Odd names like these (Laleana, Saffron etc.) became popular on the council estates in the 90’s/00’s, with a trend towards names more “chavvy” and affluent than this heroine’s. So in the 60’s/70’s “working class” names were still pretty standard: Mary, Barb, Pat, Jo etc. and would therefore not be equatable with a “working class” background. I agree with the Author with regard to the evolution of names, however I did find the location references unsettling.

Coco

I can see an issue with it though in certain genres like historical fiction where naming conventions did have social implications, but for a contemporary, I don’t see the issue as long as the name works with the story and the author’s vision of the character in question.

Sorry that I wasn’t clear in my previous post, the social implications still exist today. Not as seriously as it was before, but it still matters.

For example, there are some real-life girls who have this name Chardonnay. When we meet one, it may tell us a couple of things about their parents – they may be Chavs from a council estate and/or nurse dodgy aspirations for their daughters, e.g. becoming a Page 3 girl or enter the showbiz (think American Idol). It’s totally unfair, but that is how it is in this country.

I feel bad for bringing this up once again, but I promise this is the last input from me. Either way, massive good luck with your writing career. :)

While I’m as American as they come, I certainly did not for one moment believe that Laleana was upper class, or even white — hearing that you intend her to be an upper class Irish girl went beyond the bounds of my disbelief. This is because, even today, there are trends in naming that follow class/racial lines, much as we would like to ignore that as a supposedly classless and (ideally) racially impartial society. To ignore that for “I like the name” is being extraordinarily tone-deaf to the implications of your choices. I find that books written by people who are tone-deaf to that kind of shading of meaning are ultimately unsatisfying.

You see at the top where it says the critiques come from “authors, readers, and industry others?” I’m all three of those things. The point of this exercise, as I understood it, is to give the writer a sense of how people from each of those points of view would respond to the first page.

Whether or not readers “don’t give a hoot” about things like believable names, geographic accuracy, accurate representation of class and social milieux, I can assure you that agents and editors and book reviewers all give several hoots about this.

Nobody’s trying to be mean to this author; we’re trying to give her our perspective from our own points of reference inside the industry. Before a book even gets to readers, it has to go by agents, editors, copyeditors, and the people in marketing who make decisions about which books to push and which books to let wither on the vine.

This first page isn’t ready to run that gantlet yet. It’s not conveying the message the author wants to send. The message may be great, and the story may be completely fascinating, but right now the noise is overwhelming the signal. Anyone who interprets that as “mean” or “hostile” probably might want to rethink the whole idea of being a writer, because every single writer who has ever lived gets feedback hundreds of times more negative than that on every project.

My wish for this author, as it is for every author who submits their pages for critique here, is that they figure out what is working and isn’t working in their manuscript with the help of the feedback provided by folks with different points of view and perspectives. I would love to see the author have every bit of success that she hopes for with this book, which is why I took the time to offer my thoughts to her.

Any thoughts?

And thanks to you Maili for the insightful view on names. I suppose I never gave it much thought since I have never picked up a book and had a problem with a fictional character’s name. I can see an issue with it though in certain genres like historical fiction where naming conventions did have social implications, but for a contemporary, I don’t see the issue as long as the name works with the story and the author’s vision of the character in question.
All good stuff, and I have a lot of work to do.

@Julia Sullivan – Even if I hadn’t lived here, I’d watched a lot of British TV and had visited, and I would still have been as annoyed by inaccuracies, though I might not have noticed as many of them ;-)

@The Author – If you’re writing in English, your audience is everyone that speaks English, even if your primary audience is American. This is especially true nowadays, when it’s so easy to get information about books and to even order them from other countries. Your books are listed on Amazon UK (though are currently unavailable), and nothing is stopping someone from the UK ordering your book off of Amazon US (or buying it in e-book format, assuming the revised version is available from multiple etailers who don’t have it restricted by region).

If you’re trying to avoid making it incomprehensible to Americans, you should strive to make the dialogue as location-neutral as possible and avoid Americanisms. Sentences like ‘We all still headin’ out to the ole family plot for holiday?’ sound very non-British to me, especially the word ‘plot’. I asked my English husband what he thought the family plot would be, and he thought it would in a cemetery. (That was one of the things I thought of, but I thought I’d ask to double-check.) It’s also got connotations of a plot of land where you build something, not a country home, which is what I think you were going for.

I realise these are little things, but the little things add up, especially if you’re an unknown quantity. And if lots of people are picking the same little things, then you’re potentially alienating a lot of potential readers right off the bat.

ETA: Regional issues do exist in the US, but I think the UK may have even more regional accents, especially since it consists of 4 different countries. Compared by size, it definitely has a lot more. Also, as others have mentioned, class is a lot bigger deal over here than in the US, and it’s a lot less flexible and a lot less dependent on your financial status.

But, I am really starting to get confused here as to what the issue is. Exactly why is her name so ridiculously critical that it has become a bone of contention for some readers. I am very interested in this, sincerely. Naming characters is a very difficult and personal thing for a writer. Most of us enter into it with the same care and attention we take when naming our own children. So I would love to discuss this in more depth. What makes a name, and what makes a name important to readers? This is a topic I would love to see discussed in full forum.

Thank you for the invitation. It’s an issue that sometimes bothers me about Historical romances set in the UK.

As lilitu93 notes:

One of the reasons that people are commenting so much on the name is because the UK is very class conscious, and class is different in the UK than in the US.

This is unfortunately true. Historical romance authors tend to favour these names for heroes’ first names: Sebastian, Devlin, Chase, Damien, Devon, and similar. None of these were “real” to me.

Heroines tend to have masculine / odd/”unique”/”Gaelic” (but aren’t)/class-defying names for heroines, such as Eden, Percy, Aisling, Becky (as an actual name, instead of nickname and traditionally, a working-class name, too), Jacinda, Jasmine, Byrony, etc.

I have learnt to accept these as part of the Historical romance universe. I usually try to learn to get used to the name before I could get into the story. If it is really way out of it, I will just pretend the story set in another country. Once in a while, I just couldn’t and give up on the book. Also, almost all used each other’s first names so casually at the beginning, which shocked me, but I am used to it now. :D

Don’t get me wrong, there were many real-life people with unusual names, but those unusual names tend to make sense in historical/social context and those historical romance names above don’t usually fit.

My usual advice for authors who want unusual names for heroes, go for surnames (such as their mothers’ maiden/family names) as first names or use heroes’ own surnames as nicknames. For example, if one wants to use Chase for hero’s first name, then use Chase as his surname that people could use to address him.

Even now, some of my male friends address each other by their surnames or nicknames they earned from school days, especially those with common names.

Apart from accents, names tend to tell us where the person is from and what their family may be like. There are some names that some families wouldn’t touch because of cultural and/or social associations. Too common (read: working class), for instance. Some posh English families wouldn’t touch Scottish/Irish/Welsh names (too common/working class) during certain time periods and yet, many heroes have S/I/W names in those time periods. It’s rather odd.

I think it’s largely discarded nowadays, but before the 1960s, names were – right or wrong – good clues of people’s backgrounds. I think it’s still continuing nowadays, but not as much as before.

Sorry for being so long-winded, but thank you for listening.

A little note, with apologies: Lain isn’t Gaelic. It’s the corrupted Angelicised form of Eoin or rather, the corrupted form of Iain (Eoin).

Funny, I saw a lot of compliments mixed in with the constructive criticisms. This segment isn’t designed to be a cheerleading session. It’s supposed to help an author see what does – or doesn’t – work for a reader. Plain and simple.

I sincerely hope the author derived something from this experience, aside from an exercise in justification and rationalization. If not, we’re all wasting our time.

I saw a lot of comments stating that I had a nice strong voice, confident and assured. That’s most important. If I got that, then all the rest can be tweaked, nudged, and shoved a little.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have been through some pretty intense critique sessions, but it’s been five months since I submitted, so to say I was caught a bit off-guard is an understatement, especially about the name.

I would love a new Beta reader. I am always looking for Beta readers. We should hook up.

I can’t believe how much first page Saturday has changed from whether or not the excerpt works and whether it would compel the reader to continue reading into a 51 comment nitpicking bash about how any author chose her character’s name.

This kind of heavy-handed critiquing is exactly why I won’t submit to this again – I love DA but man, when it comes to so much of the advice given, if an author listened, he/she’d never get anywhere since it’s all so contradictory and all so subjective.

Oh, and Author, I might have someone who would love to be a beta reader for you. She’s English and currently lives in Spain. If you are interested, let me know and we’ll try to hook up. Good luck!

Laleana’s name is writing a check the character can’t cash. Readers judge characters by their names. “Laleana” conveys an image that isn’t in keeping with the character you’re trying to portray. You can either take that on board and stick with the name, or change the name, but nobody reading the name “Laleana” thinks “38-year-old Irishwoman.”

Also, 38? These people are in their late 30s and their idea of fun is watching their friend wreck his parents’ house? Yikes.

In the U.S there are more regional issues muddled together with class issues. We have them here too, and regional dialect here can be just as frightening to deal with, as well.

I could use a British Beta reader. I had some people look at it who spent a good deal of time there but not born and bred lived all their lives there. It would be a help. Any volunteers??? :)

I love the candor as well. 5 months ago, it was submitted for the purpose of productive reader feedback, of which I have received tenfold by many wonderful readers here, but at some point, I have to look at the arguments rationally from a respectful and non-emotional viewpoint. I have to talk out my rationale in conjunction with the reader rationale and then formulate the best course of action: change everything, change nothing, or meet in the middle. Not an easy choice by any means at all. It’s a downright painful struggle. Someone is bound to be pissed off no matter what. This is just the way it is. We all know it’s true. I have hated books other people have loved. We might aspire to be Proust, but we are who we are, as people and as writers. I just need to sit for a minute, copy and paste all the pros and the cons I have received into a spreadsheet, sleep on it, and come at it with a fresh face. Reader outrage hits hard, and we don’t want to come at that in a reactionary frame of mind. It’s just bad for the writing, and it’s bad for everyone. I think all the readers here would agree with that. We have seen enough “authors behaving badly” of late. I am not one of those authors. I am the sort that likes to chill on things a bit.

That, along with the old/new money confusion of Julian’s family and calling a touristy area of Central London ‘the middle of nowhere’, breaks the suspension of disbelief that’s necessary for fiction to work. Bloomsbury is in Zone 1 (the Tube), and it’s where The British Museum, RADA and many of the institutions that make up the University of London are located.

Also, I wouldn’t mix British and American – it’s only realistic if you’re an American living in the UK (like me) or vice versa. It’s fine if you want to make things not too British, so that they’re understandable outside the UK, but it should still sound realistic.

You also have to keep in mind that people in the UK speak differently depending on their country or region, their class, their race or ethnic group, their age, etc. A Northerner will speak differently from a Southerner who will speak differently from someone from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Not to mention that the Irish speak differently as well (and differently from the Northern Irish). Someone born and raised on a council estate will sound different from someone educated in a public school, etc.

I second the suggestion that if you want to set something in the UK that you get a British beta reader. If I ever start writing again and I were setting something here, I’d get one as well, and I’ve been here 10 years. I’d do the same thing for anything set in the States as well, even though I was born there.

In order for people to believe that vampires can exist, boy wizards can save the day, etc., people have to get involved in a story, and anything that distracts the reader breaks that involvement and ruins the suspension of disbelief. You’ve got several things that seem to cause that effect on most of the readers here, most of which are easily fixable or just require a bit more research.

The first ’sentence’ being a sentence fragment, the tense switches and the inaccurate Britishisms all broke my concentration, and made it near impossible for me to get involved in this story. (Occasional sentence fragments for effect don’t bother me, but they have to be used well, and it’s distracting if it’s the first thing I read.) These issues definitely were deal-breakers for me, and I wouldn’t have continued with the story due to those issues.

I think the majority of us would say that the protagonist’s name give strong associations that are very dissonant with what you, the author, are saying about the character. Ultimately, Author, you want to communicate clearly without having to give a long rationale explaining every choice, right? If people consistently say this name doesn’t ring right, or your use of verb tense is unconventional (in a way that obstructs clarity), or your “garish” patricians don’t work for them, then you have some choices, including making some of the changes that experienced and educated readers strongly recommend. Alternatively, you can reject all the feedback as not fitting in with your style/intentions/goals/beliefs, but you risk just being unclear (which doesn’t, as the button suggests, automatically elevate your writing to a higher level).

Respectfully, it seems to me that your responses have leaned towards trying to justify not changing anything, in which case, I’m curious about why this was submitted for comments at all.

All I am saying is … names mutate over time as do words and their translations. The root meanings get muddled, the spellings get changed. A name is not a literal definition of a person, how could it be? As different cultures make use of Latin or Greek names, things change. I witnessed that with my own family name. When my great grandparents immigrated, their last name was changed in spelling to make it easier to pronounce. In some cases names can change so drastically that it’s hard to identify the root and what the intended meaning once was. All we can do is search out the essence, not a specific meaning, just the essence of an idea, and then it’s up to the writer to make their own interpretation. Or rather, their own translation.

Storytelling, whether it be a name or a place or an incident, is always the artist’s interpretation. Think of how boring the world would be if every Irish woman had to have a certain acceptable name and a certain stereotypical lilt in her voice not to mention red hair and freckles. Art is not about experiencing the world as it is so much as it is about experiencing the world as it changes. It’s about breaking free of convention, even in something as simple as a name. Fact is fact, of course, but naming conventions and cultural nuances mutate over time. Look at American Christmas for instance, talk about a mutation. Fiction can take liberty in a way history cannot; although even views on history mutate over time. That is the beauty of it. Could an Irish woman be named Laleana. Sure. And we can pick apart her name to see how it was made possible. All that needs to exist is the possibility. Fiction exists because of the infinite possibilities. In James Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder, a forty something American Immigrant has an affair with the then 19 year old Ben Franklin. Did it happen? Who knows, but in the context of the story, it’s possible, and so we can believe it 100%. Great book by the way if anyone is interested. Anyway … vampires can exist, boy wizards can save the day, Kafka’s protagonist can turn into a bug, Adam’s can say the meaning of life and everything is 24, and Tyler Durden can blow up a whole bunch of buildings and not get caught. Why? Because in fiction, the possibilities are endless. Reader mileage will vary, of course.