In this example we have three characters; Nathan, Vanessa, and the author speaking as a third-person omniscient narrator.
Nathan calls Vanessa, 'Nessa'.
A piece of text in the story reads; "Nessa walks into the TV room with a bag of popcorn."

In this instance it is not Nathan referring to Vanessa, but the author calling her that instead of referring to her as Vanessa.


In my opinion this just doesn't work, unless Nathan is the narrator. For me it makes the story look unprofessional. I think that there needs to be a separation between the author and the characters.

^In an instance like that, no. If the nickname is fairly widely known and that's how most of the characters were referring to the person, then maybe.

A character I recently played in a show was victim to this in the original novel, funny enough! Earlier this year I read "The Wind in the Willows" for my first time, having been cast as one of the main characters in a local production and being a lot less familiar with the story than the rest of the cast!

Anyway, the character I played gets referred to in the book (by the narrator) sometimes as "the Water Rat", sometimes simply as "the Rat", and a few times as "Ratty" or "Mr. Rat". I found all of these acceptable because he gets referred to as each of these by plenty of other characters throughout the story, and I think it also helps in that the majority of the characters in this particular novel are mostly just named after their respective species.

(For the record, in the script we used, my character was only ever referred to as "Ratty", avoiding this situation completely!)

That said, I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work if a character's nickname is only used by, say, one character. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any times that's happened in any books I've read (perhaps it has and I've just forgotten), but I can imagine myself finding it confusing! I'm... kind of okay with authors occasionally breaking the barrier between the narrator and the characters (I didn't used to like that style of writing, but I think at some point it grew on me). But regarding the nickname thing specifically, I think it depends on how commonly the character is referred to by said nickname, and if it's a majority of characters that call them by it.

I guess it's just one of those things where I personally don't care for it lol.

Unless a character goes by a nickname for all interactions (for example, a character named Abigail who goes by Abby), then no.

^ That's sorta how I feel.

In my opinion it depends on the type of narrator, the style & POV it's written in. If it's written in the standard 3rd person objective or ominient, probably not, but I give authors the creative license to give their narrators personalities and opinions (despite being just an omnipresent observer and not an actual character in the story). If that's the case, it would feel normal to me for an empathetic narrator to call a character by a nickname only otherwise used by close friends//family, or for a particularly sassy or grumpy narrator to refer to a character by a nickname they knows they don't like to be called.

That said, if it's 3rd person POV and the narrator is only observing and reporting (and not giving their own commentary), then using nicknames would throw me off a little.