Category: names

December 24, 2011

Wherefore Art Thou Romeo

            Pop culture reference, four hundred years late.  Plus, if you actually know how to read that title line, you’ve got a hint at what this week’s ranty blog is about.

            Sorry this is late, by the way.  Yesterday was early Christmas lunches with family and parties at night with friends.
            Speaking of which, one last push before Christmas—you can still order Kindle books as last minute gifts and my publisher has a ton of them on sale for dirt cheap prices, including my own Ex-Heroes.  You can also pick up the Kindle version of The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe for half off the paperback price.
            Now, with all that out of the way… let’s get back to our title subject.
            One thing I stumble on a lot in stories is names.  Sometimes writers will load up every single character in their manuscript with a proper name.  I read through and I know the given name of the cabbie, the waitress,  the office intern, the homeless guy at the freeway exit, the woman whose ahead of the main character in line at the grocery store.  It doesn’t matter how important—or unimportant—they are to the story, they get a name.
            Another thing that makes for a troublesome read is when there are lots of people with similar names.  Sometimes, if there are enough of them, it can just be the first letter of the name.  Believe it or not, I read two scripts this year by two different people, but each screenplay was loaded with names that began with the letter J.  There was Jason, Jackie, Jerry, Jonathan, Javarius, Jacob, Jenny, and even a Jesus.  I read one the year before where everyone’s name began with P.  Since names are the reader’s shorthand for characters, making them confusing is not a great way to go.
            What I’d like to do now is to suggest a simple rule of thumb that can eliminate both of these potential problems.  And I’d like to illustrate this rule of thumb with a popular character most of you probably know…
            Calvin and Hobbes was created by Bill Watterson back at the end of that ancient decade known as the ‘80s.  The glaciers had retreated, a few mammoths still wandered the plains, and I had just started college in western Massachusetts.  The two title characters were Calvin and his stuffed tiger, but after them the two people we saw the most were Calvin’s long-suffering mom and sometimes just-as-mischievous dad (no real question where Calvin got it from).  Their names, as any fan of the series knows, were Mom and Dad.
            No, seriously.  That was it.  Mom and Dad.  I challenge anyone here to find a single scrap of evidence from the decade or so of Calvin and Hobbes strips that shows these two characters have any names past that.
            There’s a simple explanation for why they didn’t.  The entire strip is done from Calvin’s point of view.  In his world, people randomly transmorgify into giant bugs or space aliens.  Dinosaurs are still common if you know where to look.  And those two adults in his house with the sagging poll numbers are just Mom and Dad.  Not “just” in the sense that they’re diminished somehow—they simply don’t have any identity past what Calvin’s given them.
            A character’s name should be what your main characters refer to them by.  If my main character doesn’t know their name (and never will) there’s probably not a reason for the reader to know it.  Calvin never thinks of his parents as anything other than Mom and Dad, so within the story of Calvin and Hobbesthey never get names, just those simple titles. 
            It’s not just Calvin and Hobbes, of course.  There are a lot of examples where storytellers don’t name someone because it’s unrealistic for the main character(s) to know that name.  A few other well-known characters without names include…
–The little red-haired girl
–The alien bounty hunter from X-Files
–The other woman
–House’s cellmate
–The cute blonde waitress
            It didn’t lessen any of these characters to not have actual names.  If anything, you could probably make the case that some of them were more memorable because they didn’t have names—it added to their sense of mystery. 
            Consider it this way.  Stephen King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” is about Red, Andy, and the other prisoners.  Because of this very few of the guards get named, even though there are dozens of them in the story.  They’re the outsiders.  But in King’s The Green Mile it’s the guards who are the focus of the story so most of the prisoners don’t get names, even though there are hundreds of them in the prison.
            Or, if you prefer, consider this.  If you’ve ever worked as a waiter or waitress, or ran the checkout counter at a store, how many of your customers could you name?  On the flipside, can you name the waiter from the last time you went out?  Or the clerk the last time you bought something?  They were probably even wearing a nametag, but I bet you can’t.  And the reason you can’t is because they weren’t important to your story. 
            While giving every character a name helps show how well-thought out the world is, in the long run it makes a story confusing.  If your main character doesn’t know who someone is, there’s nothing wrong with just calling them Man #3 or the other girl, and it usually makes for a much cleaner, easier read when you don’t have to info-dump half a dozen names on each page.
            Next time, I thought I’d do my annual sum-up of the year in writing.
            Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a general Happy Holidays to you all.
            Try not to take the whole week off from writing.
characterkingnamesrelevanceWatterson
September 15, 2011 / 4 Comments

Screenwriting 101

Okay, I’ve said many times that I don’t want to use this blog to go over the basics. If you’ve found your way here, I’d like to pretend that you’ve got a loose grasp of your chosen writing format. But after a few recent scripts I’ve seen, it’s apparent the basics aren’t as well-known or understood as they should be.

So, without further ado (because there’s a lot to go over), here’s a baker’s dozen of basics you should have down before you show your screenplay to someone. And especially before you submit it to someone.

1) Basic Format—Scripts are always in single space Courier 12. Always. If you heard a story about a professional screenwriter who only works in Times Roman and turns in his or her work that way, I can tell you two things—that person’s already got the leeway you only get with a well-established career, and as soon as they handed the script in the whole thing was reformatted into Courier 12. It’s the industry standard for a number of reasons, including timing and scheduling. Every other department needs that script in Courier 12.
Ahhh, says clever wanna-be #7… but if they can convert it anyway, what difference does it make if I want to write in Times or Arial or Wingdings?
It doesn’t make any difference how I write it. But when I submit it to a contest, an agent, or a production company, it has to be in Courier 12. Because scripts are always in Courier 12. Always. And I’m trying to convince people that I’m a professional.
And another thing—you don’t use scene numbers in a spec script. That’s something that comes up much later during the actual pre-production for a film. They’re a tool for the assistant directors and department heads, not the screenwriter. Putting them in now will just get me tagged as an amateur.

2) Basic Style—Always use third person, present tense. Always. The script is what’s happening on screen right now. Characters can have dialogue where they talk about things in past tense, but all my action blocks and descriptions must be in third person, present tense.
A screenplay that switches person or dips back and forth between past and present tense is always a good tip-off for readers that this is someone’s short story or novel they sloppily adapted into screenplay format. There’s also usually a reason no one bought their short story or novel, and it’s related to the fact that they didn’t bother to learn how to format a screenplay…

3) Don’t use archaic terminology – Forsooth, whenst thou uses scrivening of yesteryore, thy words appearst equally of yesteryore. And few and far between liest those who show interest in the dry, dusty bones of a mouldering anecdote.
Or, as we say today, no one’s interested in an old script.
It used to be common to end every scene with CUT TO or FADE, or to end every page with (CONTINUED). It also used to be common to see kids be-bopping to their transistor radios. In both cases, no one’s done that for years. When I started working in the film industry back in 1993, CUT TO was already dead. CONTINUED was on life support, and only crops up in very limited use, usually for ongoing dialogue.
If you’ve been using an old script from Casablanca, Star Wars, or Chinatown to learn this stuff–toss it. The film industry grows and changes like any other industry. If a script wasn’t written in the past ten years, it’s probably going to give you more bad habits than good ones.

4) Capitals — This really isn’t that tough. You use capitals the first time we see a character so the reader knows this is someone new. I’ll go into this a bit more in a minute.
You also use capitals when something important happens. When YAKKO IS SHOT or Dot’s exploring the cellar and finds A SEVERED HAND ON THE FLOOR. Keep in mind, though, that in this sense capitals are just like exclamation points. The more often I use them, the less power they have, and eventually they’ll tip the scale and just start frustrating or annoying the reader.
Also, none of this applies to dialogue. Again, for clarity, never apply the above rules to dialogue. If dialogue is in capitals it means someone is shouting, nothing else. There is no other way to interpret capitals in dialogue. So even if my step-sister has never been mentioned before, I don’t say “Have you met my step-sister CAROLYN?” I also don’t say “Hey, over there on the floor, is that A SEVERED HAND!?!!?”
Well, okay, I might shout if I see a severed hand… Question is, am I supposed to be shouting?

5) Names — Again, whenever I introduce a character, I always put them in all caps, even in the action blocks. The very first time I see YAKKO WARNER I need to know he’s someone new. After that he’s just Yakko. For example…
Another man cut from the 50’s action cloth, ZACK “ZAP” MARSHALL is standing by another panel, a few feet down the wall from Lance’s. This one has three large buttons on it, marked “laser,” “missile,” and “x-ray”. Zap also wears a wide, high-tech belt buckle with a large button in the middle of it.
REX
Ready, Zap?
    ZAP
Just give the command, Captain. I’m ready to blow it out of space.
Dialogue headers are always all caps and you never change dialogue headers for a character. Jack’s dialogue is always headed with JACK, Jill’s is always headed with JILL. The only time they would change is if the character has completely changed identities on screen.

For example, in Lord of the Rings when we find out the ranger Strider is actually Prince Aragorn. He’s STRIDER in headers until he’s revealed as ARAGORN in either the action block (because you’re introducing a new character) or dialogue. Then his next dialogue header should be STRIDER/ARAGORN. Use that double-header once, and then he’s ARAGORN from there on in.
6) Don’t Name every Character—In the abbreviated, concise format of a screenplay, names are an important tool. They tell the reader that this character is someone we need to pay attention to. They’re important enough to the story that they rate a name and not just a title like MAN #2 or WAITRESS or OFFICER.
Alas, some idiot somewhere started pushing the idea of naming everyone in a screenplay. The logic is that this gives more detail, nuance, or some such nonsense. Do not do this. If your screenplay is littered with extra names, I’m going to be tripping over myself trying to keep them straight because the logical assumption is that they need to be kept straight. You made the effort to name them, after all. So rather than focusing on the story, I’m trying to figure out how the guy at the bus stop and the waitress figure into it. That’s breaking the flow and it’s going to piss me off when I realize I wasted time and effort juggling twenty-seven names for no reason.
Never name someone just to give them a name. No one—not even the actor—is going to be upset with just MAN #2. A friend of mine has made a good career out of being MAN #2. Trust me, MAN #2 is going to make a nice chunk of money, even for just one day on set.

7) Actually Describe Things—A few years back I got to interview screenwriter-director David Goyer (The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, the Blade trilogy) and he told me a funny story about getting smacked down by Guillermo del Toro. It seems Goyer had described a character in a script as “a living nightmare.” del Toro looked at this and said “What does that even mean? That is boolshit!”
There is a time and a place for pretty, evocative imagery and language. That time and place is not while writing a screenplay. As I mentioned above, the script is about what’s on screen, which means it has to be something we can actually see. A reader needs to be able to visualize what’s on the page, and it’s very important that multiple readers visualize the same thing. I can tell you Kara is a dead ringer for my college girlfriend Penny, but that doesn’t mean a damned thing if you don’t know what Penny looked like. “It’s every bad dream you’ve ever had rolled into one” sounds fantastic, but it’s really hard to do concept sketches and storyboards off that.
During the interview, Goyer actually admitted this issue bit him in the ass when he was directing one of his own scripts. He’d given a vague, roundabout description of a sequence, but once he was on set he actually had to figure out how to film it—now he needed a real description. So the gears of production jammed up while Goyer and his assistant director tried to clear up the mess writer-Goyer had left them to deal with.
That leads nicely into…

8) Don’t write what we can’t see – A solid corollary to the last point. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen stuff like this in amateur screenplays.

Tight on a man sitting on the side of a bed. This is JOHN, a computer scientist who created a new type of parallel processor chip. He’s depressed because he found out his wife is cheating on him with his best friend. He’s moved out of the house and has been living in this hotel room in Boston for the past six weeks as he tries to figure out what to do with his life. He’s thinking about divorcing her, but part of him is still in love, despite the pain she’s caused him.
What’s wrong with that paragraph? Well except for the first sentence, how is the audience expected to know any of this? All we’re going to see is a guy sitting on a bed. Again, the script is what’s on screen. Not what’s in someone’s head on screen. That’s the stuff that comes out through dialogue, action, and maybe some clever set dressing or wardrobe choices. But definitely not in a block of exposition in the action blocks.

9) Don’t Over-Describe Characters—This sounds a little contrary to some of the stuff I’ve just said, but trust me–it isn’t. A bad habit some writers develop—especially prose writers—is to go mad with character description. Hair color, eye color, education, underwear preferences, etc… They take their entire character sketch and drop it into the screenplay.
You don’t go nuts describing characters in scripts for a few reasons. One is that you always want to be tight and lean in a screenplay. Two is, as I just said above, you don’t want to describe anything you can’t see. Three is the one none of us like to think about—there’s a good chance this character will change. I can spend half a page describing Angelina Jolie and then they decide to cast Kiera Knightly. It happens.

Just give enough description so the character stands out from any other character. Really, if you’ve got more that two sentences of character description you’ve got too much. Yeah, you may have tons more, but remember—the script is about right now. Everything else about your character will come out in the course of the story through their dialogue and actions. If it doesn’t, my problem is not that I only got two sentences of character description.


10) Don’t act – Okay, you know those little descriptions under the dialogue header, usually in parentheses? These are called parentheticals. Sometimes, as a joke, they’re called wrylies. It’s a quick set of instructions to the actor about how the line’s supposed to be delivered.

Actors hate parentheticals. They hate them the same way screenwriters hate development and producers who want you to add in a bit with a dog and a part for their girlfriend. It’s someone who has no idea how to do your job telling you how to do your job. Let’s look at a quick scene from one of my own scripts…
WENDY
(excited)
You did it!
TED
(proud)
Yeah, great shot, Zap!
LANCE
(relieved)
All clear again, Captain.
REX
(serious)
Yes. But for how long?
WENDY
(confused)
What do you mean, Rex?
REX
(thoughtful)
If it wasn’t for brave crewmen like Lance, Zap, Ted, and the rest of you, the galactispiders would make the starways far too dangerous.
Are those parentheticals really telling you anything useful? Most actors would be able to figure this stuff out just from context. So would any reader. Which, for the record, is why none of these parentheticals are actually in my script—I just added them for this example.
Y’see, Timmy, there are only two times to use a parenthetical. One is if it’s life or death important to the story that this line is delivered a certain way. If the whole film is going to fall apart if Yakko doesn’t whisper in this scene, then add a (whispered) to that line of dialogue. Two is if I think there’s a very real chance this line could be misunderstood, even with all the context and lines before it, and the resulting misreading will destroy the entire film.
If you’ve got a parenthetical in your screenplay, think long and hard about if it meets one of these two criteria. And then remove it. They’re the adverbs of screenwriting.

11) Don’t direct—Okay, remember what I just said about actors hating it when you tell them how to act? Directors loathe writers who fill up a script with directing notes. When I fill pages with stuff like “Dolly over to reveal” or “pan up to Dot’s face,” directors start shaking their heads and figuring out how they’re going to shoot it.
Like the parenthetical above, only put in direction if it’s life or death important to the film. If the story hinges on this being a crane shot, then put in—if the story really hinges on it. Me thinking this scene would be really cool with a crane does not make it a pivotal shot.

Plus, a lot of time adding direction honestly detracts from the story. Here’s a great example—how many of you have seen The Shawshank Redemption? The last time we see Andy walking to his cell, it’s pretty important that we don’t see his feet, right? Except if I point that out, readers are going to spend the next ten pages trying to figure out what’s so important about Andy’s feet and that’s going to override a lot of what’s going on now. If I hadn’t mentioned it, they wouldn’t’ve thought about it, but now it’s essentially a low-level spoiler in my own script that his shoes are going to be key. By the time the readers get to the flashback and figure it out, they’ll understand that when the movie is filmed we can’t see his feet at that point.
By the way, just to clarify—it doesn’t matter if I plan on directing the script myself. The script I submit to a contest, an agent, or a producer, has to be a script for anyone. If you’ve actually going to be the director, you’ll have plenty of time later to add that stuff. Plus you’ll have your own notebook and schedule. For now, all those things are just taking up space on the page.
12) VO vs. OC—Okay there’s a huge difference between voice-over and off-camera. This is one of those little things that can get me tagged instantly as an amateur if I get them wrong.

Voice-over (V.O.) is when someone’s talking that no one else can hear. Announcers and narrators are usually voice-over. Train of thought is voice-over. “Little did he know…” tends to be voice-over. Another good tip—I will never, ever see lips moving for a voice-over.
Now off-camera (OC) is when someone’s talking that other characters can hear but the audience can’t see. For example, if Yakko’s on his phone talking to Dot, and we hear her voice, she’s off-camera, not voice over. That old bit when everyone hears a voice, turns, and sees that Wakko’s come into the room—that’s off-camera.
I want to use OC carefully, because too much makes it look like I’m trying to direct again (see above). I’m not going to put it during an intercut phone call. I don’t use it when we know Dot’s on the other side of the room but we’re not seeing her at this moment.

13) Don’t use real celebrities as characters—The last of our baker’s dozen. I’ve read screenplays where one character married Carmen Electra, another one where someone ended up on a cruise with Whoopi Goldberg, and a really, really creepy one about Matt Damon falling in love with a producer (who happened to have the same name as the screenwriter). Unless your movie is already in production and Zachary Levi happens to be your best friend in the world who would do anything for you, do not use his name in your screenplay.
Yeah, I’m sure some of you are already calling foul. After all, didn’t I litter Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots with mentions of celebrity zombies? Well, yes I did. But that’s the difference between a book and a screenplay—you can still read the book if Angelina Jolie, Alex Trebek, or Nathan Fillion don’t show up. Now if someone ever decides to make a movie… well, then there’ll be issues. Although I feel relatively safe saying Fillion would show up…
So, thirteen tips to a more coherent screenplay. I’m betting the majority of you knew most of them. But a few of you… well, now you know.
And knowing is half the battle.
Next week, I think I’ll steal another reader suggestion and show you some of my etchings
Until then, go write.
characterdescriptionnamesscreenwriting
February 3, 2011 / 2 Comments

Who is Keyser Sose?

Why am I using that famous question as the title?

No reason.

So, a while back, someone I was working with asked if I’d be willing to look over a script he’d been working on with a friend. I said sure, because I hadn’t yet learned to be wary of such situations. And then spent a few days figuring out what I could politely say about said script…

Almost two-thirds of the script was other movies. Quotes from other movies. Visual references to other movies. Deliberate parallel scenes from other movies. Discussions about other movies. And what was left–the original material– wasn’t much.

Let me tell you another little story.

I was reading a script for one contest where the main character was named Sam Spade. He worked in a diner where their specialty chicken sandwich was called the Black Bird. One of his regulars was named Archer. There’s a waitress named Brigid, and the cook was named Wilmer. Then one day a guy named Cairo wanders in. He works for a fellow named Gutman.

These are the names of pretty much every character in The Maltese Falcon, by the way. If you didn’t know that, hang your head in shame and go rearrange your Netflix queue. How are you going to write anything new if you don’t know the classics?

Anyway, I’m getting away from the point.

What was the point, you ask?

Well, that’s a good question. What was the point of all these names and moments and interactions? If someone’s characters are going to do nothing but talk about movies and they’ve written their script to shamelessly copy movies, what do you think it’s about?

That’s right. It’s about a lost dog.

And that other one. With all those Maltese Falcon references, there’s got to be a lost treasure or a mystery or something going on, right?

Nope. It was a slice-of-life story about this person’s dreams and that person’s aspirations and desperate sex in the storeroom and driving home at night with the music loud. That’s it.

Soooooo… what’s up with all those references?

Personally, I blame Kevin Smith.

Ever since those guys in Clerks had a long debate about the contractors who built the Death Star, dropping references into stories and dialogue has become a standard. Oh, people did it before him but he started doing it in movies and made it very widespread. Smith still does it. Stephen King does it. I do it.

(…like how I lump myself in with the big guys? Not egotistical at all…)

The catch, of course, is that these writers have a reason for doing this. When Dante and Randall get in an argument about the Star Wars trilogy, we’re learning more about them than we are about the movies. When Milla Jovovich’s confused character in Resident Evil goes down into an unbelievable underground world, is it that shocking to discover she’s named Alice?

And let’s not forget that sometimes the reference is just there to drive home similarities or contrasts. In my own books, the Mighty Dragon’s real name is George Bailey. Remember the poor sap in Office Space who’s named Michael Bolton but loathes that musician’s songs?

Y’see, Timmy, once you start throwing out lots of familiar names and sequences, people are going to start looking for patterns. That’s what a good audience does. And there needs to be one. Each of these odd names or references is going to knock a reader out of the story for a moment or two, and if you don’t have any sort of payoff for that disruption… well, it’s not going to go over well.

Not only that, if you don’t acknowledge the oddness of everyone who enters this diner having the same name as a Maltese Falcon character, your readers are just going to get annoyed. If you acknowledge it but don’t have a real, in-story reason why all of them have these names, that’s going to be seriously annoying.

No, sorry, it’s not acceptable just because your three best friends said it was really cool and it wasn’t disruptive.

If you’re going to do something clever in your story, awesome. As long as there’s a real reason for doing it.

Speaking of doing it… next week’s going to be pretty close to Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d ramble on about the rules of love. Yep, there are rules. If only I’d known them in high school. Or college.

Until then, go write.

coincidencedisbeliefnamesrelevancesmith
November 25, 2010 / 3 Comments

Naming Your Heroes

I thank all of you who dragged yourselves either out of a triptophan-induced coma to read this right after I posted it or for taking the time to check in while you’re in line for a Black Friday sale.

I’ve talked once before about names for characters and ways to come up with them and how much meaning needs (or doesn’t need) to be given to them. I thought it would be a good time to revisit that train of thought, especially since I’ve had two books come out since then. One of which has become unexpectedly popular.
If you’ve listened to or read any of the different interviews I’ve done over the past year, you know a lot of the characters in Ex-Heroes first came to be back during my grade school years. At the time, my big goal in life was to make comic books, even though I didn’t know the art and the story were done by two different people. I made up tons and tons of characters when I was supposed to be diagramming sentences, and I’d sketch them out in one of the art notebooks my mom would get me. In all fairness, about 70% of them were either crap or completely derivative of existing Marvel or DC characters.
A few had solid ideas behind them, though. So here’s how some of their names developed (or just fell) on the page. And because I’m not above self-depricating humor, here are some of the sketches of the characters that eventually, well, grew up into the ones in the book.
By the way, a little warning right up front– all the images you’re about to see are close to twenty-five years old. They were so faint I had to use my camera because the scanner couldn’t pick up the images. The artwork is not spectacular. Neither is the sense of proportions. The sense of light and shadow is non-existent. God forgive me, much of it is influenced by mid-late ‘80s fashion.
All that being said, unnecessary cruelty will not be tolerated and shall be stomped out post-haste.

St. George got his name a bit circularly. I knew early on I was going to be using a lot of the old characters I’d made up in middle school and junior high, and one of these was the Dragon (originally created as a fresh teenage recruit for Marvel’s New Mutants). I also knew I wanted the post-apocalyptic heroes and civilians to be on a more casual, even level with each other. I figured it wouldn’t be uncommon for many of the heroes to have given up their secret identities. The catch here was that I still felt the Mighty Dragon, as my ‘alpha’ hero, would be a person of great respect in the community.
As it happens, I’ve loved the story of St. George and the Dragon since I was a kid, and this solved a number of issues in one fell swoop. It also didn’t take long to go from there to making his real name George Bailey, just like the lovable martyr Jimmy Stewart played in It’s A Wonderful Life. This helped give St. George a bit more of a “Superman” feel to him (the phenomenally powerful hero with the goofy, clumsy secret identity) and humanized him as a guy trying to deal with the very-recognizable name his parents hung on him. It also immediately tied him to a figure with a solid moral code and strong ethics.
Here’s a fun fact. Stealth was originally a man. He was one of my oldest characters, originally called Night Stalker, first made up in Mr. Berenson’s fifth grade class at York Middle School. That’s kind of an overused name, though, so I played around and came up with Stealth, which is kind of self-explanatory.  At the same time, I was noticing the rarity of female characters in my early oeuvre, and I liked the idea of a woman as the uber badass of the Mount.
I didn’t want to give Stealth’s real name for a few reasons. Her backstory was actually the second one I wrote for the novel, and as I polished it over four or five more drafts it became apparent she was the most obsessed and driven of all of them. She holds herself to such an impossibly high standard and feels like she has to prove something. Considering how she decided to become a hero, it made no sense for her to give up her secret identity, despite the conditions they were all living under. This also firmed up her character even more, because what kind of woman refuses to remove her mask when there’s such a small number of people left in the world?
Zzzap is, by far, the most powerful being in the story, and it’s only his own personal limitations which hold him back. He gets queasy and his mental reactions are a lot slower than what he’s physically capable of doing. I wanted a very plain, average name. Dare I say it, a Joe Six-Pack name.
I also admit I wanted to evoke the sense of a classic comic book secret identity with at least one of my characters. So many of those heroes have alliterative names. Peter Parker. Wally West. Reed Richards. Susan Storm. Bruce Banner. Matt Murdock. Stephen Strange. Heck, people have written essays on Superman’s LL fixation with his supporting cast. So Zzzap became Barry Burke.
For the record, the actual name Zzzap, with three Z’s, was inspired by an old Hulk villain called Zzzax. I read somewhere that writer Steve Englehart wanted someone who’d always come last in any alphabetical listing. So I followed in his footsteps with Zzzap.
Actually, one more fun fact. I was digging through the old sketchbooks for pictures to go with this post and came across this one here with the very tiny picture of “Zap” amidst a swarm of heroes. I seem to remember this as a very early experiment in starting a picture with stick-figures (which I think I learned from Draw Comics The Marvel Way or some such book). If the date on the cover of the sketchbook is to be believed, it means this is probably one of the oldest pictures of any of these heroes, from 1982. So Zzzap predates Return of the Jedi.
When I first came up with the idea for Gorgon, I freely admit it was a prepubescent idea for a character who could touch Rogue from the X-Men without getting zapped. I made him an energy-vampire off the rationale that similar powers would cancel each other out, and once it was optic-based (he hid his eyes behind sunglasses) Gorgon seemed like a pretty straightforward name to use. His vague backstory was created just for the novel, as was the idea of his custom, camera-iris goggles.
For the record, this was long before most people pictured Rogue as Anna Paquin, and even longer before Anna Paquin was getting in on with vampires on a regular basis. That was all just a bit of serendipity.
His real name of Nikolai Bartamian came from a desire to show off a bit of LA’s melting pot. There’s just a ton of different populations here. Mexican. Korean. Armenian. Chinese. Japanese. I didn’t want it to feel like a pile of male white Anglo-Saxon heroes. And Bartamian is the last name of a friend of mine.
In my original collection of sketches and index cards, Cerberus wasn’t so much a suit of armor as a technological weapons array you wore with regular clothes (kind of like Whiplash in Iron Man 2). It even had a cape and flared gloves. The name came from its ability to throw three types of energy beams. And he was a villain (yep, another he-becomes-she), or at least such a dark, zero-tolerance anti-hero/ mercenary-for-hire that he served as a villain in all respects.
For Ex-Heroes, since Cerberus is this huge, powerful, armored machine, the person inside had to be contrasted as much as possible to stand out. Danielle is a great name which even looks feminine on the page. I also liked the idea of a woman who wants to be feminine, for the guys to look at her, but really has no idea how to make that happen. And it doesn’t help that she’s usually wearing this monstrous battlesuit and has a code-name which makes people mistake her for a man. Morris, in all honesty, I just picked out of the air because it sounded good with Danielle.

Cairax Murrain was always a monster, always a villain. Originally he was a cape-and-robed sorcerer (named John Carracks) who turned into the demon through a big long ritual (and a sticky, Alien-esque cocoon). The name Cairax was just a bunch of hard syllables, meant to sound a bit alien. Murrain is an archaic word for plague (anyone who’s sat through a full Seder probably knew that already). Together it’s a pretty good name for a demon. The two part name also hints at a certain level of self-awareness and intelligence, because I wanted it clear that the demon itself wasn’t just some slavering beast. Being a little older, I liked the idea of evil slaved to good through this magical “partnership” and then effectively becoming a villain again because of the ex-virus.
His real name of Maxwell Hale came from two places, so to speak. Max ties back to Cariax, sound-wise, and let me hint the demon isn’t entirely responsible for Max coming across as a bit ruthless and self-centered, no matter how noble his motives were. On the flipside, Hale is a very simple name. It may not be common but it sounds common, which helped ground the guy who was supposed to be this amazing sorcerer and make him a bit more relatable.
And that, I think, covers most of the bases for now. I could go into Regenerator, Midknight, Blockbuster, and dear little Banzai, but this is kind of long already and most of the points I wanted to make have been covered.
Next time, I’ll probably go on for a dozen or two paragraphs about something else.
Until then, have a Happy Thanksgiving. And try to do some writing after the pecan pie.
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