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Trying to figure out whether I should give some minor characters names. I noticed recently in the last 3 stories that I wrote that I didn’t actually give several of the minor characters names. They just get referred to as “naval officer” or “personal trainer” or things like that. They don’t necessarily matter because they aren’t important. But at the same time I kinda feel like it should work better if I can refer to actual people.

A name is something the reader needs to keep track of, so the role itself might be alright, but context is usually everything. Having a full character workup on that character can certainly help in giving non-standard reactions to what your primary characters are up to. “Reminds me of my sister” or similar. However, that might be overboard for the needed role, so you could instead mention “They paid.” and simply move on, even cutting out that minor character all together. Of course, you can still have a character workup for them and never drop the name too. If you’ve got two or three minor characters interacting in a slightly more significant way, now you have to differentiate them, so you could always go “blond” vs “black” haired, or use names or their roles or something else; though names require a way to get them, or fast nicknames (as I did in one scene where Hermione “nicknamed” them in her head, just to keep them straight).

Yeah, I’m more concerned about the ability of readers to distinguish rather than creating a full character workup. This is because the main focus of the minor character is having sex with the main character. However, what I noticed is that in many of my stories, I either use a canon character who already has a name or if I create an OC, I used to give them names but have kinda stopped doing this. In the examples I give of “naval officer” or “personal trainer” I will refer to “naval officer on the left” or “naval officer I first spoke to”. Which technically does give people a sense of the different characters but maybe I should just say “John” or “Frank”.

I’ve edited the title, fixed the typo, and updated the disclaimer. At some point, when we are able to deal with punctuation again, the missing colon can be added to the title, and the punctuation restored in the description. It’s frustrating, I know, but we’re working on it.

And TBH, even IF I given a name to a background character, I’ll go to referring to them by their role anyways. ie “I’m Officer Burton,” the officer said. “Was that your vehicle son?” The officer pointed at the smoldering burned metal frame. Because the burden of remembering the name/association for a short period of time… is that where you want the emphasis of your story to be? However, when you’ve got multiple of the same role, as pointed earlier, Hermione gave nicknames to her attackers so I didn’t have to repeatedly say “tall one with a freckled face” and “short fat one”, when it became easier use “Freckles” and “Chubby”. Maybe the reader shed a tear when the coroner’s report described their internal organs as vindaloo?

Note, disillusioning your girlfriend in her basketball game is NOT fair competition.