As I plow through some line edits, I am once again struck by what a very aural writer I can be. I have been known, at times, to put down homophones of the word I mean write. (This can get very confusing to copyeditors, editors, critique partners. I’ve been in situations where I get back critiques where I’m incredibly confused, though clearly not half as confused as the reader, who has been wrestling with the text and trying to come up with a rational interpretation for whatever it is I’m accidentally saying — such as the sudden appearance of a grizzly sighting on the streets of Rome or an island off the Florida coast.
It may be a reason I wrestle so with names, because to me, it’s the sound of a name that really affects my interpretation of it. I was at a workshop about names with writer Jo Beverly a few years back, and she rocked my world by explaining that the name Caitlin, so common in America (pronounced “Kate-lyn”), is in Wales pronounced “Kath-leen” (and in Ireland “Koyt-hleen” and if you go on the internet, people argue about it constantly!)
One of my CPs, by contrast, is very visual. It doesn’t matter to her as much what the names sound like, as long as they don’t look the same. She’s very conscious of how many names start with the same letter. (Since I am writing a book series with a Jenny, a Josh, and a Jamie, you can see that it’s not something I notice as much!) After reading an early draft of my latest book, she asked if I’d intentionally given an uncle and his niece the names Cornelius and Cornelia. (Yes. And their nicknames are way different.) And that, on top of a Caitlin (the American way), was too much for her.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I guess that also depends on how you pronounce things. For example, I do not pronounce the word Mary like I pronounce the word marry, so I missed out completely on a joke that one of my CPs other readers kept making in regards to her manuscript. However, I am aware of unintentional rhymes I may have built into my own work.
What about you? Do you notice sounds or signs?
April 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am
I, too, am a very aural writer. My sentences have to run to a particular cadence that is only mine. (Hmmm . . . Thoreau anyone?)
BTW–I’m related to a slew of Corneliuses, and even a Cornelia. That’s on the New England side of the family.
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April 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am
I pay attention to sound when it comes to names (not only of people but places as well). But I’m visual enough that poor editing bothers me (their, they’re, there mistakes and so on).
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April 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
I’m definitely aural during the writing. The visual is stronger during rewrites.
My thing is to avoid having most of the names end with y or ie. I’ll insticitively choose the different spellings for appearance but then I realize they sound the same.
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April 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am
Definitely visual. Even when I hear things, the words pan visually in my head.
I know. Insanity reigns. But it helps with spelling! I always completely understood Anne’s need to be Anne with an E.
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April 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
I’m definitely visual. Like Susan, words are pictures to me.
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April 21st, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I’m now curious as to which form of ‘marry’ you say differently.
I am auditory. Though, I am also a lazy reader. I grew up reading Iron Man comics, and one of Tony Stark’s best friends was James Rhodes – ‘Rhodey’. I didn’t process that very well and called him Rodney for years, because it sounded right to me.
Mistakes like that have spawned a family favorite joke when interpreting names in Fantasy novels.
We joke that in Robert Jordan’s WoT, the ‘White Tower’ is actually pronounced the ‘WUH-hit-ee toe-ER’
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April 21st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Yeah, it’s all the way the letters look on the page. I can read a whole book and you can ask me who the main character is and I won’t be able to tell you. But if you showed me a list of names, I’d be able to find it. This means that I very often mispronounce names in my head (if I bother pronouncing them at all).
This also means that I’ll rarely notice names that rhyme (I only realized the Mary/Harry business when I was reading it out loud).
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April 21st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I’m pretty aural, too. (Why does that sound dirty?)
In my current WIP I have characters named Rico, Razor and Rek. And I don’t want to change any of them unless forced to. They sound completely different to me and each fits the character perfectly.
On a slightly related note… I can never keep Phury and Rhage straight in J.R. Ward’s books. Now, they don’t sound the same… but they mean the same thing and so the two characters are interchangeable for me — even after reading one of their books… Rhage’s? Phury’s isn’t out yet, right? (Those names totally confuse me even though the characters are so different. I can’t keep their names straight.)
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April 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 am
I remember your pointing out to me in one of my earlier YAs that even though the hero and heroine’s names looked completely different, they rhymed: Chai and Ty. I never would have picked up on that.
In my GHOST HUNTRESS book, I have Kendall and her little sister Kaitlin. I’ve had people say “that’s a huge no-no,” but honestly…people DO name their kids similiar names or names starting with the same letter. My family is Jennifer, Jeff, and Jessica (although I never went by Jessica.)
Again…it’s what works for you and your story, I’d say. (And my editor hasn’t had a problem with Kendall and Kaitlin…yet.)
= )
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