About Characters
From PenguinWiki
Discussion about characters - moved here from 'The Novel' discussion page
[edit] characters
Carlo
Denny Crane
Inu
Tango Poisoner
There is a pregnant woman too...She needs a name?
Sergeant Anderson
Tony Mockbell aka "Big Tony", and his partners, "Medium Vince" and "Normal-Sized Jerry"
Perhaps second (maybe this should have been first) we need to establish whether we are telling the story in 1st, 2nd or 3rd person. It seems to have begun in 3rd and 2nd person but some of the story reads as 1st...
--Nich.S 00:12, 2 February 2007 (CST)
So is Tony Mockbell the Tango Poisoner or is Ru-Ru, the legless guy? The second half of the second chapter seems to be trying to run circles around the reader by throwing a bunch of nonsense terms and names.
Also, is Ms. George supposed to be Anderson's wife? It's a bit silly to have Ms. George and Ms. Bell mentioned but apparently have no use in the story (though Ru-Ru thinks its fortunate to be between them). Sorry if this is addressed later, but I'm only at ch. 2 and have more enthusiasm than sense.
-Thunderfoot, 14:30PDT 2 February 2007
"his huge appreciation of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, which cases him to sense that something is somehow missing but he can not begin to see what"
First of all, there might be people that haven't heard of these bands, thus that sentence would mean nothing to them. Secondly, this is not a forum to express your musical preferences. Save it for MySpace.
[edit] Characters
"Big Tony," "Tony Mockbell" and "Denny Crane" These are just phony dumpy colloquial names for a novel. I don't like them. They aren't going to fly with most people. Here is a revised list of characters with names most people aren't going to puke when they hear:
Mikhael
Carlo
Griff
Inu
Any other characters that I've seen are just puke. For example "Big Babooby Oobey" or "Dave" or some of the others. Try stick with the small number of characters listed above. The fewer the better. If you feel you must add a name make it a tasteful name. If you have no taste, allow someone else to edit that name, or use one of that characters above. Thanks, nostrum19.
[edit] character bios pages
Character Bios: Pretend for a moment we're on Wikipedia, writing an article about a very popular novel. Since fandom is a big thing there, individual characters from that book would likely get their own biography articles, seperate from the main article about the book. Perhaps we should do the same thing here? Y'know, take advantage of the features this wiki offers us. The novel itself is entirely and exclusively the text found in the chapter pages, but character biographies and other articles can be used as a utility for the authors. Take Carlo, for instance: We give Carlo his own article on the wiki, where we develop a biography for him. That article is not part of the novel. It's simply a resource; a central place to record what we know about Carlo. The novel itself is still canon, although the bio could have info about a character that doesn't make it into the novel (in which case it's not canon, it's just extraneous info intended to help writers develop and understand the character). Naturally, the bio is completely mutable just like the article (Carlo could become Carla The Alien Enforcer at a moment's notice). And I realize that initially, these characters are going to change a lot, making bios a difficult thing to keep current. I'm not suggesting that the novel has to follow the bio, or vice versa. I'm not suggesting any rules at all; the theme here seems to be: "no rules, just write." But with a central repository for biographical data about Carlo, and a central discussion page for dicussing the character (hooray for wiki discussion pages), we can attempt to keep a clear vision of the character throughout the dozens of chapters in the novel. In each chapter, the first mention of a character's name should link to his/her bio. Likewise, events described in the bio should link to the relevant chapter (although I imagine such links would become "dirty" fairly quickly). The bio would necesarily contain spoiler information. For instance, it might give the date of Carlo's death, even though someone who just started reading the novel may not realize that he dies in the third chapter while trying to pull his dog from the path of a cement truck. =o) -Eisnel 17:05, 1 February 2007 (CST)
Excellent idea about the Character Bios. If the bios stick to the characters' backstory, then they wouldn't necessarily contain spoilers. But I'm quite impressed that you imagine there could be spoilers in such a fluid thing as this. You must have tremendous prescience ;-) --Christine 19:05, 1 February 2007 (CST)
Well done for actioning on my editorial comments within the novel and apologies for placing them there. I will endevour to place the comments here from now on. Chapter 1 is looking much better now. Would be great to introduce line numbers so we can comment easily on the content. (--Pluto - 2nd Feb 2007 01:55am GMT)
