And here I have agonized after realizing all my female character names started with a vowel! More than one with an "A"! Nevermind the feedback was "too many characters ", if I had made a few of them share names maybe that reader would have been more comfortable thinking the cast was not so large, after all.
This goes back to what I said in To Do Something Well. Never compare the quality of your draft to a finished, edited, professionally published book. I encourage anyone to check out Stephen Hero, which is the manuscript Nora Joyce literally retrieved from the fireplace after James threw it in to get rid of it because it was THAT BAD. It's also the first draft A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of the greatest novels ever written in English.
And here I have agonized after realizing all my female character names started with a vowel! More than one with an "A"! Nevermind the feedback was "too many characters ", if I had made a few of them share names maybe that reader would have been more comfortable thinking the cast was not so large, after all.
This goes back to what I said in To Do Something Well. Never compare the quality of your draft to a finished, edited, professionally published book. I encourage anyone to check out Stephen Hero, which is the manuscript Nora Joyce literally retrieved from the fireplace after James threw it in to get rid of it because it was THAT BAD. It's also the first draft A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of the greatest novels ever written in English.