I’m writing a dark academia/sci fi novel set in an elite college.
[name_f][/name_f]Some characters are [name_m]Stephen[/name_m], [name_m]Steffan[/name_m], and [name_f]Stefania[/name_f]. [name_m]Steffan[/name_m] goes by his last name to avoid name confusion with the other two. I added this as an idea because when I went to a fancy college for a few years so many people had the same names. It was like the parents who could afford to send their kids there all had a list of 15 names they chose from. [name_f]Do[/name_f] you think this idea will get too confusing, or is it acceptable? The characters address it immediately upon meeting each other, and one goes by a nickname, so I feel like it shouldn’t be too bad, but I know some people don’t even pick names for characters that start with the same letter so I wanted to get some feedback.
I understand the logic behind it, especially because it is the case that people share names and have similar names in real life. I would still advise against it though, for a couple reasons.
[name_f][/name_f]first, it’s just plain confusing—you run the risk of people not remembering who is [name_m]Stephen[/name_m], [name_m]Steffan[/name_m], etc. and what differentiates each. depending on how major or minor these characters are, you might not have enough space to create a strong, easily identified difference.
[name_f][/name_f]second, even if the characters are unique enough to avoid this confusion, they could still be confused by someone reading quickly, since the names obviously look the same. if im quickly reading a spell of dialogue, I can guarantee that im not going to spot the difference between Stefania/Steffan/Stephen, and that’s going to slow me down as im reading.
[name_f][/name_f]third, not everyone reads because they want to pay close attention to a story and its characters. sometimes, people just want to read because it’s easy, and having similar character names would make things less easy. not a bad thing per se, but potentially narrowing the target audience
that said, it could just be a stylistic choice you make. there are novels which don’t name any of their characters, and im sure there’s a novel out there which uses the same name for all of its characters, and it’s a choice either way
[name_f][/name_f]if you’re confident that it’s not an issue, my advice is to leave it and see what beta readers say. it’s hard to know for sure if it’s confusing without seeing the names in context, so that’ll give you a better idea of how it impacts a reader’s experience