Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Characters with no names

I've got a few short stories going, and I've foregone naming any of my characters. It started because I just didn't have any good names in my head and I was going to take care of it later, but now ...

3 answers  ·  posted 12y ago by tylerharms‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction naming
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:37:24Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/6834
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar tylerharms‭ · 2019-12-08T02:37:24Z (almost 5 years ago)
I've got a few short stories going, and I've foregone naming any of my characters. It started because I just didn't have any good names in my head and I was going to take care of it later, but now I'm considering leaving them all nameless. It's worked well for the first four stories, but I have between ten and twelve stories in mind for this collection, and I am wondering if I should just continue without naming anyone. Most of my stories have between two and four characters, and so far I've been able to get away with referring to them by one or two traits. For instance,

> - The man in the pink shirt
> - The woman in the Claims Department
> - The second boyfriend

I realize that these names are kind of generic, but it works. So far.

I would like to know if anyone has any feedback about the relative merits of an entire collection of stories (or at least about 10) without named characters.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2012-12-18T22:11:05Z (almost 12 years ago)
Original score: 16