When fictional characters are concerned pretense plays a key role, for, I argue, fictional characters exist only through the pretense that is constitutive of story-telling activities.
I here present an account of creation of fictional characters according to which a character is created by the author’s pretense to be referring to a flesh-and-blood individual, by the original introduction and use of the name of the character within a work of fiction.
Once the name of the character has been introduced, we, readers, can use it to genuinely refer to the character in our talk about fiction; yet, for the use of the character’s name outside the fiction to be parasitic upon its use within the fiction, the pretence performed by the author must have some content, which is the main target of my reflections here.
Pretense of Reference