: Re: When Choosing Labels/titles for Characters instead of their names This is probably a repeat of a previous question, but I have a slightly different problem when writing. I don't always want to

@Annie587

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Some titles are used routinely in "real life" and so can be used freely in fiction. For example, other characters might routinely refer to someone as "the general" and address him as "general". Similarly "mayor" and "Mr Mayor", "pastor", etc.

If the characters would not know another character's name, like a stranger shows up at a party or meeting, than in real life people would probably refer to him as, "the stranger", "the man in the blue suit", "the fat lady", etc. But right away I think you can get into trouble here. It's unlikely that everyone would refer to someone by the same description. If one person says, "Hey, who is that man in the blue suit?", and a little later someone says, "Oh, the man in the blue suit was from the Health Department", that wouldn't sound odd. But if there are six characters and they all call him "the man in the blue suit" every time anyone talks about him, that would sound repetitive and implausible. In real life, maybe one person would call him "the man in the blue suit", but someone else would call him "the stranger" and someone else "that guy who showed up", etc. Some descriptions are common enough that this wouldn't be a problem. Like, "the policeman" comes to mind. Certainly if the first person to see him refers to him as, "the tall, dark-haired man in the blue suit with an angry look on his face", it would sound quite strange for other characters to use this exact same description repeatedly.

I think your best bet is to give every character a name or the sort of description people use routinely as quickly as possible. Obviously, if you have a scene where a stranger walks into the room, the narrator could say that his name is Bob Arbuthnot, but the characters won't know that until he (or someone) tells them, so it would be quite disconcerting for everyone to start calling him Mr Arbuthnot with no introduction. But that's often easily solved by having him say, "Hi, my name is Bob Artbuthnot". If that's implausible -- like I wouldn't expect the prison guard to introduce himself before he begins torturing the prisoner, like "Hi, my name is George and I'll be torturing you today" -- try to come up with something that people might plausibly call him, like "the guard".

I would definitely avoid getting yourself into a position where identifying characters get confusing. "And then the second man -- not the man holding the horse, the other one -- said ..."

I read a novel once where a character was routinely referred to by his name, and then suddenly the author called him, "the redhead". I had to stop and figure out who "the redhead" was. If he had previously mentioned the color of his hair, I missed it. I presume he wanted to avoid saying "Bob said ... then Bob walked ... then Bob opened the box ...", etc, so he figured he'd vary it up by sometimes calling him "Bob" and sometimes "the redhead". But he dropped it in without warning and I found it very disconcerting.

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