I have a story in progress and am stumbling over an issue regarding names. It involves two brothers, one the younger being the main character of the whole story. The older brother is the main character in the first two or three chapters. the older brother is murdered. The younger now investigate's, that is the story. I have chosen to refer to the main character by his surname. how would you differentiate between the two brothers? is it acceptable to use one brother's surname throughout and refer to the brother by his forename or would using the surnames confuse the reader even though they have been given their own character descriptions from the beginning? I think from the way the question is worded you might understand my confusion thanks for any and all answers
We've had discussions about names of characters being too similar and the confusion that can result. It's hard enough to rememeber the names even if they're clearly different. If you have a pair of brothers then using their last name for one of them seems like a recipe for disaster, unless you're going to clearly distiguish between them every time it becomes an issue. The obvious solution is to use their first names.
You could have the second one named after his father, so he's called Junior. Then he's also not using his first name.
Ultimately, I agree with @Xoic . Just use the first names and don't overcomplicate this issue. If other characters call them by their surname, then that wouldn't be much of an issue, I suppose.
