Writing about coffee pots and other technological objects

I got to thinking about coffee pots, refrigerators, and the names we use to refer to these objects. My grandfather made coffee in an electric percolator, which he referred to as a coffee pot. I make coffee in a drip coffee maker with a glass carafe and I refere to the carafe as a coffee pot.

My grandparents had an electric refrigerator, which they referred to as an icebox. My mother still refers to the fridge as an icebox. My grandparent called the refrigerator an icebox because the that was the type of fridge they had in the early 1900s. The iceman came every weekday and Saturday morning to deliver a block of ice. The ice block was placed in the bottom of their icebox and it kept the foods from spoiling.

Because my grandparents had an icebox when my mother was small child, (my mother was born in 1921); Mom refers to the fridge as an icebox. Therefore, when writing a novel or short story, a writer has to consider the terms that the characters us for object. This makes the story and the charactors authentic to the reader.

If the story is set in the past, then the writer needs to use the terms the people of the era used for objects. If the story is set in the present, but the characters are older then the writer has to look at the words they use to refer to technological objects such as refrigerator. In conversation where these words are used, the writer needs to us words that the character would use.

The little things like this that make the story believable within the context of the story. It does not matter if the story is historical fiction or science fiction, the characters will have their own names for technological object based on their cultural background and family history.

Creating a Character

17 Qawl 164 B.E. - Sunday, December 9, 2007 about 1020 AM PST

When it comes to creating characters, I have few problems with the character description or personality. It's naming the character that sometimes slows me up, especially in writing flash fiction. I like to use different name or variations of the names I've used before. If I use the same name sometimes the reader confuses that character with an earlier character.

On writing.com I put my responses to the Daily Flash Fiction prompt in a collection of stories called Flashes of Lightning. None of the stories are related in any way, in fact the only thing they have is common is Flash Fiction. Naming the characters in these stories is sometimes, a problem because I want to use different names for characters in different stories.

Today I found a web site that has names and the meaning behind the names. It's called Behind the Name and it gives "the etymology and history behind first names". This is a great site for a flash fiction writer or a writer of any type. I can use the first names for main characters in flash fiction and for all my characters in short stories and novels. This is definitely a site I'm going to bookmark. I have one of the members in the yahoo journal-writing group to thank for this web site.