Introducing secondary characters

Question

The dilemma I find myself in is introducing secondary characters. Say, this character - a family relative - only exists fleetingly in my story. The first time I introduce the character, I mention it's my aunt/uncle/etc. To exacerbate the problem, it's an Indian story with local names, not easy to remember. Should I replace the names with something easy to remember? If I talk about the character again after 20 pages, it doesn't hurt to re-introduce them with an extra couple of words like "Manu, my aunt."

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

I guess there's no harm in introducing characters having complex names but using short-terms like aunt etc. can be a bit ambiguous for the reader to understand, given that your story has many characters having complex names. Make sure that each character has their own unique characteristic and voice like one character can be quite witty, while the other is confused and so on. It will be easy for the reader to know about them quickly, whether they are appearing constantly or at some particular situations.