not that easy. I’m getting ready to give up on this book.”
What the author was doing wasn’t good for any book, of course. Having characters with names that start with the same letter can get confusing…especially that many names. And this was an author published with a major house.
The trouble was compounded by the fact that the writer hadn’t put in any of those little tagging reminders of who the character is (especially when they’ve been offstage for a while.) It’s helpful to have a ‘Jenny hopped in the car, still wearing her scrubs from work.’ Really, you don’t even have to be that vague with the reminders: sometimes a ‘Jenny, Cameron’s sister, got in the car’ is fine to slip in.
To make matters worse, there were nicknames for more than one character. And these nicknames weren’t like ‘sweetie.’ No, these were actual names. And the nicknames weren’t just truncated parts of the character name (Mike for Michael.) They were totally different.
My friend mulled aloud a few minutes about whether the book would have been salvageable if the story hadn’t been on the Kindle. She said that she loved her Kindle, but still missed being able to quickly flip through a book instead of using a “go to” function.
I’m sure that future roll-outs of the Kindle will probably fix this issue—maybe they’ll have touch screens or a quick scrolling option.
But in the meantime, it offered another reason to double-check my manuscripts for name problems. Is there anything confusing in there? Would a reader need to flip around in my book to try and figure out who the character is? If so, they’re working too hard. This is supposed to be entertainment…better to just fix it.
Especially since flipping pages isn’t exactly easy with Kindles.
Are there character naming problems that you run into as a reader or writer? If you have a Kindle, do you miss page flipping?
I don’t buy non-fiction on my kindle for that reason–the difficulty of page flipping. As for fiction, if I come across that problem I won’t page flip anyway. I’ll either plough ahead and hope the mystery clears up, or I move on to a different book.
One thing I’ve noticed with reading on the Kindle is that every little issue just seems to pop out magnified. Things that i would read write over in a print book jump out at me. Writers should upload their manuscripts and review them on a Kindle, it’s a real eye opener. I personally can’t read for enjoyment this way, it feels too much like editing someone’s work.
I use the Kindle app on my iPod so I don’t know if it’s different for the actual Kindle but it provides a list and description of the characters. In fact, it’s one of the things I love most about it. I might actually finish Anna Karenina now! I had the same problem as your friend with the characters. They each have three names and they get interchanged from page to page. Now I can go to the list to remind myself who is who.
I also love the dictionary function that lets me highlight a word and it gives me the definition without even having to leave the page. I always thought I wouldn’t like reading on an ereader but I actually really love it. I could imagine switching over for fiction reading. Although, I do love being able to flip back and look at things so for non-fiction books, I’ll still always buy in paper.
Elizabeth – Thanks for this insight! E-Readers really are changing the way people read and think about what they are reading. This is a good discussion of one of the ways writers have to adjust to that. Of course, as you say, it’s always good to keep characters’ names and identities distinct, anyway. Hmmm… better check through my WIP for that pitfall!
So you can’t do search and find with Kindle? Hmm, Amazon needs to improve the functionality then. But in the meantime, authors need to be careful with naming their characters.
Bargain with the Devil
I don’t find it a problem at all. If the book is that confusing, even flipping back pages would make me totally crazy.
With the Kindle, the benefit is that instead of having to find that one page it was on, I can do a quick search on the name and go to the first instance of it.
Jen
I have already thought of that with ebooks and it is because I listen to audio books that it came to me. I love mysteries but can’t listen to any but the most basic ones on audio for the same reason. If I get confused (and let’s face it, I’m old, I get confused) I can’t find a reference easily with an audio text. I also remember things visually which means I remember roughly where in the book it is and which side of the spine. Can’t do that with kindle or audio. We’ll figure it out though…and we won’t believe we had those problems. Our minds will adapt somehow.
As a reader, I love a paperback book. It goes anywhere; even the tub and the beach.
As a writer, you give very good advice about nameing characters. Wouldn’t you love to ask the author why he/she gave all the characters names beginning with the same letter? Sounds kind of crazy. Surely there’s a reason.
Lucy
I have a NOOKcolor, and you can easily do a search for a word. Also, the NOOK has page numbers, which helps you find your place (and bookmark capability).
As for the names – I’m getting ready to put up some back list titles, and I’ve been changing names. Can’t believe how I fixate on a specific letter–I’ve since learned to keep a spreadsheet, but I wonder about the editor of these early books. One had THREE characters (minor, to be sure) named Hank. Sheesh!
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
I try to be careful with names, but sometimes I don’t catch something wonky until I read aloud. Then I end up having to change a name I love. I’ve heard about the flipping back issue from quite a few Kindle users.
Didn’t realize that was a problem with the Kindle. I had a book with three M characters, but I hope I made them distinct enough to avoid confusion.
I miss flipping pages so much that I only buy for Kindle when it’s way cheaper. If i know I’m going to love a book then I order the hard copy.
I hate it when I can’t keep characters straight. And I didn’t know this about Kindles. I still don’t have an ereader – hmmm
Karen
This totally reminded me of reading War and Peace where there are a ton of characters, and while they names weren’t necessarily similar every character had a NAME, a TITLE, a French name and a term of endearment, so MC Natalia is Natasha, Princess Iforget, Natalia and Nataly. I was CONSTANTLY looking at the key for who was who. I am also a map-looker–I love books with maps and I flip to them all the time. I suppose either of these is easier than the random flipping, as they are at the beginning, but at the very least, my Kindle for the PC isn’t very easy to get to a specific page–you have to go page by page.
Sometimes character names become a problem when I’m reading. But it doesn’t bother me as long as the story and characters are good. I’m still an ink & paper reader, so I can easily flip back!
I’m reading Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series. The names are celtic from the old days, and so it was really confusing at first. But there’s a pronunciation guide in the back of each book. Once I knew how to pronounce each name correctly, it was no longer an issue.
Was it The Brothers Karamozov? Yes, flipping pages is HUGE for me. I love savoring books that way, and am having a lot of difficulty enjoying electronic reading for that reason. Maybe they’ll fix it with a ‘highlight/reference’ ability?
Btw, Elizabeth, you’ve received a blog award over at Critique Sisters. Love mystery, and love reading your blog.
Glad the iPad has the page-flipping feature!
A good reminder for writers. Right now I am editing & translating a Danish manuscript, and I have made a note to myself that I´ll have to change several family names before I send it off to any beta-reader. At that time (1960s), most Danes would go by sen-names (Nielsen, Jensen, Hansen, Andersen), but I think I will have to be a bit more imaginative to make it easier to keep them apart.
I remember reading a few Agatha Christie novels where she’d put a cast of characters at the front of the book. Until now I hadn’t thought about how often I reference things like that. Interesting!
Lynda–Good point about non-fiction and the Kindle…I hadn’t thought about that. I think the e-reader will definitely improve in these areas, though, for sure–it’s still early days. And I do love it! But…there are a couple of things I love less.
Karen–Well put! Yes, issues are definitely magnified there.
Mallory–No, I haven’t seen that feature on the regular Kindle…and I would LOVE that feature. One of the things I adored about Agatha Christie books was the cast of characters at the beginning of each mystery.
I do love my Kindle–and I was one who thought I’d never be able to handle anything but print books. The dictionary function is great, and I do like the highlighting and bookmarking functions.
Enid–You can search, but it’s tedious. For me, anyway! I’m sure Kindle will fix it. :)
Jan–YES! Oh, I’m so glad you said that. Yes, I can remember in a book where the info was–what side of the page, where on the page, whether it was on the right or left. Oh good–I thought I was the only one. And I’m 40 (fast on my way to getting old!) and having this problem, too, so I think it’s something that can trip all of us up.
Margot–Exactly what I did, too!
Diane–It wasn’t you, so don’t worry! :) It was no one that I’ve seen interacting online.
Laura–Kindle is usually a lot cheaper, though–at least for most books. I’ve definitely been buying more and more on there. I got a new release for half the price of the hardback the other day…hard to turn that down!
Jen–You know, I’ve brought up this issue with some other readers that I know and they didn’t have a problem in the world with it. For me, it just takes me out of the story a little to go to menu/go to/and then type on that tiny keyboard. But then, I think there are others who don’t have that problem at all. At any rate, I’m sure Kindle will be changing that feature for future roll-outs of the device. I’m just a fuddy-duddy!
Hart–I didn’t get very far with “War and Peace” for that very reason. :) But, yeah, I kind of expect that sort of thing with classical lit. But *modern* writers…gosh, they should know the kind of attention spans they’re dealing with! Life is so much faster-paced these days.
Laura–Sounds like the pronounciation guide was really helpful! That would be a great feature–especially with some of the fantasy series out there.
Lucy–I asked my friend if the writer seemed to be making a point of some kind. She couldn’t see it. Just nutty! And the strangest thing to me is that the *editors* didn’t make her change at least a couple of them. Usually you’d have 2-3 editors looking over a manuscript…hard to believe they didn’t think that would be a problem.
Linda–We can highlight–and you’re right: that would actually be the very best way to handle it, as a reader, until the newer generations of Kindles are released. So, as we’re reading, we could highlight each time a character is introduced. Then, if we forget them later on, we could go back to the highlighted bit. Good idea!
Thanks so much for the award! I do appreciate it. :)
Terry–Kindle has page numbers, bookmarking, and search–but it’s still typing. It’s just not as easy as touching something and manually, quickly, scrolling. And I do love my e-reader…it’s just that one sticking point, I think.
Oh, but Hank is such a great name. :)
Carol–The funny thing is how *attached* we can get to a character name. I’ve had to change a few in the past and half the time I kept thinking of the character with the original name!
Alex–I was thinking about the iPad as I wrote this post! I do really like that page flipping feature.
Karen–And I have a stinky memory. It definitely doesn’t help when the characters get confusing!
Hi I’m a student of criminal psycology. As an assignment we were given some information on bizarre cases. My assignment was to gather information on the pantyhose murders.
I understand that this occured in the early 1970’s. The victims were all university girls wearing short mini-skirts and pantyhose.
The killer would hide inside their apartment. As soon as the girl would step inside the door, he would grab them and place them on the bed. He would put a pillow over their face and began suffocating them. He would revive them and smother them three or four times over.
After smothering the life out of his victims he would remove their pantyhose and keep them for a sick trophy. The girls were not raped. They were found fully clothed with the exception of their missing pantyhose. The pantyhose were never removed until after he killed his victim.
I was wondering if anyone knows more information on this weird case?
Just wanted to drop you a line. I’ve written an article concerning the best book/writing blogs on the web, from my own writer’s opinion. I added yours to my article today.
http://norabpeevy.blogspot.com/2011/04/2-bs-blogs-about-books-and-being-writer.html
-Nora
oldfashionedlady–No, I sure don’t–although, it does sound a little like an old Hitchcock movie called “Frenzy” that came out in the 70s…and you’d have to substitute ties for hose. My true crime knowledge is a little sketchy, though, especially from those years. Others might remember, though.
Dorte–I’m guessing that Danes might be more used to it, though! Maybe Americans just have such a wide variety of different cultures living here that we get thrown if we see the same type of name too many times in a book.
Jemi–I loved those casts of characters!
Nora–Thanks so much for the mention! That’s wonderful. :)
I have a NOOK (Barnes & Nobles e-reader) and the problem is the same. I read a lost of fantasy & Sci-Fi. Books with glossaries, appendixes, and explanations that help introduce a reader to completely different worlds. I really have to decide if I want to use the “go to” feature to find something because it is a lot of work.
oldfashionedlady,
I’ve heard of the pantyhose murders. They were not strangled, they were suffocated with pillows or plastic bags. I believe it occured in Germany between 1968 till 1972. Your correct that their pantyhose were removed after death, not before
I’m not sure, but you may try looking under the mini skirt murders. I’m not sure if they have made a film about this or not.
Does anyone remember a film about this? It is based on true crime.