I've changed the name of my first novel to The Cantoni Sisters.What's in a name? Depending on what it is - everything. For a person, it's either a moniker they're stuck with and hate their entire life, or probably for most of us it's one we're ok with, maybe we play around with abbreviations, nicknames, but settle for what we're given. But names are important. Rightly or wrongly, they can give an impression of what that person is like, or let us foolishly go along with our preconceptions.Would we think of a strong, manly figure being called Pinkie? Well, I would have said no But take the main character in Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene. He's called Pinkie and he's a mean spirited thug. But did that make him strong and manly? You make the call.For writers, and particularly novelists, as we need to live with the characters for so long - as do our readers - names are incredibly important. I spent hours deliberating names for my characters for my first novel. The fact they are Italian names did not make the job easier. We each have personal associations that interfere with potential choices - people we know, or someone we don't care for; perhaps a teacher who was particularly mean. Our own history colours our decision as well as the characters we're trying to portray.Some people say having names that begin with the same letters make it confusing for the reader. Two brothers called Harry and Henry, I can imagine being easy to mix up, unless their characters are either extremely well defined and/or very different from each other. Take the Kray brothers - Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Can anyone remember which was which despite the publicity at the time, or the filmic portrayals etc.? I can’t.The younger sister in my novel is called Alma. But initially the older sister, the main protagonist of the novel, was Essie (an Italian abbreviation of Esther). For me I knew who they were, but other people found their names too similar. They had the same number of syllables and they found them confusing. I eventually changed Essie’s name to Raffaella, which instantly made her a different character both in my mind and on the page. I also had to admit, part of the problem was her character hadn’t been clearly enough defined. So changing her name helped me shape her character. I talked about character in my blog a few weeks ago (see Real Characters Feb 18th).So where does that leave us with the title of the work, in this case a novel? That too has to fit, has to mean something to someone who picks up the book and has only the blurb on the back cover and the title to help them decide whether or not to buy it. For the past 3 yrs the novel has been called Tracing Paper. And it fit the novel when I began. But the novel has changed so much, that the meaning behind it has become diluted.So after a professional critique of the beginning chapters and other writers who thought it no longer fit, I have changed the title to The Cantoni Sisters.Letting go of the original name has been hard – almost like letting go of a friend. But as with any rewrites, you have to be prepared to be brutal, even if it was a favourite piece of the work. Publishers often change titles, so I may have to let go of it again. But to me, writing is all about change and rewrites. How else can the work grow and improve? My hope is that long term it will help me deal with change in real life, which is usually just a tad bit harder than a quick tap of a key or stroke of a pen.How do you go about choosing names, or the title for your latest work? Was it a difficult process? Is it one that's ongoing?I’d love to hear from you.
Savouring Taste Treats: Using the Senses in Writing
Senses evoke such different responses in everyone, so it was fantastic to get feedback from people about their experiences, from last week’s blog, 'Music Evoking Memories'. Thank you.When we try to describe a situation we might have encountered to someone else, we often simply talk about what we saw, or maybe what was said. But for an author, all the senses need to be engaged, to really capture the moment. Much as I love photography, I’m always frustrated that only the visual is captured. Who was on the street? What did it sound like? What did the air smell of, or taste like?The sense of taste, like any other sense can evoke memory. But much as we might enjoy certain foods over another, at a basic level we also associate it with being hungry, or once we’ve eaten, being full.These are things most people reading this blog will take for granted. We get hungry we eat, we 're full. A few hours later the ritual is repeated. Sometimes we eat alone. Sometime times with others. Each time has a different connotation, a different emphasis, and through these experiences we build memory and associations.
Radio Echo is set during World War II and food rationing was a major part of life for all the countries involved. Ration books were issued in the UK at the beginning of 1940 and continued until 1953. It was not limited to food but included petrol, clothing, bicycles and most hard goods. The US brought in similar rationing in 1943.Much of the effort to encourage people to participate fully and get behind the idea in the UK came from the Ministry of Food.Here is a short flash film:httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdVSNALj1XYMany people had ‘Dig for Victory Gardens’ and grew their own food. And of course the lack of protein was made up for in creative ways – two of which were using whale meat and eating horses!httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouu_aignRfUIn the novel, as in the reality of wartime, the black market is used for those who had both the money and the contacts.Italy, where Radio Echo is set, is known for its fabulous food and wonderfully simple, but flavorful ingredients. But during the war, Italy was badly hit by poverty and food shortages, especially in cities like Bologna that had been heavily bombed.
Communal kitchens were set up, and neighbors for the most part helped each other. But the Black market was thriving there as well as in the UK and US. There was no waiting at the Bologna Market Hall for hours for a loaf of bread for the Benedetti family who is central to the novel.
But whether it was bought from the Black Market or doled out in the small rationed portions, food was savored, appreciated in a way that is foreign to many of us today. An onion or an orange is not a rare commodity. We take them for granted. And by doing so, we miss the uniqueness of their taste. Their specialness. The sense of taste evoking memory is different for different people. Perhaps the first time you ate a particular food or something you might have been forced to eat as a child sticks in your mind and is remembered by the same taste. Or avoided.At my junior school, after the boiled meat and cabbage variation on lunch, we often had pink blancmange for dessert – basically jelly (Jell-O) with milk. God knows what the pink was from - some gross strawberry flavoring. It’s the kind of thick pudding that lodges in your throat, making you feel sick with every spoonful. I have a clear humiliating memory of being made to stay in the canteen for the second sitting with the ‘big kids’ until I finished my pink blancmange. Maybe that’s why I’ve never liked the color pink.Let me know what your taste buds long for or where they take you. Your comments are always the most interesting part of writing this blog.To end on the note of one of the the most popular tastes - if you’re looking for a great chocolate shop somewhere near you, check out this blog http://diversionswithdoreen.com/.Doreen is writing a Chocolate Travel book.Happy eating.
Real Characters (orig. post Jan 13th)
Real Characters
I recently watched a US hospital drama in which Alfre Woodard (an excellent, but underrated actor) played a writer desperate to finish a novel before her aneurism burst. She said the characters in her book were her family. I understood what she meant. They were real to her and her readers. That’s when you know if the character is successful or not. The three-dimensional nature of characters is to me the test of a good book. Plot is great, but without characters it's worthless.When writing Radio Echo, I struggled for months writing the characters of the two sisters. Then I started to write the character of the homosexual fascist. I was staggered that he just fell off the end of my pen. I instantly cared about him despite his unlikeable nature – or at least his distasteful politics. I realised in part that with the two sisters, I’d focused on what happened to them, rather than who they were; trying to nail the plot of the entire novel, at the expense of their character. I re-worked them, and now they’re three-dimensional.I think the response of the viewer for any art form is an integral part of the process. Arguably, the end product could be considered incomplete without the response of the viewer, however different that individual response is. I could go further and say that fictitious characters are as important as real flesh and blood characters if they have had an effect on you as individuals. If fictional characters can evoke emotion, isn’t that about as good as it gets in terms of anything meaningful? Okay you can't hug or touch a character in a novel, call them up and have a chat. But to miss them when the novel ends and to wonder what happened to them or to feel changed by them is to learn something about one's self. Especially as an adolescent, but also as an adult, a good character in a book might express what you’ve been thinking all along, but didn't have the words to say it. How often have you finished a good book and said –‘yeah that’s what I meant’?Much of Radio Echo is set in Bologna. The central piazza there, Piazza Maggiore features in the hearts and minds of the characters. “We’ll be dancing with GI’s in Piazza Maggiore before the end of the year,” one of the characters says after the Allies have taken Rome. The sentiment encompasses the hope that people had at that point in Northern Italy. Because the novel is historical, characters have root in real life. They all are fictitious; none of them are based on real people per se. None of the individual events are based on real events. But of course in other ways they are based on things that did actually happen. So when I went to Piazza Maggiore myself, I was fighting back the tears. I had lived with those characters for a long time and it was as if I, in their place, had made it back to the piazza. And of course the citizens of Bologna and returning resistance fighters did congregate there and celebrate with the Allied troops when Bologna was liberated in April 1945.The memorial in Piazza Maggiore is very different to any of the war memorials I’ve seen in England. It is dedicated solely to the men and women who died fighting in the Italian resistance. Instead of just a list of names, there’s a photo of each person printed on a tile and so you have an image of that person as they were in the mid 1940s with their name beneath it. More than just a list of names, the sight of the images together makes them truly real characters.