Here of late, I've been dabbling in the field of memory research in preparation for a new project I'm exploring. While doing so, I've been curious about the role memory plays in fiction writing—notably my own. In the past, I've been frustrated by my struggles to remember the names of real individuals not long after meeting them. But now I've lowered my expectations since it's apparently much more common than many others let on. If the professor of psychology & neuroscience & author of Why We Remember, Charan Ranganath, admits to frequently doing so himself, I figure I have nothing to worry about. Of course, like he says, he has the advantage of being able to lean into the absent-minded professor trope.

But I wonder how many writers experience the same thing when it comes to characters they've "created" or at least named. Think about those stories you wrote in your late teens either on paper or in your head. Do you honestly remember the names of all the main characters? If so, I'm playing in the minors while you're rocking the big memory league.

Awhile back, I made a spreadsheet to track my characters' names since I began to suspect I was inadvertently creating namesakes from one story to the next. Which means I'm constantly on the hunt for unique add-ons. About the only laugh I got from the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas (other than the ludicrous title) was Dickens's penchant for stopping to write down unusual names of real people in a daybook to incorporate into future stories.

But what prompted me to write this post was Ranganath's discussion in his book & during an interview about how easy it is to have a "tip of the tongue" moment. For example, if I were on the spot in a social situation to remember whether his first name is Charan or Chandresh, the neurons for those two possibilities would jostle for dominance and make it hard for me to remember the right one. That's why the correct name frequently comes to mind later when revisiting the event since the interference tends to diminish in the absence of stress.

After reading & hearing his particular take on the process, I suddenly realized two prominent characters in my upcoming serialized novel had names starting with the same letter. My original thought was the characters themselves were different enough that it shouldn't cause a problem, but now I realize I was creating a potential interference for readers. After I made the change, I also remembered Dreyer's admonition to avoid creating that kind of interference—from an editor's point of view, of course.

The last thing I want is a reader experiencing any neuron interference & hesitating even one millisecond to settle on the right character.

After all, every little bit helps.

Till next time.

Drew
Drew Faraday
Pearl Fields and the Oregon Meltdown