Halfway through writing “The Honey Locust Tree,” I realized that the list of people who had a role in the memoir was getting long. How many characters was too many? Where did I draw the line?
The number became so lengthy that I created a document where I listed the people and put them into groups. I had to give each character a fictitious name, since the memoir starts with this statement:
This is a work of nonfiction. I have recreated conversations to the best of my ability and have altered some details to protect privacy. I have changed the names of all people, except those of my family.
The first group was my wife and three children. My children were very young at the time of the memoir and had a minor role in the story, but it was an important one, so I had to include them. My wife played a major role.
The second group included the members of the Society of Friends with whom I conducted Quaker meetings at the state prison. The three men and one woman who volunteered on a regular basis were essential, but there were three Quakers who joined me in the prison one time and one Quaker whom I only saw at a few prison ministry potlucks. I included all seven of them.
The third group comprised four teachers and two students at the Moses Brown School. These six people appeared once, or at most twice, in the memoir, but their contributions were important, so I kept them. I wanted to introduce more faculty, but I worried that the memoir would sink under the weight of so many names.
The fourth group included the six inmates I met in minimum, medium, and maximum security. I got to know one man in medium—Ralph Maloney—fairly well, but the rest I hardly knew. But each of them spoke after Quaker meeting in the prison and I wanted to include their words.
My neighborhood book group, the Vassar Avenue Literary Society, comprised the fifth group. VALS played a small but important role in the book. One member, a man I called Arthur Waddington, was the assistant director at the state prison and his observations were important. I couldn’t include him without mentioning the other members of VALS, so those names stayed in the book.
Finally, there were people who didn’t appear in the memoir but whom I mentioned by name, such as the prison chaplain, a relative who was the victim of a crime, a Quaker involved in capital punishment issues, and a Quaker who gave a speech at Moses Brown entitled “What’s Irritating about Quakers?” Each of these people had minor roles, but they pushed the story forward.
Final count: Thirty-five characters, including myself. I matched the characters to a setting so the reader didn’t have to remember all of them. I hope the most salient characters will stand out in their respective environments.