: Re: Multiple characters without names: how to address First off, the answer might be pretty much obvious (that there is no clear way to distinguish these characters) but I would still very much

@Goswami879

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Here is a problem I run into regularly as a short story writer. Sometimes I don't ever plan to give someone a name. Particularly if they are going to be disposed of in some fashion not warranting the effort of naming them.

Name them by what they are wearing, i.e. a mugger in a red jacket becomes Red Jacket for the sake of the internal dialog of my main character. He isn't interested in them, he just needs a way to identify them.

This trick works as long as there are only a few people who don't need names and the interaction with the characters will be a short one. More than a few pages of this and people may become annoyed and hope for Red Jacket's grisly demise to happen sooner rather than later.

You can simply decide to name them by a personal descriptive attribute, i.e. big hands, dark eyes, scary man with a lisp. Each of these focuses on a threatening aspect of the person allowing you to build around that descriptive element.

In the case of big hands he is a bit fidgety, with many scars criss-crossing his rough and callused flesh. He becomes more than just a pair of hands, he becomes the essence of physical violence (that he is the survivor of) giving him a greater menace without giving him a name.
Dark eyes has a penetrating (and perceived to be unblinking) stare which bares the soul of anyone who gazes into them. The victim of said stare always turns away.
Scary man with a lisp is a hulking brute, but his lisp, which he is very sensitive about, detracts from his menace. This upsets him and makes him even more violent. Think Mike Tyson and his very distracting voice.

You don't always need to give your characters names as long as you give them presence with the descriptions when they come onto the scene. This information cements them into the consciousness of the reader and their names become less important than whatever they represent.

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