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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23494
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

## Addressing characters in dialogue:

Anything goes. I usually call my mum 'mum', but I might call her 'mother' to be mock-serious.

'Queen of the Muffins'? Sure, if in the middle of some exchange it makes sense for me to call her that, as a joke, as an insult, whatever — you can put it in my dialogue.

## Addressing characters in the narrative:

Orson Scott Card! Politically, you might think he's a lunatic (I do). But he's an extremely well-established writer and is regarded as an excellent teacher. A writer asked him exactly your question, and he answered it [here](http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2004-09-28-1.shtml). He refers to third-person POV, but the advice applies to any perspective where you're inside the character's head:

> The rule for how to refer to a teenage character's parents is really the same as the rule for referring to any character in any fiction where you're using limited third person point of view: You refer to the parents by the names or titles that the point of view character would use.
> 
> Let's say that teenage character Anna calls her parents Mom and Dad. When you're in Anna's point of view, then they are **invariably** called Mom and Dad. If you call them "her mother" or "Mr. Smith," you are violating point of view. Even if Anna, in her dialogue, calls them "Mother" or "Harold," when you refer to them in the narrative you still use Mom and Dad because those are the titles she actually thinks of them with.
> 
> But when you do a chapter from Mom's point of view, she isn't Mom, she's Agnes. And she thinks of her husband, not as Dad or Mr. Smith or Anna's father, or even as Harold, but as Harry. She might CALL him "honey" in their conversation, but in the narrative throughout the section from Mom's (Agnes's) point of view, he is invariably referred to as Harry.
> 
> Now you have the chapter from the point of view of Anna's brother, Jason. He thinks of Anna as Anna, but in his own mind he calls his mother Mother and his father He or Him with a capital letter, the way some people refer to God. It's sarcastic, but he's also sincere - that is, he REALLY thinks of him this way, it isn't just a pose. You continue to use these terms whenever we're in Jason's point of view. Then, when Jason and his father have a rapprochement and Jason comes to understand him, he can come to think of him as Dad and his mother as Mom, at which point you start referring to them by the new appellation that applies inside Jason's head.

## Should you vary your terms for variety's sake?

My advice? Probably not. If your characters aren't dynamic enough to hold the reader's attention, you're not going to fix the problem with a carousel of nicknames. There are much better ways to engage the reader, and you're probably already doing them.

If you're really worried their names are getting repetitive, maybe it's a sign you're overusing them. I do this all the time. My brain seems to think that 'You're an idiot,' is a terrible line, but 'You're an idiot, Jack,' is superlative. When I'm editing, I'm constantly hunting for the parts where my characters overuse each other's names.

Honestly, though, you'd be surprised what you can get away with. Watch _Titanic_ and count how often Jack and Rose say each other's names. It doesn't seem to have hurt the movie much...

Original score: 2