First things first, I'm entering a short story scholarship to help me pay for grad school. I'm expanding on an old idea I jotted down a while back. Its in 3rd person. The main character is a 10 y/o boy but is introduced as "he." "He" doesn't get a name until nearly 5 paragraphs down when someone asks him his name and he tells them. From then on, I use his name. The character who asks him his name introduces herself, and then I use her name from then on. Basically, we are introduced to the characters through their introduction to each other. My question is.... is it "taboo" to keep using these pronouns in place of a name? Should I use "the boy/girl" instead?
My thought is this: is there a reason to not introduce his name before then? Is it intentionally kept a mystery? Is his identity vague or in flux before he meets this girl? In fairness, it's only five paragraphs. Unless they're monster paras, that's not that long. So it doesn't have to mean anything -- I don't think the switch would kick me out of the story in consideration or anything. Just something to think about, I guess, with regards to the greater question -- What are you saying if you don't give these characters names, and allow them their anonymity? What, if any, point is being made? Does in strengthen the theme or is it unimportant?
I would have no problems with it. I have written shorts where i never name the characters. The one I am working on now is third person. A boy/girl thing. It's written with him as POV, and actually starts with his name (XX). XX verb noun. A very fast way to introduce the name. She will not be named until XX asks for her name. Until then I refer to the her as she or the girl or some usage of her. In speech attribution i would only use she said/says. -- When I wrote a little thing with two girls i found it was better to quickly give them both names. Names are very handy!
I didn't intentionally NOT give him a name. He started out not having a name because I couldn't think of a name that fit him. When I thought of a name, I just didn't go back and "fix" it. I am still trying to decide whether or not to go back and use his name earlier on rather that at the point I used it.
to be honest, the reason why I wrote it like that was because my notes didn't include a name for him. So I started writing without a name for the boy. The paragraphs before he is introduced is basically building the setting and the mood. he lives in the country, its windy and about to rain, he's mind wanders as he takes the sheets from the clothes line. Stuff like that. That's when this strange girl who is walking past his house shows up, snapping him out of his thoughts, and introduces herself, to which he reluctantly introduces himself. I'm still editing it... scholarship deadline is next month. I'm just debating on whether or not to go back and add his name sooner, among other things....
About the pronouns, I think using them throughout would sound more natural than repeatedly saying his name.
If the fix is obvious, I'd just make the fix. I'm assuming that this is a word processing document, so that you wouldn't have to retype the whole thing.
Honestly? Five paras of mood setting in a short story sounds like a big much for me. Now this is not having read the story, for all I know all that is very important information. I do like the gimmic of not knowing his name till he introduces himself though, I think it's a fun touch.
These scholarships are competitive. There are likely going to be many people vying for the same spot as you. You really don't want to give the deciding committee a reason to put down your story and move onto the next. Now, I haven't read your story and maybe it's super already. But five paragraphs is a lot to read without basic information like your MC's name. And one thing that was said over and over when I was in grad school was to name your characters. And in third person there isn't really a reason you can't slip the name in sooner. Honestly, not all the stories people are applying with are likely to be read until the end. You don't want to give the committee a reason to reject your work and move onto the next. They are going to have a lot of stories and applications to get through. make sure what you apply with is your best. I think @Carly Berg makes a good point that a name can help a reader better connect to a character sooner than a character without a name or a story that takes awhile to reveal the character's name. If you can develop a stronger connection between reader and character, there should be no question about doing it. You've got some time to keep working on it. A lot of the time I don't know a character's name right away, but I do think it's best to go back and name him. A lot of times too I switch names. Maybe Joe seems more like a Joel or whatever when I have completed a draft or two of the story. I applied for similar funding when I was going to grad school. I spent about a year really getting my story and application ready. I made sure it was the best I could do at the time. I found that things I questioned I really did know the answer to for the most part. And more work did pay off for me. Good luck!
Impolite and unhelpful response notwithstanding, I don't agree. It's not "dumb" to have characters' names revealed through their interactions. This is a much more mature and professional style than starting your story by stating the character's name. Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than a story which starts off something like "Cindy McTearful was the saddest girl in her whole school..." So, reserving the reveal of the character's name until it can be discovered naturally is a perfectly acceptable (I would argue preferable) stylistic choice, and until the character's name is revealed, you have no choice but to use a pronoun. I can only think of one reason why somebody might think this might be taboo, and that's related to this ridiculous identity politics notion that pronouns are damaging to individual identity. Don't buy in to this idea. It's bullshit.
I reckon you should think less about how you wrote it, and more about the opening mystery's effect on your reader. I know that when I start reading a story and a nameless person is the opening character, I spend a certain amount of time trying to figure out who this person is. That may sound like a 'good' thing—intriguing and all that—but it's actually not. What it means is that I go speeding ahead until I find out who this person is. This means that much of what goes on between the opener and the Big Reveal can get forgotten, or doesn't actually stick. Unless it's important to the story that we NOT know who he is, I would advise you to just spit it out at the start. I'm not saying the 'mystery man' can't be done, but it's tricky. Make sure you're doing it for a VERY good reason. Just the fact that you originally wrote it that way isn't, to my way of thinking, a very good reason. Nor is assuming an artificial 'mystery' will intrigue your reader. A real mystery—a character who is in deliberate disguise, or has purposely destroyed any means of identifying himself—can be intriguing. But if he's going to run into somebody a few paragraphs later who calls him by name? What's the point? You can leave the reader feeling a bit manipulated and disgruntled with that approach. Here they've spent time mulling over this 'mystery' which turns out to not be a mystery to anybody but themselves. Not really a good idea, in my opinion. It gets the reader off on the wrong foot. Reading over the thread, I also agree with @Carly Berg and @deadrats , that knowing a character's name can help a reader identify with that character sooner. In fact, I was reading a story recently where the pronoun was used for the first part of the story. Then when the character eventually got named, I found it difficult to assign that name to that person. I'd been thinking of him as 'he' ...and now he's called something else? It was a little blip, but nonetheless a blip. And totally unnecessary. Don't forget, a reader is starting with nothing. They don't know what they should be looking out for. So don't distract them with a false mystery, if you can help it?
