Desiderius Price

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Context is everything here. If it’s a long scene with only that other character, you might get away with “naval officer” and use “he” or “she” pronouns; M/F being easier at than over, say M/M or F/F. And your main character not remembering the name the next day. Going down a line? Maybe a name, maybe not. If I’m portraying the opening run of football players within cheerleaders? Describe the paint job, the similarity, or even one or two differences as you’re going down that line. If you’re bouncing between characters, back and forth, well, names are likely more critical. (ps. trying to retire “minor” from this conversation unless you’re wanting it to be under-18.)

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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?

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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).

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I’ve done both good and bad flashbacks. The bad one is why I split up my first original story, because I was using them to cover backstory that was better to split off to other stories (ie, I was confusing myself). The good is a quick flash “forward” of a future suspense point (ie Voldemort exclaiming the potion in his cup is the “Elixir of Immortality”) with a “two years earlier….” as the fast move back in time point. Which ever way it’s done, flash-forward or flash-backward, that scene should be kept relatively short. If it needs to span chapters, then consider a separate backstory, and snippets for the flash back itself.

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42724 and a palindrome

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Spotted this on AO3’s reddit, an alignment chart for work titles, maybe it’ll help? Link to post (to credit the artist) https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/16plpw3/i_made_an_alignment_chart_for_ao3_work_titles/