Dealing with the same characters in stories

[gunhilltrain]

Lol. I am forever repeating names. It's got to the point where I'll read an old story and think, fuck me, look at that, I'd completely forgotten I'd used that name before.

I don't think it makes a shred of difference - as you say, plenty of people with the same name in real life, happens all the time. Only the stories are different.

Most of my characters have both first and last names. I've used some first names more than once. I also have the issue that some characters, usually the male narrators, are likely (or even definitely) the same person but on different timelines. They may have the same name and be of the same age, but they might live in slightly different neighborhoods. The "arcs" of their romantic lives may overlap but not be identical.

 

[TheRedChamber]

If you are likely to be using these characters for a long time, I'd suggest having a serious think about how you are going to link them all together (which it seems you are doing). There are a number of different approaches you could take.

1) Use numbered chapters in a continuous story and try to write the stories in some sort of order and expect readers to follow it.
2) Write an episodic series with the same characters, but which don't need to be read in order.
3) Consider writing the stories with similar but distincty different characters to keep things fresher.

1. There are only so many ways of describing a blonde waif - in my latest story, I resorted to her saying (as narrator) “if you want to know what I look like, read one of my other stories“. I’m turn between extraneous repetition and leaving people who have never read another of my stories in the dark.

Generally people here will tell you that keeping descriptions short is good writing even when not writing about a repeated characters. You can have the characters comb, touch, dry, toss their long blonde hair early in each story and repeat readers aren't going to mind. If you want to write a whole paragraph about what a character looks like, try and focus on what the character looks like today and how that ties into the story.

She weighed herself on the scales and gave a little shout of victory. Yes! She'd lost another three pounds. And better still, running her hands over her body, it seemed like all the weight had come off her waste rather than her breats or ass which remained prodigious. Her new exercise regime was clearly paying off. [Little did she know just how sweaty things would get at the gym today.] Maybe a new haircut would set off her new figure even better, but for the moment it was still long and straight, running all the way down to her back.

If you're doing numbered chapters this is less important, though it doesn't hurt to remind your readers every so often, but its very good practice for episodic stories. For episodic stories, I'd put a disclaimer at the top that they don't need to be read in order.

2. I find myself referencing events from other stories. This makes sense to me as the builder of this little world. It may make sense to people who have read my other stories (at least those who register anything beyond the amount of gratuitous sex in them). But it will totally pass by the new reader.

Here's where the distinction between episodic and continuous story comes in. If you're finding you need a lot of references just to write today's story that's probably an indication that you should be writing a continuous story. If, on the other hand, you're just adding them in because you can or because they are slightly relevant to introducing a character, then think about whether you actually need them. In some cases, it can be fun and more interesting to reference events that you haven't already described. If you think about they way old sit-coms used to do it, there was a certain amount of continuity as characters grew and relationships changed, but they rarely referenced what actually happened in previously. Consider the following example.

Narrator: Cheers is filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Norm: Hey Sam, you went on another date with Rebecca? How that go?
Sam: Well, not well, Norm, not well. [Comical anecdote about how his eye was caught by a stunning blonde halfway through their meal together and he got into trouble]
Norm: [Zinger]

So this fills in a viewer who may have missed the last episode that Sam and Rebecca are back together, but does it in a way which is amusing for everyone (or it would have been if I could have thought up an actual joke). Even those viewers who've never seen the show at all before will start to get an impression of Sam's character.

I think this is doubly important if the reference is going to be emotianally important to the plot. I think a classic example of this is Star Wars. At the end of A New Hope (i.e. the first one), Han saves Luke's life in the final battle. At the start of the final act of Empire Strikes Back, Luke sets off to try to rescue Han (and others) despite being told it's a suicide mission. And we as the audience understand that it would be pretty shitty of Luke not to go given the debt he owes. However, since this is happening in two seperate movies, what do the screen-writers do? They have Han save Lukes life again, right at the beginning of the new movie (by going out in arctic night to find him) - that helps to ensure that the dramatic beats land more of less the same for everyone. They could have just had Han say to Luke at the beginning of the film "Hey remember how I saved you during that Deathstar assult? Wow, you really own me a debt for that one."

3. I also have a continuity challenge - especially as the stories don’t appear in chronological order. I could spend more time on that than on tying to have new ideas.

If you know you are going to hop around a lot, it might be a good idea to sit down and figure what the main time periods in the on-going saga are and if there is a way to signify to your readers the time that these events are taking place. If you decide, for example, that the main periods are going to be.

1) MC is in college in Boston (18-21yo).
2) MC is working in a lawyers office in New York (21-30yo)
3) MC is married and living on a farm in Arkansas (30yo+)

Then readers aren't going have much of a hard time keeping the cronology straight. If you don't want to make such radical changes you can at least try to define the overall arc of the story by the dividing things up into 'relationship' stages. I'm currently planning (though not making any actual progress towards writing) a BDSM series involving a professional dominatrix and her younger less experienced girlfriend and I have a file with tons of story ideas that can take place at various points of the relationship. I ended up listing about eight possible seasons which have different relationship dynamics, but a simplified version of each season would be something like.

1) The girlfriend isn't supposed to take part in the domme's session (but always finds a way to sneak in anyway)
2) The girlfriend becomes an official sub and is taking part in session's regularly (but the domme is overprotective of her).
3) The domme has an (not serious but takes time to recover from) accident and the sub takes over as the domme (and struggles with the role)

I'm probably going to try to write in chronological order, but there's no reason why I couldn't potentially nip back to other time periods when the relationship dynamic at that earlier stage fits the story idea I've got better (actually maybe there is, stories that revert character development that's already been done can feel superflous to readers).

(I'll stop here because I've actually just written 1,000 words that could have gone onto my unwritten stories. Explains a lot...)

 

[ElectricBlue]

(I'll stop here because I've actually just written 1,000 words that could have gone onto my unwritten stories. Explains a lot...)

I see what you did there.

You do realise you coulda had two, maybe three, 750 Word stories, in the time/effort taken to write these notes? But, I admire the altruism, so you're clearly A Good Bloke.

Carry on, but perhaps, fewer notes?

 

[TheRedChamber]

I see what you did there.

You do realise you coulda had two, maybe three, 750 Word stories, in the time/effort taken to write these notes? But, I admire the altruism, so you're clearly A Good Bloke.

Carry on, but perhaps, fewer notes?

No, you don't understand, telling others what they should be doing is way less effort than actually doing it yourself. But yes, lunch and then writing. Definitely. Or maybe some video games...

 

[thomas1965]

I've never used Scrivener to keep track of things. Money is pretty tight with me, so I don't want to buy it right now.

Papyrus Author has a free version. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube.
The spell checker is much better than in Word or OpenOffice. It also can highlight filler words, has a database for characters....
Might be worth checking out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Definitely. Or maybe some video games...

You, sir, have the art of not writing via procrastination down to a fine art .

 

[DaddyAnal1966]

@TheRedChamber - thank you for the detailed and painstaking feedback - I appreciate it

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I was thinking I needed a chronology document - at the very least when characters meet for the first time.

I maintain a spreadsheet (I use Excel) with a separate tab for each story that I start to write. Each new sheet (tab) starts with a timeline and main character descriptions. If a character from a previous story makes an appearance in a later story, I can maintain consistency. I also write mostly in third person and allow my characters to be described as others see them. That is harder to do in first person, but it can be done.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Lol. I am forever repeating names. It's got to the point where I'll read an old story and think, fuck me, look at that, I'd completely forgotten I'd used that name before.

I don't think it makes a shred of difference - as you say, plenty of people with the same name in real life, happens all the time. Only the stories are different.

I am considering that when I get my next dog, I will name her "Pauline French".

Maybe I can find out how many true fans JustPlainBob really has in this world.

 

[PennameWombat]

I have a few different ‘universes,’ for each one I have a spreadsheet file (I use Google Sheets, but it’s compatible with Excel) with multiple sheets that have lists of characters and their physical characteristics. Other sheets have timelines across the various stories that are set in that universe.

But I also have a few names that I use in certain ways. Margarets are bosses, Rachels are sexually uninhibited, Melons are brains, Sarahs are guardians.

Otherwise, I just aim for names that fit my settings and characters.

 

[Voboy]

I also write mostly in third person and allow my characters to be described as others see them. That is harder to do in first person, but it can be done.

I've not found this to be true at all.

On the contrary: provided your FP narrators are different people within your universe, different character descriptions are baked into the cake. I addressed this above when talking about unreliable narrators, which are a cinch to pull off in FP.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've never used Scrivener to keep track of things. Money is pretty tight with me, so I don't want to buy it right now.

It's useful for me but it's not for everybody. Some writers work fine with index cards or cork boards or other low-tech solutions, and for less complex projects it'd be overkill. Whatever works.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Having been a DM for a TTRPG has given me some skill with coming up with names on the spot.

OTOH, I do not shy away from Random Name generators (just don't be a slave to them, it's OK to reroll, nobody will know) - This one bundles a lot of names & not just for people.
https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
I've also found this to be a good resource, especially for looking for names of specific cultures/in specific languages or with a specific meaning.
https://www.behindthename.com/


ETA: for last names, check wikipedia's lists of most popular last names by country, it can help.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Papyrus Author has a free version. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube.
The spell checker is much better than in Word or OpenOffice. It also can highlight filler words, has a database for characters....
Might be worth checking out.

I have heard of Papyrus Author; I'll give it a try.

I do run the Word spell checker for the first draft or even earlier. It does help as the "first cut," if that is the correct term. I wouldn't rely on it beyond that point, however. I like how it says, "You're good to go!" when it's finished. More than a bit of an exaggeration.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Jessica. (Jess and Jessie, too) I lean on that name as if it were my own. It's the first name I ever used in an online writing RPG and I've never quite gotten over my bad girl gone good. (She was a budding serial killer but ends up killing her mentor after falling for their intended victim.)

I've yet to do any serial killers of either gender.

Often, I use my yearbooks (junior high, 1969; high school 1973) for name suggestions. I mix up the first and last names so I'm not using the name of a real person. (Not that they'd likely notice after this much time.) It helps me sort out the plethora of ethnic identities in the New York area. Of course, there has been further immigration since then, from the Middle East and elsewhere. I once had a character who was of Lebanese descent, but I don't remember how I picked his last name.

However, if one searches online for most names, one or more real people will show up. I was surprised to find out that a girl at my high school has the same name as a anthropology professor at Berkeley. It's definitely not the same person, because the one I knew became a social worker in Pennsylvania.

 

[Duleigh]

So my problems are/

1. There are only so many ways of describing a blonde waif - in my latest story, I resorted to her saying (as narrator) “if you want to know what I look like, read one of my other stories“. I’m turn between extraneous repetition and leaving people who have never read another of my stories in the dark.

2. I find myself referencing events from other stories. This makes sense to me as the builder of this little world. It may make sense to people who have read my other stories (at least those who register anything beyond the amount of gratuitous sex in them). But it will totally pass by the new reader.

3. I also have a continuity challenge - especially as the stories don’t appear in chronological order. I could spend more time on that than on tying to have new ideas.

I realise that J K Rowling probably has the same problem, but what do you do in these areas?

1. Exposition is the first and most important part of the story, you're painting a picture with words. In effect you are cheating your reader out of seeing the story you see by excluding the exposition. If you're tired of describing your character, you need a new character

2. If you feel that something will totally pass by a new reader, it will, big time. Take the extra paragraph to fill in the details and leave enough clues for the reader to figure out where that event occurred.

3. It's ok to tell your reader where you are in your timeline using an intro. I have one big story that I like to write side stories for. Right now, I'm writing a story about my lead characters going to the prom, it's an "ugly duckling" story where two nerds blossom into amazing young adults and in a preface, I introduce the characters and say that "This occurs during the events in Chapter 4 of We're a Wonderful Wife..." But if your stories are written in random time periods, I can't help you there, I see time too linear, I write my stories A to Z and if I want to add something between M and N I do it in a side story.

I know it's hard to break from a character, when you fall in love with a character you want to explore every facet of their lives, it's hard to turn your back on them. That's when contests and events come in handy, you can develop whole new worlds to explore for Winter Holiday or April Fools - take that opportunity to go make a new character and setting to be crazy about.

 

[DaddyAnal1966]

I

1. Exposition is the first and most important part of the story, you're painting a picture with words. In effect you are cheating your reader out of seeing the story you see by excluding the exposition. If you're tired of describing your character, you need a new character

2. If you feel that something will totally pass by a new reader, it will, big time. Take the extra paragraph to fill in the details and leave enough clues for the reader to figure out where that event occurred.

3. It's ok to tell your reader where you are in your timeline using an intro. I have one big story that I like to write side stories for. Right now, I'm writing a story about my lead characters going to the prom, it's an "ugly duckling" story where two nerds blossom into amazing young adults and in a preface, I introduce the characters and say that "This occurs during the events in Chapter 4 of We're a Wonderful Wife..." But if your stories are written in random time periods, I can't help you there, I see time too linear, I write my stories A to Z and if I want to add something between M and N I do it in a side story.

I know it's hard to break from a character, when you fall in love with a character you want to explore every facet of their lives, it's hard to turn your back on them. That's when contests and events come in handy, you can develop whole new worlds to explore for Winter Holiday or April Fools - take that opportunity to go make a new character and setting to be crazy about.

Thanks for the feedback. I have introduced some characters with the idea of having stories focussing on them, in the same universe as it were. I agree something entirely different could also work.

 

[HopelessDreams]

My advice is: try something different. Write about a different character. It can be a very similar character, if you get satisfaction writing about this type of character, but make it a character with a different name that is not tied to the same universe. Doing so will completely free you of all the concerns you have. You can still explore all the same erotic interests, but with none of the boundaries and limits.

A potential problem with this though is that you'd end up with characters (and perhaps settings) that seem like clones of each other, even if they're not exactly identical. I personally make sure to keep each of my characters and settings meaningfully distinct from each other. But then again, I don't have many stories. For people who write a lot, and who don't want to deal with the vastly declining readership that a long series entails, your advice might suit them just fine.

 

[SimonDoom]

A potential problem with this though is that you'd end up with characters (and perhaps settings) that seem like clones of each other, even if they're not exactly identical. I personally make sure to keep each of my characters and settings meaningfully distinct from each other. But then again, I don't have many stories. For people who write a lot, and who don't want to deal with the vastly declining readership that a long series entails, your advice might suit them just fine.

This is only a problem if you assume that all your stories have the same reading pools, and I think it's probably not true. And even if it is somewhat true for many readers, I'm not sure it's a problem. Many Literotica readers, I sense, read the same kinds of things over and over and don't mind. If you change a character's name and hair color, that's all you need to do from one story to the next.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If you are likely to be using these characters for a long time, I'd suggest having a serious think about how you are going to link them all together (which it seems you are doing). There are a number of different approaches you could take.

1) Use numbered chapters in a continuous story and try to write the stories in some sort of order and expect readers to follow it.
2) Write an episodic series with the same characters, but which don't need to be read in order.
3) Consider writing the stories with similar but distincty different characters to keep things fresher.


Generally people here will tell you that keeping descriptions short is good writing even when not writing about a repeated characters. You can have the characters comb, touch, dry, toss their long blonde hair early in each story and repeat readers aren't going to mind. If you want to write a whole paragraph about what a character looks like, try and focus on what the character looks like today and how that ties into the story.



If you're doing numbered chapters this is less important, though it doesn't hurt to remind your readers every so often, but its very good practice for episodic stories. For episodic stories, I'd put a disclaimer at the top that they don't need to be read in order.



Here's where the distinction between episodic and continuous story comes in. If you're finding you need a lot of references just to write today's story that's probably an indication that you should be writing a continuous story. If, on the other hand, you're just adding them in because you can or because they are slightly relevant to introducing a character, then think about whether you actually need them. In some cases, it can be fun and more interesting to reference events that you haven't already described. If you think about they way old sit-coms used to do it, there was a certain amount of continuity as characters grew and relationships changed, but they rarely referenced what actually happened in previously. Consider the following example.


So this fills in a viewer who may have missed the last episode that Sam and Rebecca are back together, but does it in a way which is amusing for everyone (or it would have been if I could have thought up an actual joke). Even those viewers who've never seen the show at all before will start to get an impression of Sam's character.

I think this is doubly important if the reference is going to be emotianally important to the plot. I think a classic example of this is Star Wars. At the end of A New Hope (i.e. the first one), Han saves Luke's life in the final battle. At the start of the final act of Empire Strikes Back, Luke sets off to try to rescue Han (and others) despite being told it's a suicide mission. And we as the audience understand that it would be pretty shitty of Luke not to go given the debt he owes. However, since this is happening in two seperate movies, what do the screen-writers do? They have Han save Lukes life again, right at the beginning of the new movie (by going out in arctic night to find him) - that helps to ensure that the dramatic beats land more of less the same for everyone. They could have just had Han say to Luke at the beginning of the film "Hey remember how I saved you during that Deathstar assult? Wow, you really own me a debt for that one."


If you know you are going to hop around a lot, it might be a good idea to sit down and figure what the main time periods in the on-going saga are and if there is a way to signify to your readers the time that these events are taking place. If you decide, for example, that the main periods are going to be.

1) MC is in college in Boston (18-21yo).
2) MC is working in a lawyers office in New York (21-30yo)
3) MC is married and living on a farm in Arkansas (30yo+)

Then readers aren't going have much of a hard time keeping the cronology straight. If you don't want to make such radical changes you can at least try to define the overall arc of the story by the dividing things up into 'relationship' stages. I'm currently planning (though not making any actual progress towards writing) a BDSM series involving a professional dominatrix and her younger less experienced girlfriend and I have a file with tons of story ideas that can take place at various points of the relationship. I ended up listing about eight possible seasons which have different relationship dynamics, but a simplified version of each season would be something like.

1) The girlfriend isn't supposed to take part in the domme's session (but always finds a way to sneak in anyway)
2) The girlfriend becomes an official sub and is taking part in session's regularly (but the domme is overprotective of her).
3) The domme has an (not serious but takes time to recover from) accident and the sub takes over as the domme (and struggles with the role)

I'm probably going to try to write in chronological order, but there's no reason why I couldn't potentially nip back to other time periods when the relationship dynamic at that earlier stage fits the story idea I've got better (actually maybe there is, stories that revert character development that's already been done can feel superflous to readers).

(I'll stop here because I've actually just written 1,000 words that could have gone onto my unwritten stories. Explains a lot...)

My father uses a software package called TimeLine to keep track of births, deaths, marriages, individual story events, relations origins, and such in his reoccurring characters in book series. Anon TimeLine, I think. He used it for plotting one story but found it very clunky to use for that purpose. But keeping track of individuals in a universe, the package works great. It is a calendar-based system but can be adapted to nontraditional calendars for fantasy or Sci-Fi worlds.

 

[EarlyDawn1973]

I am a deeply limited / slightly obsessed (delete as appropriate) writer / hack (delete as appropriate) and all of my stories centre on the same character. The main supporting character is also featured in all my published work (I have two stories in the works where he doesn’t feature). Several other characters make appearances in two or more stories.

So my problems are/

1. There are only so many ways of describing a blonde waif - in my latest story, I resorted to her saying (as narrator) “if you want to know what I look like, read one of my other stories“. I’m turn between extraneous repetition and leaving people who have never read another of my stories in the dark.

2. I find myself referencing events from other stories. This makes sense to me as the builder of this little world. It may make sense to people who have read my other stories (at least those who register anything beyond the amount of gratuitous sex in them). But it will totally pass by the new reader.

3. I also have a continuity challenge - especially as the stories don’t appear in chronological order. I could spend more time on that than on tying to have new ideas.

I realise that J K Rowling probably has the same problem, but what do you do in these areas?

DA66

I am currently working on another story using the same characters, a continuation of their story so to speak. I find myself referring to things that happened in the previous story. I was wondering myself how to keep the reader up to speed.

 

[Voboy]

I am currently working on another story using the same characters, a continuation of their story so to speak. I find myself referring to things that happened in the previous story. I was wondering myself how to keep the reader up to speed.

What I do is just keep it vague. Make it the kind of reference that you'd put in any story, to any previous event... only, this time, there's a story out there about it.

I think of it as an easter egg for my readers.

 

[geekstyle]

(1) there are several simple techniques you can use to describe the character in a different way. It's rather simple once you got the hang of it.

If your character has long blonde hair with blue eyes and big tits.

Example 1: "I tied up my hair into a pony tail and looked at the mirror. I got to admit, I looked cute. They emphasized my blue eyes somehow. Usually I'd prefer to let my long blonde hair fall down my breasts. They tend to draw attention to my cleavage nicely. I've not problem catching boy's attention with my breast. They were 32DD after all. But having my long hair frame my tits gave them the reason to look at it. But I can't disobey daddy.

Example 2: "As per daddy's request, I'm wearing an oversized t-shirt today that hid the curve of my breasts. With my long blonde hair covering my chest, I was a good as hiding my chest from view. Even the push-up bra didn't help. I'd never needed to wear a push-up bra before. No girls with 32DD ever needed to wear a push-up bra. But at least the shirt complemented my blue eyes."

Example 3: I got to admit, my tits looked great even without a bra. That's the benefit of having 32DD breasts, I guessed. I looked at the mirror to decide between allowing my blonde hair to fall beside my breasts or pushed it to the back. The former emphasize my breasts. The latter emphasized my big blue eyes. I decided on the former. They will notice my eyes once they got closer.

You can also use it in conversation.

Example 4:

"Damn girl, your tits are getting bigger."

"I hope not," I said. "Finding 32DD bra itself is a pain in the ass."

"Maybe it's just the shirt," she said. "It brings out your big blue eyes nicely."

"Um, thanks," I said, trying not to blush. I liked people commenting about my eyes, though it always made me blushed.

"But you should bring your hair back," she said, grabbing my blonde hair and putting it over my shoulder. "It makes your tits bigger."


(2) I haven't read your story so I can't comment specifically. But you can do short backstory or paraphrasing it. For the sake of the story, just enough information so that the reader know what you're talking about.

 

[SimonDoom]

One idea about dealing with the same character across multiple chapters or stories is to make sure you give them something new and interesting to do in each chapter/story. You can do this in a few different ways.

One is like a traditional serial TV show, where each episode stands on its own, and the audience/readership gets the satisfaction of seeing a character with whom they've become familiar and fond of take on something new: a new case, a new romantic entanglement, whatever. This was the model for classic TV detective shows or situation comedies.

The other, more difficult way, is to have a continuous, ongoing story, where new things arise but the episodes fit together in a continuous story arc. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones are like this. The tricky thing about doing it this way is maintaining a continuous story arc while making sure each chapter/story provides something the readers want.

 

[Voboy]

One idea about dealing with the same character across multiple chapters or stories is to make sure you give them something new and interesting to do in each chapter/story. You can do this in a few different ways.

One is like a traditional serial TV show, where each episode stands on its own, and the audience/readership gets the satisfaction of seeing a character with whom they've become familiar and fond of take on something new: a new case, a new romantic entanglement, whatever. This was the model for classic TV detective shows or situation comedies.

The other, more difficult way, is to have a continuous, ongoing story, where new things arise but the episodes fit together in a continuous story arc. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones are like this. The tricky thing about doing it this way is maintaining a continuous story arc while making sure each chapter/story provides something the readers want.

Conversely, you can also create a stable character whom you thread through several stories just to cue your readers that they're in the same universe. Mine is Gretchen, a barrista and sometime cross-country runner whom, it seems, all my other characters either know or have heard about. I've described her minimally and I don't think she's ever said anything beyond cashier banter at the coffeeshop, but a committed reader who pays attention could probably write a very vivid Gretchen Story just based on the hints my other characters have dropped.

She'll never get her own story, the poor thing.