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Folks, I need your help. After writing almost 20,000 words on my Quest story, I realize I made a major mistake at the beginning - I made three characters with very similar names. I want to change two of them, but I just KNOW if I try and do it I'll get confused and miss the name in one place or replace the wrong one in another. Help!
Possible work-around
Pick just one of the characters you want to adjust and then go through your story and only change that one character. Once you have completed that one, rinse and repeat.
Gut it Out
Only 19th Century Russian novelists get to change the names of their characters half way through the story. Gut it out and press on with what you have. When your done and if you wish to pull down your story, re-edit it and re-post it, make the changes then.
Courage of one's convictions and the chutzpah to see it through is what matter.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
First make a backup copy of
First make a backup copy of what you've written.
Then on only one of the copies, use replace function (CTRL-H) to replace the names one at a time. Then ask someone else to check it.
If something goes wrong, you still have the original to go back to.
hear here!!!
make a backup and jump in with both feet repeat until you get it right
Name Change
I've been guilty of doing that several times, and didn't know it. Do 'Ctrl f', write in the word you are looking for, then hit the 'replace tab and write in the word you want to substitute. Then you can click on replace all. Voila! At least this works in Word.
Portia
Portia
Easy fix
Continue writing with the similar names and then do a global find and replace, this way you don't have to look it all up yourselves and get confused. early on i once swapped the name of one minor character with a name from another story.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Al of the above.?
I think I'd take Nancy's advice and finish the story first; step back from it for a few days, then re-read it. The problem may be less than you imagine, and I have known writings where it seemed very likely that the author had used similar names deliberately, for plot purposes. The simplest of those is so that a third character can mix the other two up.
If you still think you need a change, read the story again to see if you have actually used the correct name in each place that a name occurs. You cannot do this 100% but catch any 'crosses' that you can.
Acquaint yourself - if you need to - with the [Find] and [Replace] functions in the program you use for writing.
Make a sacrificial copy - or copies - of your story, rename the file, and practice on that copy. Delete that sacrificial file when that step is finished.
Make a copy; name it so that you know this one matters. Do the replacements on it. Then try to get that file proofed by someone, or better by several someones.
Do not delete your original text until you have two good copies of the revised story, preferably on different drives.
And above all, as it says on the cover in large friendly letters...
Don't Panic!
Regards
Xi
Why change the names?
Why change the names?
In life as in fiction, you can bump with persones how have similar names.
In one year back at shool, we had 3 with the same first name.!!
But if you really need to change them, the other sugestion should work good.
ALWAY work from a copy. ALWAY !!!
What about having the character "officially" change there name, no need to re-write, only to find a reason why.
tmf
Why? Because It Confuses Readers...
...or forces them to concentrate on something that shouldn't be an issue and distracts them from what the author really wants them to be thinking about.
Even when in RL three people in a class have the same name, someone usually comes up with a nickname or something to tell them apart. (Sometimes whether they like it or not.)
(The San Jose State football team a few years back had two running backs both named (first, middle and last, AFAIK) after the same father. They called one James Junior; the other was James T. Back in 1984 baseball's Cincinnati Reds had two pitchers in their minor league system named Michael Anthony (Mike) Smith, one from Texas and the other from Mississippi. (Both eventually reached the majors, but not at the same time or with the same team.) In their first spring training together, somebody sewed outlines of their home states onto their uniforms.)
Eric