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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42808
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42808
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm a discovery writer, I don't name every character, or even every character with lines. Here's a waitress (I just made up) with two lines:

> The waitress approached, a smiling young girl that had been flirting with the young man eating at the counter. "Ma'am! What can I get you?"
> 
> Bethany put down the menu. "This, um, number three, and an iced tea."
> 
> "Right up!" the girl said, and spun to leave, but instead of walking back around the counter she took the long way around toward the register, passing behind the young man at the counter, and giving him a gentle punch in the right shoulder as she passed. He laughed, and turned to watch her walking.
> 
> Bethany smiled, but then turned back to her phone and the long list of attorney profiles she was browsing. About halfway through and still not a single candidate.

I think it interrupts the flow to stop and note the waitress's name (maybe on her name tag), and the young man's name (more difficult), it really isn't important to the story. She is real enough, the central character in this mini-scene, a young girl flirting with a young man she obviously knows and having fun at work in the diner.

Personally I don't give characters names unless it would be unrealistically awkward for them to not have one. IRL, most people _don't_ remember their waitress's name, they use "Miss" (or for a male, often "Waiter" or sometimes "Sir"). That is not unrealistically awkward. And we need never refer to the young man again, so zero awkwardness.

I agree a nobleman or boss, IRL, is likely to know the names of his employees he interacts with often. But not necessarily all of them.

> "Briggs, good to see you. I see your boy there, what's his name again?"
> 
> "Bilson, sir."
> 
> "Yes, Bilson. I see him heaping up the scoop for the oats there. A kindness, he thinks. Not enough to colic, but we want the pigs and chickens fat, not the horses."
> 
> "Sorry sir, I had not noticed. I will take care of it, sir."
> 
> "No need to be harsh. Brush and saddle up the white stallion, and bring him to the front. I'll be riding to Duckworth's this afternoon. Want to show some station, yes?"
> 
> "Yes sir. He'll be ready, sir."

I also give "walk-on" characters names if it would make sense that their own friends or customers or whatever would use their names, but I don't go out of my way to make that happen.

I guess that is the rule I follow, if the speech feels awkward _without_ a name, I add a name, but I don't go out of my way or write extra to force that necessity.

Original score: 13