What’s in a name?

I used to have the worst time in the world trying to come up with names for my characters. It used to be that I had three or four names I had that I recycled through everything I wrote–short stories, fan fiction, novels, everything. I used the SAME. FOUR. NAMES.

Okay, not the same four names. Just slightly different variations of the same names. At some point, my best friend (let’s just call her E. Lynn) pointed out that not only was I using the same names, but I wasd pretty much recycling the same characters. And she was more or less right.

After all, Blake Foster became Justin Stewart became Jake Oliver, but they all the same guy. Brink became Clu became cutter, but I ripped both those names off from Disney shows and movies. (Bonus points if you can tell me from which ones). I think until recently I had a character named Morgan in every single story I wrote.

Only recently has E. Lynn shaken me out of my “name everyone the same thing” mode, and only recently have my characters finally become their own people, with their own distinctive personalities and quirks. It’s funny, looking back on the older things I’ve written (it’s also painful) and realizing that there’s practically no difference from one character to the next. Name all the characters the same thing kept me safe; I didn’t have to try to hard too write them or give them different speech patterns or things of that nature because I’d been writing them since I was like, eight. And the thing about writing the same characters you’ve been writing since you were eight is that those characters is that the cracks in those characters begin to show themselves pretty well.

Since E. Lynn hammered it into my head that I HAD to name my characters different names (less she stop being my beta reader), I’ve freed myself from the same boring “these three characters go through wacky hijinks over and over again” pattern. The characters only sort of changed, but the stories were always the same, which made for super boring stories.

Now, since around November, I’ve written loads more interesting people and MC’s, and characters I have a way deeper connection with. Fiona Avery Brooks, the girl with the STD, became the first character I actually knew, and could describe in detail without seeming like I was talking out of my ass. Teralynn Myers, the girl who grew in  ultra-Christian household, happened completely by accident–it shocked me how much I ended up liking her after I wrote that first NaNoWriMo story. And now, Broderick Allan Hetfield is the most compelling guy character I’ve ever written.

I know there’s a lot of published authors who say that the names don’t really matter, but if not for being pushed to change the names and actually think about what I was naming my characters and why iI was naming them, I’d still be writing the same old boring stories that never got finished. Those old characters never fit in the mold of a girl dealing with an STD, a girl coming to grips with the pro’s and cons of her faith, or a guy coming to grips with his sexuality.

Nope,  those three characters would just be sitting at a table right now, having a one dimension conversation about one dimensional things and generally being pretty boring.

Is it any wonder I love E. Lynn? (Aside from the staggering beauty and the incessant flirting and general awesomeness…but that’s for another blog).

KC

The Trouble With Twilight 1: Edward Cullen

There have been few books in recent years that have divided book readers quite like the Twilight Saga. It’s truly a case of either you love it or you hate it, and if you love it, you REALLY love it, and if you hate it, you buy used copies specifically to sacrifice to the Dark Lord by roasting it over an open flame.

Before I get into it, let me just say that I think anyone writing YA or hoping to publish young adult fiction owes a HUGE debt to Stephanie Meyer. She’s bought an entirely new generation of readers to the genre, both young and old, and has shed the light on what’s typically considered the “whatever” genre of fiction. Published YA authors always comment on how authors of literature and mainstream fiction ask them when they’re going to write “real” books–in some since YA is still looked at as just for kids, ranking just below sci-fi and just above picture books on the spectrum of “books that matter”. Suffice it to say I think people are taking YA a tiny bit more seriously because of Twilight, and the ever expanding young adult sections in book stores is a testament to that.

That being said, I have a lot, a lot of issues with Twilight.  There are a whole plethora (YAY FOR BIG WORDS!) of issues I have with it, but I’ll start with the biggest issue of them all (until I write about Bella).

Edward Cullen.

I imagine some people just went we went in the knees while others bent over and wretched.

Edward Cullen is anomaly like I’ve never seen before. In a lot of YA romance stories, the guy that act like a jerk is vilified in favor of the nicer, friendlier man, the one that actually knows how to treat a girl. Tons of books have been written where the MC’s boyfriend (or girlfriend) is righteous in the overall douchiness, and often this characters are painted as antagonist. These characters exist with an air of perfection around them, but as the MC grows over the arc of a story, they begin to see the cracks in the facade and, ultimately, usually, dump these losers to the curb either in favor of someone else or in favor of their own sanity.

Edward Cullen is the rare a-hole spouse who has entire fan clubs of girls swooning after him, even before Robert Pattison took over the role.

Edward is not a good boyfriend. I don’t think he even pretends to be. He is abrasive, emotionally-distant and abusive, and insanely controlling. He plays Bella like a harp over the course over of four novels, screwing with her brain as he pulls the “I want to be with you/WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO BE TOGETHER” card over and over again, while Bella swoons at his alleged perfection.

Edward is the embodiment of every high school shmoe’s living nightmare; the guy who acts like  complete ass, but gets all the girls. He is selfish, he’s arrogant, and he’s a basketball jersey and a backwards baseball cap from being the disposable loser boyfriend that gets dumped in the first fifteen minutes of Transformers.

So why the obsession?  I know girls are supposed to like bad boys, but Edward is even a bad boy–he’s just a prick. A super idealized prick, but a prick none the less. And yet Bella spends the entirety of four novels thinking Edward is the best thing to happen since sliced bread. (And sliced bread is WAY more awesome than Edward).

His perfection is elaborated on in page after page–his marble skin and his liquid topaz eyes and the kisses that LITERALLY (ugh) stop Bella’s heart. His looks are put above his personality every single time.  He’s surrounded by guys who I think would be much better for Bella, and are interesting that Edward.

I mean, there’s a reason why Jacob goes through a complete character assassination in he last two books–people started to like Jacob, and they should’ve been liking Edward. (But that’s for another blog.)

The idealized relationship between Bella and Edward isn’t ideal at all–it’s horrible. I often ask people who profess to love these books why they love them, and the most surprising thing is that it seems many of them don’t even like Bella. That’s right; they don’t even like the main character, but they stick with the story because they love Edward. And I’m stumped. I’m truly stumped as to why anyone would fall so hard over a man who forbids his girlfriend from hanging out with her friends. He steals car parts from her so she can’t go anywhere. He stalks her, showing up unexpectedly when she’s somewhere without him, and watching her sleep for months.

These are things that I was raised to believe were either a.) creepy, b.) jailable offenses and c.) downright cruel to whatever woman I happened to be dating. Is this what love is supposed to be, a young girl falling for a guy who constantly seems annoyed by her continued existence, who seemingly marries said young girl only begrudgingly so? Is this the kind of guy girls want, one who becomes scared and distant the second they become pregnant? A man who spends four books constantly annoyed by his girlfriend ends up marrying her just to pork her and shut her up. The end. What the hell is the moral of this story!

Things could’ve been different if Edward had grown any in the span between Twilight and Breaking Dawn. If he started off a spoiled kid confused by his desire to simultaneous sex up and eat Bella at the same time and then grown into a man who was confident and assured in her love for her, I could give him a pass. But he doesn’t–he starts off mean and only gets meaner and more distant.

Maybe that’s the real problem I have with him, is that he doesn’t grow and become the true hero that he’s made out to be. This is the entire reason books were invented, so that as the characters grow we feel like we’re growing, that we feel like we can relate to them because they aren’t perfect creatures who are incapable of wrong doing, because honestly, perfect people make for boring stories. I think that point was brilliantly displayed in the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld but in particularly in the second book Pretties, we’re life is essentially perfect for the main characters, but nothing exciting actually happens until that perfection is shattered. Perfection is an illusion, and a terribly boring at that.

Bella never questions Edward once, she only bows down to the fact that he’s perfect now and will be perfect forever, and when Stephanie Meyer wrote Edward that way she handicapped herself and her ability to write a compelling story. Flaws are what makes us human and what makes our short time on these blue marble of ours otherwise bearable, but when you write a book with someone who’s flawless (or presented as such) you remove the person’s humanity.

Edward is a hollow shell of a man presented as the answer to every woman’s prayers, which is why it’s so disturbing that so many young girls and even adult woman are attracted to him, which is ultimately my problem. When you present perfection as the only means to happiness, what exactly are you telling your readers? And when that perfection isn’t perfection, but emotionally abusive and oppressive, it sends an even worse message. Every day I write I strive to give all my characters, protagonist and antagonist, something inherently likeable and dislikable about them, because I like seeing my characters grow as people.

Edward Cullen never grows–he only stagnates, and becomes the ultimate “BUT I COULD CHANGE HIM!” figure for millions of readers. Unfortunately, he was never built to change–he was built to be perfect, built to be ideal.

And quite frankly, at the end of the day, being perfect and ideal is plain fucking boring.

KC