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Dale Hurst – Author - Dale Hurst is an author, journalist and broadcaster.
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What’s in a Name? — Comments on Complicated Character Names

14 September 2018 No Comments

I have now sold at least 65 copies of my debut novel in the 15 weeks that it has been available. Quite an achievement in itself, when you consider that most self-published authors don’t sell 50 copies of their first book at all. For the most part, the response has been very positive, though many readers have come up to me and remarked on how their vocabulary has expanded since reading.

The recurring point of “criticism” (for want of a better word) has been the characters’ names, which some have viewed as complicated. So I am dedicating this next post to discussing how complicated character names are rife within literature and that mine are on par with, if not easier to read than some authors.

Charles Dickens At His DeskAs has been discussed before, several great 18th, 19th and 20th century authors influenced my literary style when it came to writing The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty and the related works that came before and after it. Of all of them, two stick out in my mind in having unorthodox, whimsical and downright weird character names. They are Charles Dickens and Mervyn Peake.

When it came to writing the first full Berylford novel, starting back in 2008, I began with a list of 40 characters, many of whom I renamed as time went on, particularly as their surnames were swapped with those of my extended family. To give a few examples, Whitlock, Osborne, Gwynne and Warwick. Others, such as Gussage, are named after areas in Dorset, just as J.K. Rowling named some of her better-known characters after places in England (think Dursley in Gloucestershire, Snape in Suffolk and Flitwick in Bedfordshire).

And then there are those that are just downright odd and came from my imagination, and were partly influenced by those two aforementioned novelists: Dickens and Peake. Any fan of literature will know that Dickens’ characters all had quite characteristic and complex names, some of the more complicated to read on a page that strike me include Tulkinghorn and Jarndyce from Bleak House, Flintwinch and Tattycoram from Little Dorrit, Grewgious from The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Pecksniff and Chuzzlewit from Martin Chuzzlewit. The same goes for surnames like Barquentine and Prunesqualor from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books.

Upon reading those, would it be fair to say that surnames such as Vyrrington, Haffisidge and Rudgerleigh are less-complicated to read? I would say so. Having said that, those three surnames underwent numerous changes across the eight-year writing process for Lust & Liberty. Only one major family retained their surname from start to finish, and is definitively very Dickensian or Peakesque. Stirkwhistle. I don’t remember how that name came into my head when it did nearly ten years ago, but naming one of my favourite characters to write — Abel Stirkwhistle — I could not imagine him being called anything else.

If all characters in all novels set in a real-life place were given mundane names, how would they be memorable or unique, not to mention representative of the author’s style?


By popular demand, I am going to dedicate some future posts to telling the story behind creating some of my more favourite characters in my Berylford universe; how they first came to be in the stories and what or who influenced them.

 

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Blog

Sex Scenes in Literature – the Go-To Influencers

5 September 2018 No Comments
two people laying on a bed covered with a floral comforter

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Erotic fiction has regained a place in the world since the Fifty Shades of Grey series and related books took the world by storm (or not, depending on your allegiance). But BDSM sex chambers and millionaires played by Jamie Dornan aside, there is an art to writing about sex and sexual acts in fiction.

I was recently asked if it took me a long time to write the three scenes that feature in The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty. In truth, it took me longer to decide whether they were necessary in the first place. Could I pull off a half-decent romantic mystery novel without giving a graphic illustration of my anti-heroine Lady Vyrrington’s sexual encounters? Ultimately, I decided that, yes, they would be. The writing of the scenes themselves only took a day each, or so.

The best way, in my opinion, to learn how to write a sex scene suitable to the style and tone you’re going for in your own work, is to read how it’s done in books of similar genre. This gives the best idea of how to work the language to sound good and illustrate what is happening without putting off the more prudish reader.

Ken Follett, author of Pillars of the Earth and A Dangerous Fortune (among others) is my key influence in this regard. Sex scenes are a common occurrence in his novels, and in many instances, he doesn’t beat about the bush.

Then there’s Angela Carter, who wrote The Bloody Chamber, an anthology of short stories, one of which is entitled The Snow Child, which ends with a Count having sex with the corpse of a girl his wife has just murdered. The words “thrust his virile member” carry a certain memorable quality and poetic gravitas, yet retain their graphic nature.

I would recommend against using EL James as an influence for sex scene writing, not least because it’s lazy but also her literary skill has divided opinions. And having read the first Fifty Shades book, I don’t hold her skills as a writer in high regard. However, her scenes may serve as a starting point on which you can build and improve.

Only use sexual slang if you are describing the scene in dialogue. Obviously, if it’s a first-person narrator, the rules are slightly more flexible. But otherwise, “thrust his virile member“, regardless of the genre and style of your writing, is going to appeal to the reader more than “shoved his cock in“. Unless, of course, you are deliberately satirising, in which case there are different rules altogether.

If you have any further questions on writing sex scenes in fiction, please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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About me

Dale Hurst is an author specialising in historical fiction, mystery, crime and black comedy.

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