Do you have any significant characters that are nameless? Why are they nameless? How does this tie into your plot?

And how do you deal with the anonymity in the narration and dialog? How do you refer to the nameless character? How do other characters manage?

In one of my sci-fi's I have a character who is named simply "The Journalist". (his real name's Derek but nobody really asks. )

Characters coped. Characters just call him the Journalist -- some because they don't know his name, and some because they think it's so awesomely cool that way.

But it was a script so I didn't have to handle a narrator.

I have one character that is nameless, and the entire plot of the story revolves around his search for an identity.

This boy, now nearly 16, was never named because his eccentric mother refused to pick a name until his father came home. The father abandoned the family and never returned, and the kid is tired of being a nameless "status." So he sets out to find his father and gets stuck in a 1970s orange hippie van with a bunch of other mildly insane relatives.

Obviously, the boy's anonymity plays a large part in the story. His mother unofficially calls him "Child," and that is the name used on documents. That is also the term the narration uses consistently. Additionally, relatives often refer to him by relation - son, grandson, nephew, etc.

I use these "names" to make a point in the story. The boy hates being a nameless "status," so he sets out to earn a real name and an identity. What he learns is that part of your personal identity is in your relationship to others, and titles like "son" and "father" are very special indeed because of the relationships they signify.

Because you pick one name for a character and stick with it in the narration (action) of a script, dealing with the anonymity isn't difficult from the writer's standpoint. What's going to be tricky is explaining that Child doesn't have a name and why... without being OTN...

"The Journalist" stuck so badly. It just fits the character beautifully - who cares if he's got a real name?

I sometimes write short stories in first person, which allows for the character not to be named in some instances. This saves me from having to come up with a name for a character who is only around for a few pages.

I have two characters that lack names for the first part of my story. This is because they were basically lab experiments and were never named beyond Nova 1 and Nova 2. In contact with each other they refer to the other as Nova but they never tell anyone else their "name" because in their minds it belongs to the other. For narration reference I use descriptions so "the child", the boy" etc. Characters have more trouble with it but these two don't interact much before they find names.

Very true.

I look forward to returning to that character someday.

I have many unnamed characters in Charlotte's Story since they don't exist yet. I only have key characters figured out...still needing to figure out side characters...I'm not going to think about that task at the moment. XD

I tend to make up characters as I go, so that's probably how it'll end up in Charlotte's Story.

I HAD unnamed characters. But then I got involved working in a sort of backstory and Shan and Aione got names =)

eruheran

Agreed. Often, in short works, you can get away without naming characters. The same goes for insignificant characters in longer works, as well as scripts.

Yeah, just think of all the characters in credits who are known as "Teacher #1", "Teacher #2", and so on.

And you have no idea who is #1, and who is #2.

Yeah, that is always annoying.