Name Confusion

[Publius68]

Has anyone else ever had a real problem with mixing up your own characters' names?
I just published a six-part story in which one of the female characters is named Bridget. But at some point during writing it I started calling Bridget, Britney. And I completely missed I was doing it. I proofread all 70,000 words of the series multiple times, and never realized that I has called her Britney more than 40 or 50 times, at least... until the comments started rolling in. No one seems to have dinged me in their ratings for my mistake, but the frustration, public and private, is universal.
When I realized the magnitude of the problem, I fortunately had time to edit the final, Bridget-centric, chapter before it was posted. I had so many screwups in that final chapter, I just did a find and change all to replace them with Bridget. This meant that the three times I had misspelled Britney as Brittney got through and were still published that way.
The worst part of all this is, I started a sequel series immediately, and I STILL am calling her Britney half the time, sometimes using both names in one paragraph.
I mostly want to vent about how stupid this is, but I also wonder if anyone else has ever had this problem? If so, what the fuck did you do about it?

 

[NotWise]

I had a problem with Virginia/Victoria in one story, but I got over it.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Has anyone else ever had a real problem with mixing up your own characters' names?
I just published a six-part story in which one of the female characters is named Bridget. But at some point during writing it I started calling Bridget, Britney. And I completely missed I was doing it. I proofread all 70,000 words of the series multiple times, and never realized that I has called her Britney more than 40 or 50 times, at least... until the comments started rolling in. No one seems to have dinged me in their ratings for my mistake, but the frustration, public and private, is universal.
When I realized the magnitude of the problem, I fortunately had time to edit the final, Bridget-centric, chapter before it was posted. I had so many screwups in that final chapter, I just did a find and change all to replace them with Bridget. This meant that the three times I had misspelled Britney as Brittney got through and were still published that way.
The worst part of all this is, I started a sequel series immediately, and I STILL am calling her Britney half the time, sometimes using both names in one paragraph.
I mostly want to vent about how stupid this is, but I also wonder if anyone else has ever had this problem? If so, what the fuck did you do about it?

Yes. It’s easy to do.

I kept mixing two male characters names and it was a nightmare even though their names weren’t remotely similar.

I think it’s because they were both foils for the main characters but in different ways. Thankfully successive rewrites solved the issues …I think.

 

[oggbashan]

Yes, it is my most frequent fault.

I usually start writing with vanilla names for my characters and change them as the people develop. But I can be unsure what the 'real' name can be and change unconsciously towards the end.

I check and check and still miss some.

 

[MsNatalie99]

I've done it. It's easy enough to do when you're in the zone, flowing more than thinking. I've also given the same name to multible characters. Just one of many reasons why proofing and editing are so invaluable.

 

[Seadog777]

Yep, me too.
I've currently got 3 different stories that I'm typing up, so I've confused the characters from story to story.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Yep, me too.
I've currently got 3 different stories that I'm typing up, so I've confused the characters from story to story.

I think in my new story it’s easier as all the characters are mine so there’s less confusion.

But any changes I do to names happens early on in the writing process. So for example in this one I’ve decided to do names that illiterate, but only worked that out halfway through part one.

From now, the names are the names and that’s it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Not really, though I had a character in a series called Karen, which I was about to start posting when the Karen meme kicked off. So find&replace went through a few iterations until I found a name I liked. One of which was Kerry, forgetting I'd named a minor character that,.so I had.to skim through all the scenes where Kerry might have appeared so she could get her name back again.

I tend to use short names or even A and B in my drafts until a name occurs to me. The result is that in my Lit works I have three characters called Ali, one female, two male. I had to prevent one Ali from popping up again in a story where he would have worked, but female Ali was already in that story and it would have confused readers. I may have to call my next characters Z, Y and X to avoid this problem getting worse.

 

[oggbashan]

Yep, me too.
I've currently got 3 different stories that I'm typing up, so I've confused the characters from story to story.

Typically I have eight to twelve stories in progress so names can be a problem.

I usually have a scrap of paper for each story with characters' names on it so I don't confuse myself - but I still can...

 

[DHerbert]

Typically I have eight to twelve stories in progress so names can be a problem.

Glad to find I'm not the only one doing this! Most people I've talked to seem to think I'm odd, and need to get more disciplined so that I can stick to just one. My trouble is I sometimes wake up with a great section of a story in my head and need to get it down quickly - whether it is from the current story, one of the others I've already started, or even a new one altogether!

 

[DHerbert]

In my serial on here I have a character called Connor who I kept calling Cameron for a while. I was doing a check on it and started wondering who this person was! Thankfully F&R sorted that, and I'm paying more attention whenever he is on screen now!

 

[SamScribble]

There's a fine literary tradition of mixing up names. J L Carr's award-winning A Month in the Country has one of the main characters, the Rev J G Keach, sometimes appearing as Arthur Keach. Carr admitted that he often didn't bother too much with proof-reading until after his books had been published.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Glad to find I'm not the only one doing this! Most people I've talked to seem to think I'm odd, and need to get more disciplined so that I can stick to just one. My trouble is I sometimes wake up with a great section of a story in my head and need to get it down quickly - whether it is from the current story, one of the others I've already started, or even a new one altogether!

I love it when ideas come like that because usually it’s just a case of hard grafting, stirring and typing.

That said my first story largely came in a flurry of thought over two nights with the big climax to the story being a massive turn-on.

Cracking stuff.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

Mike became Mick for a while in my Beth's Summer Break series.

No-one noticed.

Execpt me, and I was so pissed off with myself I almost put a nasty comment on my own story.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Oh yes. I had a main character named both Jonas and Janos. Firestorm wrath and mockery from one individual. Oops.

 

[Rustyoznail]

If there's a few characters I place a line for each at the top of the file so I can see it when it opens.

EG- Jo - crazy Chinese girl with pointy tits
Vick - cute redhead
Daryl - female mech eng weightlifter

Just enough to keep the mind focused. I delete it when it's ready to post.

 

[AlexBailey]

I named a character in a story 'Sam' who is partly inspired by an IRL friend named 'Max.' Now half the time I forget and call 'Max' 'Sam.'

 

[MsNatalie99]

I named a character in a story 'Sam' who is partly inspired by an IRL friend named 'Max.' Now half the time I forget and call 'Max' 'Sam.'

I have a character named Gary. I keep writing Dad or BitchMullet

 

[Seadog777]

Typically I have eight to twelve stories in progress so names can be a problem.

I usually have a scrap of paper for each story with characters' names on it so I don't confuse myself - but I still can...

That's a lot. LOL.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If so, what the fuck did you do about it?

Focus.

 

[DHerbert]

If there's a few characters I place a line for each at the top of the file so I can see it when it opens.

EG- Jo - crazy Chinese girl with pointy tits
Vick - cute redhead
Daryl - female mech eng weightlifter

I have a section at the bottom where I do this on each story and note anything special about the character that I need to keep track of. Height, job, size of body parts... and the like!

 

[jsmiam]

It’s very common. And just wait until you have your threesome with Bethany and Brianna! Then it’ll get even harder. ;-)

 

[Emilymcplugger]

If there's a few characters I place a line for each at the top of the file so I can see it when it opens.

EG- Jo - crazy Chinese girl with pointy tits
Vick - cute redhead
Daryl - female mech eng weightlifter

Just enough to keep the mind focused. I delete it when it's ready to post.

when I was writing my end orgy sequence and a round-Robin of blow-jobs and fellatio I had to write down were everyone was who was sucking/licking them and the order around the hot tub.

Even doing that I had one guy lose twice.

 

[oggbashan]

In my series about the Goddess Brigit, I had another character called Brigit, and then the main male character married and they had a daughter called Brigit...

 

[SimonDoom]

Yep. It took me no time at all to get confused; I did it in my second story. I wrote my first two stories more or less at the same time, and I published the second one I wrote, a very short story, before the first one. I plugged the name "Jana", the name of the main female character in the first story, into story two in place of that story's main female character's name. And, of course, I got a comment from a reader: "Who's Jana?"

I promptly sent a message to Laurel asking for a change. It is the only change I've ever made to a published story.

I don't think I've repeated the mistake. I make a mental note of checking every story I publish for this potential mistake before hitting the "submit" button.